initial commit of ebook 1973HEADmain

1 files changed, 3211 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/1973.txt b/1973.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ed16e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1973.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3211 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities,
+by Andrew Lang
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities
+
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: April 29, 2005  [eBook #1973]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF TROY: ULYSSES THE SACKER
+OF CITIES***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1912 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF TROY: ULYSSES THE SACKER OF CITIES
+by Andrew Lang
+
+
+Contents:
+
+The Boyhood and Parents of Ulysses
+How People Lived in the Time of Ulysses
+The Wooing of Helen of the Fair Hands
+The Stealing of Helen
+Trojan Victories
+Battle at the Ships
+The Slaying and Avenging of Patroclus
+The Cruelty of Achilles, and the Ransoming of Hector
+How Ulysses Stole the Luck of Troy
+The Battles with the Amazons and Memnon--the Death of Achilles
+Ulysses Sails to seek the Son of Achilles.--The Valour of Eurypylus
+The Slaying of Paris
+How Ulysses Invented the Device of the Horse of Tree
+The End of Troy and the Saving of Helen
+
+
+
+
+THE BOYHOOD AND PARENTS OF ULYSSES
+
+
+Long ago, in a little island called Ithaca, on the west coast of Greece,
+there lived a king named Laertes.  His kingdom was small and mountainous.
+People used to say that Ithaca "lay like a shield upon the sea," which
+sounds as if it were a flat country.  But in those times shields were
+very large, and rose at the middle into two peaks with a hollow between
+them, so that Ithaca, seen far off in the sea, with her two chief
+mountain peaks, and a cloven valley between them, looked exactly like a
+shield.  The country was so rough that men kept no horses, for, at that
+time, people drove, standing up in little light chariots with two horses;
+they never rode, and there was no cavalry in battle: men fought from
+chariots.  When Ulysses, the son of Laertes, King of Ithaca grew up, he
+never fought from a chariot, for he had none, but always on foot.
+
+If there were no horses in Ithaca, there was plenty of cattle.  The
+father of Ulysses had flocks of sheep, and herds of swine, and wild
+goats, deer, and hares lived in the hills and in the plains.  The sea was
+full of fish of many sorts, which men caught with nets, and with rod and
+line and hook.
+
+Thus Ithaca was a good island to live in.  The summer was long, and there
+was hardly any winter; only a few cold weeks, and then the swallows came
+back, and the plains were like a garden, all covered with wild
+flowers--violets, lilies, narcissus, and roses.  With the blue sky and
+the blue sea, the island was beautiful.  White temples stood on the
+shores; and the Nymphs, a sort of fairies, had their little shrines built
+of stone, with wild rose-bushes hanging over them.
+
+Other islands lay within sight, crowned with mountains, stretching away,
+one behind the other, into the sunset.  Ulysses in the course of his life
+saw many rich countries, and great cities of men, but, wherever he was,
+his heart was always in the little isle of Ithaca, where he had learned
+how to row, and how to sail a boat, and how to shoot with bow and arrow,
+and to hunt boars and stags, and manage his hounds.
+
+The mother of Ulysses was called Anticleia: she was the daughter of King
+Autolycus, who lived near Parnassus, a mountain on the mainland.  This
+King Autolycus was the most cunning of men.  He was a Master Thief, and
+could steal a man's pillow from under his head, but he does not seem to
+have been thought worse of for this.  The Greeks had a God of Thieves,
+named Hermes, whom Autolycus worshipped, and people thought more good of
+his cunning tricks than harm of his dishonesty.  Perhaps these tricks of
+his were only practised for amusement; however that may be, Ulysses
+became as artful as his grandfather; he was both the bravest and the most
+cunning of men, but Ulysses never stole things, except once, as we shall
+hear, from the enemy in time of war.  He showed his cunning in stratagems
+of war, and in many strange escapes from giants and man-eaters.
+
+Soon after Ulysses was born, his grandfather came to see his mother and
+father in Ithaca.  He was sitting at supper when the nurse of Ulysses,
+whose name was Eurycleia, brought in the baby, and set him on the knees
+of Autolycus, saying, "Find a name for your grandson, for he is a child
+of many prayers."
+
+"I am very angry with many men and women in the world," said Autolycus,
+"so let the child's name be _A Man of Wrath_," which, in Greek, was
+Odysseus.  So the child was called Odysseus by his own people, but the
+name was changed into Ulysses, and we shall call him Ulysses.
+
+We do not know much about Ulysses when he was a little boy, except that
+he used to run about the garden with his father, asking questions, and
+begging that he might have fruit trees "for his very own."  He was a
+great pet, for his parents had no other son, so his father gave him
+thirteen pear trees, and forty fig trees, and promised him fifty rows of
+vines, all covered with grapes, which he could eat when he liked, without
+asking leave of the gardener.  So he was not tempted to steal fruit, like
+his grandfather.
+
+When Autolycus gave Ulysses his name, he said that he must come to stay
+with him, when he was a big boy, and he would get splendid presents.
+Ulysses was told about this, so, when he was a tall lad, he crossed the
+sea and drove in his chariot to the old man's house on Mount Parnassus.
+Everybody welcomed him, and next day his uncles and cousins and he went
+out to hunt a fierce wild boar, early in the morning.  Probably Ulysses
+took his own dog, named Argos, the best of hounds, of which we shall hear
+again, long afterwards, for the dog lived to be very old.  Soon the
+hounds came on the scent of a wild boar, and after them the men went,
+with spears in their hands, and Ulysses ran foremost, for he was already
+the swiftest runner in Greece.
+
+He came on a great boar lying in a tangled thicket of boughs and bracken,
+a dark place where the sun never shone, nor could the rain pierce
+through.  Then the noise of the men's shouts and the barking of the dogs
+awakened the boar, and up he sprang, bristling all over his back, and
+with fire shining from his eyes.  In rushed Ulysses first of all, with
+his spear raised to strike, but the boar was too quick for him, and ran
+in, and drove his sharp tusk sideways, ripping up the thigh of Ulysses.
+But the boar's tusk missed the bone, and Ulysses sent his sharp spear
+into the beast's right shoulder, and the spear went clean through, and
+the boar fell dead, with a loud cry.  The uncles of Ulysses bound up his
+wound carefully, and sang a magical song over it, as the French soldiers
+wanted to do to Joan of Arc when the arrow pierced her shoulder at the
+siege of Orleans.  Then the blood ceased to flow, and soon Ulysses was
+quite healed of his wound.  They thought that he would be a good warrior,
+and gave him splendid presents, and when he went home again he told all
+that had happened to his father and mother, and his nurse, Eurycleia.  But
+there was always a long white mark or scar above his left knee, and about
+that scar we shall hear again, many years afterwards.
+
+
+
+
+HOW PEOPLE LIVED IN THE TIME OF ULYSSES
+
+
+When Ulysses was a young man he wished to marry a princess of his own
+rank.  Now there were at that time many kings in Greece, and you must be
+told how they lived.  Each king had his own little kingdom, with his
+chief town, walled with huge walls of enormous stone.  Many of these
+walls are still standing, though the grass has grown over the ruins of
+most of them, and in later years, men believed that those walls must have
+been built by giants, the stones are so enormous.  Each king had nobles
+under him, rich men, and all had their palaces, each with its courtyard,
+and its long hall, where the fire burned in the midst, and the King and
+Queen sat beside it on high thrones, between the four chief carved
+pillars that held up the roof.  The thrones were made of cedar wood and
+ivory, inlaid with gold, and there were many other chairs and small
+tables for guests, and the walls and doors were covered with bronze
+plates, and gold and silver, and sheets of blue glass.  Sometimes they
+were painted with pictures of bull hunts, and a few of these pictures may
+still be seen.  At night torches were lit, and placed in the hands of
+golden figures of boys, but all the smoke of fire and torches escaped by
+a hole in the roof, and made the ceiling black.  On the walls hung swords
+and spears and helmets and shields, which needed to be often cleaned from
+the stains of the smoke.  The minstrel or poet sat beside the King and
+Queen, and, after supper he struck his harp, and sang stories of old
+wars.  At night the King and Queen slept in their own place, and the
+women in their own rooms; the princesses had their chambers upstairs, and
+the young princes had each his room built separate in the courtyard.
+
+There were bath rooms with polished baths, where guests were taken when
+they arrived dirty from a journey.  The guests lay at night on beds in
+the portico, for the climate was warm.  There were plenty of servants,
+who were usually slaves taken in war, but they were very kindly treated,
+and were friendly with their masters.  No coined money was used; people
+paid for things in cattle, or in weighed pieces of gold.  Rich men had
+plenty of gold cups, and gold-hilted swords, and bracelets, and brooches.
+The kings were the leaders in war and judges in peace, and did sacrifices
+to the Gods, killing cattle and swine and sheep, on which they afterwards
+dined.
+
+They dressed in a simple way, in a long smock of linen or silk, which
+fell almost to the feet, but was tucked up into a belt round the waist,
+and worn longer or shorter, as they happened to choose.  Where it needed
+fastening at the throat, golden brooches were used, beautifully made,
+with safety pins.  This garment was much like the plaid that the
+Highlanders used to wear, with its belt and brooches.  Over it the Greeks
+wore great cloaks of woollen cloth when the weather was cold, but these
+they did not use in battle.  They fastened their breastplates, in war,
+over their smocks, and had other armour covering the lower parts of the
+body, and leg armour called "greaves"; while the great shield which
+guarded the whole body from throat to ankles was carried by a broad belt
+slung round the neck.  The sword was worn in another belt, crossing the
+shield belt.  They had light shoes in peace, and higher and heavier boots
+in war, or for walking across country.
+
+The women wore the smock, with more brooches and jewels than the men; and
+had head coverings, with veils, and mantles over all, and necklaces of
+gold and amber, earrings, and bracelets of gold or of bronze.  The
+colours of their dresses were various, chiefly white and purple; and,
+when in mourning, they wore very dark blue, not black.  All the armour,
+and the sword blades and spearheads were made, not of steel or iron, but
+of bronze, a mixture of copper and tin.  The shields were made of several
+thicknesses of leather, with a plating of bronze above; tools, such as
+axes and ploughshares, were either of iron or bronze; and so were the
+blades of knives and daggers.
+
+To us the houses and way of living would have seemed very splendid, and
+also, in some ways, rather rough.  The palace floors, at least in the
+house of Ulysses, were littered with bones and feet of the oxen slain for
+food, but this happened when Ulysses had been long from home.  The floor
+of the hall in the house of Ulysses was not boarded with planks, or paved
+with stone: it was made of clay; for he was a poor king of small islands.
+The cooking was coarse: a pig or sheep was killed, roasted and eaten
+immediately.  We never hear of boiling meat, and though people probably
+ate fish, we do not hear of their doing so, except when no meat could be
+procured.  Still some people must have liked them; for in the pictures
+that were painted or cut in precious stones in these times we see the
+half-naked fisherman walking home, carrying large fish.
+
+The people were wonderful workers of gold and bronze.  Hundreds of their
+golden jewels have been found in their graves, but probably these were
+made and buried two or three centuries before the time of Ulysses.  The
+dagger blades had pictures of fights with lions, and of flowers, inlaid
+on them, in gold of various colours, and in silver; nothing so beautiful
+is made now.  There are figures of men hunting bulls on some of the gold
+cups, and these are wonderfully life-like.  The vases and pots of
+earthenware were painted in charming patterns: in short, it was a
+splendid world to live in.
+
+The people believed in many Gods, male and female, under the chief God,
+Zeus.  The Gods were thought to be taller than men, and immortal, and to
+live in much the same way as men did, eating, drinking, and sleeping in
+glorious palaces.  Though they were supposed to reward good men, and to
+punish people who broke their oaths and were unkind to strangers, there
+were many stories told in which the Gods were fickle, cruel, selfish, and
+set very bad examples to men.  How far these stories were believed is not
+sure; it is certain that "all men felt a need of the Gods," and thought
+that they were pleased by good actions and displeased by evil.  Yet, when
+a man felt that his behaviour had been bad, he often threw the blame on
+the Gods, and said that they had misled him, which really meant no more
+than that "he could not help it."
+
+There was a curious custom by which the princes bought wives from the
+fathers of the princesses, giving cattle and gold, and bronze and iron,
+but sometimes a prince got a wife as the reward for some very brave
+action.  A man would not give his daughter to a wooer whom she did not
+love, even if he offered the highest price, at least this must have been
+the general rule, for husbands and wives were very fond of each other,
+and of their children, and husbands always allowed their wives to rule
+the house, and give their advice on everything.  It was thought a very
+wicked thing for a woman to like another man better than her husband, and
+there were few such wives, but among them was the most beautiful woman
+who ever lived.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOOING OF HELEN OF THE FAIR HANDS
+
+
+This was the way in which people lived when Ulysses was young, and wished
+to be married.  The worst thing in the way of life was that the greatest
+and most beautiful princesses might be taken prisoners, and carried off
+as slaves to the towns of the men who had killed their fathers and
+husbands.  Now at that time one lady was far the fairest in the world:
+namely, Helen, daughter of King Tyndarus.  Every young prince heard of
+her and desired to marry her; so her father invited them all to his
+palace, and entertained them, and found out what they would give.  Among
+the rest Ulysses went, but his father had a little kingdom, a rough
+island, with others near it, and Ulysses had not a good chance.  He was
+not tall; though very strong and active, he was a short man with broad
+shoulders, but his face was handsome, and, like all the princes, he wore
+long yellow hair, clustering like a hyacinth flower.  His manner was
+rather hesitating, and he seemed to speak very slowly at first, though
+afterwards his words came freely.  He was good at everything a man can
+do; he could plough, and build houses, and make ships, and he was the
+best archer in Greece, except one, and could bend the great bow of a dead
+king, Eurytus, which no other man could string.  But he had no horses,
+and had no great train of followers; and, in short, neither Helen nor her
+father thought of choosing Ulysses for her husband out of so many tall,
+handsome young princes, glittering with gold ornaments.  Still, Helen was
+very kind to Ulysses, and there was great friendship between them, which
+was fortunate for her in the end.
+
+Tyndarus first made all the princes take an oath that they would stand by
+the prince whom he chose, and would fight for him in all his quarrels.
+Then he named for her husband Menelaus, King of Lacedaemon.  He was a
+very brave man, but not one of the strongest; he was not such a fighter
+as the gigantic Aias, the tallest and strongest of men; or as Diomede,
+the friend of Ulysses; or as his own brother, Agamemnon, the King of the
+rich city of Mycenae, who was chief over all other princes, and general
+of the whole army in war.  The great lions carved in stone that seemed to
+guard his city are still standing above the gate through which Agamemnon
+used to drive his chariot.
+
+The man who proved to be the best fighter of all, Achilles, was not among
+the lovers of Helen, for he was still a boy, and his mother, Thetis of
+the silver feet, a goddess of the sea, had sent him to be brought up as a
+girl, among the daughters of Lycomedes of Scyros, in an island far away.
+Thetis did this because Achilles was her only child, and there was a
+prophecy that, if he went to the wars, he would win the greatest glory,
+but die very young, and never see his mother again.  She thought that if
+war broke out he would not be found hiding in girl's dress, among girls,
+far away.
+
+So at last, after thinking over the matter for long, Tyndarus gave fair
+Helen to Menelaus, the rich King of Lacedaemon; and her twin sister
+Clytaemnestra, who was also very beautiful, was given to King Agamemnon,
+the chief over all the princes.  They all lived very happily together at
+first, but not for long.
+
+In the meantime King Tyndarus spoke to his brother Icarius, who had a
+daughter named Penelope.  She also was very pretty, but not nearly so
+beautiful as her cousin, fair Helen, and we know that Penelope was not
+very fond of her cousin.  Icarius, admiring the strength and wisdom of
+Ulysses, gave him his daughter Penelope to be his wife, and Ulysses loved
+her very dearly, no man and wife were ever dearer to each other.  They
+went away together to rocky Ithaca, and perhaps Penelope was not sorry
+that a wide sea lay between her home and that of Helen; for Helen was not
+only the fairest woman that ever lived in the world, but she was so kind
+and gracious and charming that no man could see her without loving her.
+When she was only a child, the famous prince Theseus, who was famous in
+Greek Story, carried her away to his own city of Athens, meaning to marry
+her when she grew up, and even at that time, there was a war for her
+sake, for her brothers followed Theseus with an army, and fought him, and
+brought her home.
+
+She had fairy gifts; for instance, she had a great red jewel, called "the
+Star," and when she wore it red drops seemed to fall from it and vanished
+before they touched and stained her white breast--so white that people
+called her "the Daughter of the Swan."  She could speak in the very voice
+of any man or woman, so folk also named her Echo, and it was believed
+that she could neither grow old nor die, but would at last pass away to
+the Elysian plain and the world's end, where life is easiest for men.  No
+snow comes thither, nor great storm, nor any rain; but always the river
+of Ocean that rings round the whole earth sends forth the west wind to
+blow cool on the people of King Rhadamanthus of the fair hair.  These
+were some of the stories that men told of fair Helen, but Ulysses was
+never sorry that he had not the fortune to marry her, so fond he was of
+her cousin, his wife, Penelope, who was very wise and good.
+
+When Ulysses brought his wife home they lived, as the custom was, in the
+palace of his father, King Laertes, but Ulysses, with his own hands,
+built a chamber for Penelope and himself.  There grew a great olive tree
+in the inner court of the palace, and its stem was as large as one of the
+tall carved pillars of the hall.  Round about this tree Ulysses built the
+chamber, and finished it with close-set stones, and roofed it over, and
+made close-fastening doors.  Then he cut off all the branches of the
+olive tree, and smoothed the trunk, and shaped it into the bed-post, and
+made the bedstead beautiful with inlaid work of gold and silver and
+ivory.  There was no such bed in Greece, and no man could move it from
+its place, and this bed comes again into the story, at the very end.
+
+Now time went by, and Ulysses and Penelope had one son called Telemachus;
+and Eurycleia, who had been his father's nurse, took care of him.  They
+were all very happy, and lived in peace in rocky Ithaca, and Ulysses
+looked after his lands, and flocks, and herds, and went hunting with his
+dog Argos, the swiftest of hounds.
+
+
+
+
+THE STEALING OF HELEN
+
+
+This happy time did not last long, and Telemachus was still a baby, when
+war arose, so great and mighty and marvellous as had never been known in
+the world.  Far across the sea that lies on the east of Greece, there
+dwelt the rich King Priam.  His town was called Troy, or Ilios, and it
+stood on a hill near the seashore, where are the straits of Hellespont,
+between Europe and Asia; it was a great city surrounded by strong walls,
+and its ruins are still standing.  The kings could make merchants who
+passed through the straits pay toll to them, and they had allies in
+Thrace, a part of Europe opposite Troy, and Priam was chief of all
+princes on his side of the sea, as Agamemnon was chief king in Greece.
+Priam had many beautiful things; he had a vine made of gold, with golden
+leaves and clusters, and he had the swiftest horses, and many strong and
+brave sons; the strongest and bravest was named Hector, and the youngest
+and most beautiful was named Paris.
+
+There was a prophecy that Priam's wife would give birth to a burning
+torch, so, when Paris was born, Priam sent a servant to carry the baby
+into a wild wood on Mount Ida, and leave him to die or be eaten by wolves
+and wild cats.  The servant left the child, but a shepherd found him, and
+brought him up as his own son.  The boy became as beautiful, for a boy,
+as Helen was for a girl, and was the best runner, and hunter, and archer
+among the country people.  He was loved by the beautiful OEnone, a
+nymph--that is, a kind of fairy--who dwelt in a cave among the woods of
+Ida.  The Greeks and Trojans believed in these days that such fair nymphs
+haunted all beautiful woodland places, and the mountains, and wells, and
+had crystal palaces, like mermaids, beneath the waves of the sea.  These
+fairies were not mischievous, but gentle and kind.  Sometimes they
+married mortal men, and OEnone was the bride of Paris, and hoped to keep
+him for her own all the days of his life.
+
+It was believed that she had the magical power of healing wounded men,
+however sorely they were hurt.  Paris and OEnone lived most happily
+together in the forest; but one day, when the servants of Priam had
+driven off a beautiful bull that was in the herd of Paris, he left the
+hills to seek it, and came into the town of Troy.  His mother, Hecuba,
+saw him, and looking at him closely, perceived that he wore a ring which
+she had tied round her baby's neck when he was taken away from her soon
+after his birth.  Then Hecuba, beholding him so beautiful, and knowing
+him to be her son, wept for joy, and they all forgot the prophecy that he
+would be a burning torch of fire, and Priam gave him a house like those
+of his brothers, the Trojan princes.
+
+The fame of beautiful Helen reached Troy, and Paris quite forgot unhappy
+OEnone, and must needs go to see Helen for himself.  Perhaps he meant to
+try to win her for his wife, before her marriage.  But sailing was little
+understood in these times, and the water was wide, and men were often
+driven for years out of their course, to Egypt, and Africa, and far away
+into the unknown seas, where fairies lived in enchanted islands, and
+cannibals dwelt in caves of the hills.
+
+Paris came much too late to have a chance of marrying Helen; however, he
+was determined to see her, and he made his way to her palace beneath the
+mountain Taygetus, beside the clear swift river Eurotas.  The servants
+came out of the hall when they heard the sound of wheels and horses'
+feet, and some of them took the horses to the stables, and tilted the
+chariots against the gateway, while others led Paris into the hall, which
+shone like the sun with gold and silver.  Then Paris and his companions
+were led to the baths, where they were bathed, and clad in new clothes,
+mantles of white, and robes of purple, and next they were brought before
+King Menelaus, and he welcomed them kindly, and meat was set before them,
+and wine in cups of gold.  While they were talking, Helen came forth from
+her fragrant chamber, like a Goddess, her maidens following her, and
+carrying for her an ivory distaff with violet-coloured wool, which she
+span as she sat, and heard Paris tell how far he had travelled to see her
+who was so famous for her beauty even in countries far away.
+
+Then Paris knew that he had never seen, and never could see, a lady so
+lovely and gracious as Helen as she sat and span, while the red drops
+fell and vanished from the ruby called the Star; and Helen knew that
+among all the princes in the world there was none so beautiful as Paris.
+Now some say that Paris, by art magic, put on the appearance of Menelaus,
+and asked Helen to come sailing with him, and that she, thinking he was
+her husband, followed him, and he carried her across the wide waters of
+Troy, away from her lord and her one beautiful little daughter, the child
+Hermione.  And others say that the Gods carried Helen herself off to
+Egypt, and that they made in her likeness a beautiful ghost, out of
+flowers and sunset clouds, whom Paris bore to Troy, and this they did to
+cause war between Greeks and Trojans.  Another story is that Helen and
+her bower maiden and her jewels were seized by force, when Menelaus was
+out hunting.  It is only certain that Paris and Helen did cross the seas
+together, and that Menelaus and little Hermione were left alone in the
+melancholy palace beside the Eurotas.  Penelope, we know for certain,
+made no excuses for her beautiful cousin, but hated her as the cause of
+her own sorrows and of the deaths of thousands of men in war, for all the
+Greek princes were bound by their oath to fight for Menelaus against any
+one who injured him and stole his wife away.  But Helen was very unhappy
+in Troy, and blamed herself as bitterly as all the other women blamed
+her, and most of all OEnone, who had been the love of Paris.  The men
+were much more kind to Helen, and were determined to fight to the death
+rather than lose the sight of her beauty among them.
+
+The news of the dishonour done to Menelaus and to all the princes of
+Greece ran through the country like fire through a forest.  East and west
+and south and north went the news: to kings in their castles on the
+hills, and beside the rivers and on cliffs above the sea.  The cry came
+to ancient Nestor of the white beard at Pylos, Nestor who had reigned
+over two generations of men, who had fought against the wild folk of the
+hills, and remembered the strong Heracles, and Eurytus of the black bow
+that sang before the day of battle.
+
+The cry came to black-bearded Agamemnon, in his strong town called
+"golden Mycenae," because it was so rich; it came to the people in
+Thisbe, where the wild doves haunt; and it came to rocky Pytho, where is
+the sacred temple of Apollo and the maid who prophesies.  It came to
+Aias, the tallest and strongest of men, in his little isle of Salamis;
+and to Diomede of the loud war-cry, the bravest of warriors, who held
+Argos and Tiryns of the black walls of huge, stones, that are still
+standing.  The summons came to the western islands and to Ulysses in
+Ithaca, and even far south to the great island of Crete of the hundred
+cities, where Idomeneus ruled in Cnossos; Idomeneus, whose ruined palace
+may still be seen with the throne of the king, and pictures painted on
+the walls, and the King's own draught-board of gold and silver, and
+hundreds of tablets of clay, on which are written the lists of royal
+treasures.  Far north went the news to Pelasgian Argos, and Hellas, where
+the people of Peleus dwelt, the Myrmidons; but Peleus was too old to
+fight, and his boy, Achilles, dwelt far away, in the island of Scyros,
+dressed as a girl, among the daughters of King Lycomedes.  To many
+another town and to a hundred islands went the bitter news of approaching
+war, for all princes knew that their honour and their oaths compelled
+them to gather their spearmen, and bowmen, and slingers from the fields
+and the fishing, and to make ready their ships, and meet King Agamemnon
+in the harbour of Aulis, and cross the wide sea to besiege Troy town.
+
+Now the story is told that Ulysses was very unwilling to leave his island
+and his wife Penelope, and little Telemachus; while Penelope had no wish
+that he should pass into danger, and into the sight of Helen of the fair
+hands.  So it is said that when two of the princes came to summon
+Ulysses, he pretended to be mad, and went ploughing the sea sand with
+oxen, and sowing the sand with salt.  Then the prince Palamedes took the
+baby Telemachus from the arms of his nurse, Eurycleia, and laid him in
+the line of the furrow, where the ploughshare would strike him and kill
+him.  But Ulysses turned the plough aside, and they cried that he was not
+mad, but sane, and he must keep his oath, and join the fleet at Aulis, a
+long voyage for him to sail, round the stormy southern Cape of Maleia.
+
+Whether this tale be true or not, Ulysses did go, leading twelve black
+ships, with high beaks painted red at prow and stern.  The ships had
+oars, and the warriors manned the oars, to row when there was no wind.
+There was a small raised deck at each end of the ships; on these decks
+men stood to fight with sword and spear when there was a battle at sea.
+Each ship had but one mast, with a broad lugger sail, and for anchors
+they had only heavy stones attached to cables.  They generally landed at
+night, and slept on the shore of one of the many islands, when they
+could, for they greatly feared to sail out of sight of land.
+
+The fleet consisted of more than a thousand ships, each with fifty
+warriors, so the army was of more than fifty thousand men.  Agamemnon had
+a hundred ships, Diomede had eighty, Nestor had ninety, the Cretans with
+Idomeneus, had eighty, Menelaus had sixty; but Aias and Ulysses, who
+lived in small islands, had only twelve ships apiece.  Yet Aias was so
+brave and strong, and Ulysses so brave and wise, that they were ranked
+among the greatest chiefs and advisers of Agamemnon, with Menelaus,
+Diomede, Idomeneus, Nestor, Menestheus of Athens, and two or three
+others.  These chiefs were called the Council, and gave advice to
+Agamemnon, who was commander-in-chief.  He was a brave fighter, but so
+anxious and fearful of losing the lives of his soldiers that Ulysses and
+Diomede were often obliged to speak to him very severely.  Agamemnon was
+also very insolent and greedy, though, when anybody stood up to him, he
+was ready to apologise, for fear the injured chief should renounce his
+service and take away his soldiers.
+
+Nestor was much respected because he remained brave, though he was too
+old to be very useful in battle.  He generally tried to make peace when
+the princes quarrelled with Agamemnon.  He loved to tell long stories
+about his great deeds when he was young, and he wished the chiefs to
+fight in old-fashioned ways.
+
+For instance, in his time the Greeks had fought in clan regiments, and
+the princely men had never dismounted in battle, but had fought in
+squadrons of chariots, but now the owners of chariots fought on foot,
+each man for himself, while his squire kept the chariot near him to
+escape on if he had to retreat.  Nestor wished to go back to the good old
+way of chariot charges against the crowds of foot soldiers of the enemy.
+In short, he was a fine example of the old-fashioned soldier.
+
+Aias, though so very tall, strong, and brave, was rather stupid.  He
+seldom spoke, but he was always ready to fight, and the last to retreat.
+Menelaus was weak of body, but as brave as the best, or more brave, for
+he had a keen sense of honour, and would attempt what he had not the
+strength to do.  Diomede and Ulysses were great friends, and always
+fought side by side, when they could, and helped each other in the most
+dangerous adventures.
+
+These were the chiefs who led the great Greek armada from the harbour of
+Aulis.  A long time had passed, after the flight of Helen, before the
+large fleet could be collected, and more time went by in the attempt to
+cross the sea to Troy.  There were tempests that scattered the ships, so
+they were driven back to Aulis to refit; and they fought, as they went
+out again, with the peoples of unfriendly islands, and besieged their
+towns.  What they wanted most of all was to have Achilles with them, for
+he was the leader of fifty ships and 2,500 men, and he had magical armour
+made, men said, for his father, by Hephaestus, the God of armour-making
+and smithy work.
+
+At last the fleet came to the Isle of Scyros, where they suspected that
+Achilles was concealed.  King Lycomedes received the chiefs kindly, and
+they saw all his beautiful daughters dancing and playing at ball, but
+Achilles was still so young and slim and so beautiful that they did not
+know him among the others.  There was a prophecy that they could not take
+Troy without him, and yet they could not find him out.  Then Ulysses had
+a plan.  He blackened his eyebrows and beard and put on the dress of a
+Phoenician merchant.  The Phoenicians were a people who lived near the
+Jews, and were of the same race, and spoke much the same language, but,
+unlike the Jews, who, at that time were farmers in Palestine, tilling the
+ground, and keeping flocks and herds, the Phoenicians were the greatest
+of traders and sailors, and stealers of slaves.  They carried cargoes of
+beautiful cloths, and embroideries, and jewels of gold, and necklaces of
+amber, and sold these everywhere about the shores of Greece and the
+islands.
+
+Ulysses then dressed himself like a Phoenician pedlar, with his pack on
+his back: he only took a stick in his hand, his long hair was turned up,
+and hidden under a red sailor's cap, and in this figure he came, stooping
+beneath his pack, into the courtyard of King Lycomedes.  The girls heard
+that a pedlar had come, and out they all ran, Achilles with the rest to
+watch the pedlar undo his pack.  Each chose what she liked best: one took
+a wreath of gold; another a necklace of gold and amber; another earrings;
+a fourth a set of brooches, another a dress of embroidered scarlet cloth;
+another a veil; another a pair of bracelets; but at the bottom of the
+pack lay a great sword of bronze, the hilt studded with golden nails.
+Achilles seized the sword.  "This is for me!" he said, and drew the sword
+from the gilded sheath, and made it whistle round his head.
+
+"You are Achilles, Peleus' son!" said Ulysses; "and you are to be the
+chief warrior of the Achaeans," for the Greeks then called themselves
+Achaeans.  Achilles was only too glad to hear these words, for he was
+quite tired of living among maidens.  Ulysses led him into the hall where
+the chiefs were sitting at their wine, and Achilles was blushing like any
+girl.
+
+"Here is the Queen of the Amazons," said Ulysses--for the Amazons were a
+race of warlike maidens--"or rather here is Achilles, Peleus' son, with
+sword in hand."  Then they all took his hand, and welcomed him, and he
+was clothed in man's dress, with the sword by his side, and presently
+they sent him back with ten ships to his home.  There his mother, Thetis,
+of the silver feet, the goddess of the sea, wept over him, saying, "My
+child, thou hast the choice of a long and happy and peaceful life here
+with me, or of a brief time of war and undying renown.  Never shall I see
+thee again in Argos if thy choice is for war."  But Achilles chose to die
+young, and to be famous as long as the world stands.  So his father gave
+him fifty ships, with Patroclus, who was older than he, to be his friend,
+and with an old man, Phoenix, to advise him; and his mother gave him the
+glorious armour that the God had made for his father, and the heavy ashen
+spear that none but he could wield, and he sailed to join the host of the
+Achaeans, who all praised and thanked Ulysses that had found for them
+such a prince.  For Achilles was the fiercest fighter of them all, and
+the swiftest-footed man, and the most courteous prince, and the gentlest
+with women and children, but he was proud and high of heart, and when he
+was angered his anger was terrible.
+
+The Trojans would have had no chance against the Greeks if only the men
+of the city of Troy had fought to keep Helen of the fair hands.  But they
+had allies, who spoke different languages, and came to fight for them
+both from Europe and from Asia.  On the Trojan as well as on the Greek
+side were people called Pelasgians, who seem to have lived on both shores
+of the sea.  There were Thracians, too, who dwelt much further north than
+Achilles, in Europe and beside the strait of Hellespont, where the narrow
+sea runs like a river.  There were warriors of Lycia, led by Sarpedon and
+Glaucus; there were Carians, who spoke in a strange tongue; there were
+Mysians and men from Alybe, which was called "the birthplace of silver,"
+and many other peoples sent their armies, so that the war was between
+Eastern Europe, on one side, and Western Asia Minor on the other.  The
+people of Egypt took no part in the war: the Greeks and Islesmen used to
+come down in their ships and attack the Egyptians as the Danes used to
+invade England.  You may see the warriors from the islands, with their
+horned helmets, in old Egyptian pictures.
+
+The commander-in-chief, as we say now, of the Trojans was Hector, the son
+of Priam.  He was thought a match for any one of the Greeks, and was
+brave and good.  His brothers also were leaders, but Paris preferred to
+fight from a distance with bow and arrows.  He and Pandarus, who dwelt on
+the slopes of Mount Ida, were the best archers in the Trojan army.  The
+princes usually fought with heavy spears, which they threw at each other,
+and with swords, leaving archery to the common soldiers who had no armour
+of bronze.  But Teucer, Meriones, and Ulysses were the best archers of
+the Achaeans.  People called Dardanians were led by Aeneas, who was said
+to be the son of the most beautiful of the goddesses.  These, with
+Sarpedon and Glaucus, were the most famous of the men who fought for
+Troy.
+
+Troy was a strong town on a hill.  Mount Ida lay behind it, and in front
+was a plain sloping to the sea shore.  Through this plain ran two
+beautiful clear rivers, and there were scattered here and there what you
+would have taken for steep knolls, but they were really mounds piled up
+over the ashes of warriors who had died long ago.  On these mounds
+sentinels used to stand and look across the water to give warning if the
+Greek fleet drew near, for the Trojans had heard that it was on its way.
+At last the fleet came in view, and the sea was black with ships, the
+oarsmen pulling with all their might for the honour of being the first to
+land.  The race was won by the ship of the prince Protesilaus, who was
+first of all to leap on shore, but as he leaped he was struck to the
+heart by an arrow from the bow of Paris.  This must have seemed a good
+omen to the Trojans, and to the Greeks evil, but we do not hear that the
+landing was resisted in great force, any more than that of Norman William
+was, when he invaded England.
+
+The Greeks drew up all their ships on shore, and the men camped in huts
+built in front of the ships.  There was thus a long row of huts with the
+ships behind them, and in these huts the Greeks lived all through the ten
+years that the siege of Troy lasted.  In these days they do not seem to
+have understood how to conduct a siege.  You would have expected the
+Greeks to build towers and dig trenches all round Troy, and from the
+towers watch the roads, so that provisions might not be brought in from
+the country.  This is called "investing" a town, but the Greeks never
+invested Troy.  Perhaps they had not men enough; at all events the place
+remained open, and cattle could always be driven in to feed the warriors
+and the women and children.
+
+Moreover, the Greeks for long never seem to have tried to break down one
+of the gates, nor to scale the walls, which were very high, with ladders.
+On the other hand, the Trojans and allies never ventured to drive the
+Greeks into the sea; they commonly remained within the walls or
+skirmished just beneath them.  The older men insisted on this way of
+fighting, in spite of Hector, who always wished to attack and storm the
+camp of the Greeks.  Neither side had machines for throwing heavy stones,
+such as the Romans used later, and the most that the Greeks did was to
+follow Achilles and capture small neighbouring cities, and take the women
+for slaves, and drive the cattle.  They got provisions and wine from the
+Phoenicians, who came in ships, and made much profit out of the war.
+
+It was not till the tenth year that the war began in real earnest, and
+scarcely any of the chief leaders had fallen.  Fever came upon the
+Greeks, and all day the camp was black with smoke, and all night shone
+with fire from the great piles of burning wood, on which the Greeks
+burned their dead, whose bones they then buried under hillocks of earth.
+Many of these hillocks are still standing on the plain of Troy.  When the
+plague had raged for ten days, Achilles called an assembly of the whole
+army, to try to find out why the Gods were angry.  They thought that the
+beautiful God Apollo (who took the Trojan side) was shooting invisible
+arrows at them from his silver bow, though fevers in armies are usually
+caused by dirt and drinking bad water.  The great heat of the sun, too,
+may have helped to cause the disease; but we must tell the story as the
+Greeks told it themselves.  So Achilles spoke in the assembly, and
+proposed to ask some prophet why Apollo was angry.  The chief prophet was
+Calchas.  He rose and said that he would declare the truth if Achilles
+would promise to protect him from the anger of any prince whom the truth
+might offend.
+
+Achilles knew well whom Calchas meant.  Ten days before, a priest of
+Apollo had come to the camp and offered ransom for his daughter Chryseis,
+a beautiful girl, whom Achilles had taken prisoner, with many others,
+when he captured a small town.  Chryseis had been given as a slave to
+Agamemnon, who always got the best of the plunder because he was chief
+king, whether he had taken part in the fighting or not.  As a rule he did
+not.  To Achilles had been given another girl, Briseis, of whom he was
+very fond.  Now when Achilles had promised to protect Calchas, the
+prophet spoke out, and boldly said, what all men knew already, that
+Apollo caused the plague because Agamemnon would not return Chryseis, and
+had insulted her father, the priest of the God.
+
+On hearing this, Agamemnon was very angry.  He said that he would send
+Chryseis home, but that he would take Briseis away from Achilles.  Then
+Achilles was drawing his great sword from the sheath to kill Agamemnon,
+but even in his anger he knew that this was wrong, so he merely called
+Agamemnon a greedy coward, "with face of dog and heart of deer," and he
+swore that he and his men would fight no more against the Trojans.  Old
+Nestor tried to make peace, and swords were not drawn, but Briseis was
+taken away from Achilles, and Ulysses put Chryseis on board of his ship
+and sailed away with her to her father's town, and gave her up to her
+father.  Then her father prayed to Apollo that the plague might cease,
+and it did cease--when the Greeks had cleansed their camp, and purified
+themselves and cast their filth into the sea.
+
+We know how fierce and brave Achilles was, and we may wonder that he did
+not challenge Agamemnon to fight a duel.  But the Greeks never fought
+duels, and Agamemnon was believed to be chief king by right divine.
+Achilles went alone to the sea shore when his dear Briseis was led away,
+and he wept, and called to his mother, the silver-footed lady of the
+waters.  Then she arose from the grey sea, like a mist, and sat down
+beside her son, and stroked his hair with her hand, and he told her all
+his sorrows.  So she said that she would go up to the dwelling of the
+Gods, and pray Zeus, the chief of them all, to make the Trojans win a
+great battle, so that Agamemnon should feel his need of Achilles, and
+make amends for his insolence, and do him honour.
+
+Thetis kept her promise, and Zeus gave his word that the Trojans should
+defeat the Greeks.  That night Zeus sent a deceitful dream to Agamemnon.
+The dream took the shape of old Nestor, and said that Zeus would give him
+victory that day.  While he was still asleep, Agamemnon was fun of hope
+that he would instantly take Troy, but, when he woke, he seems not to
+have been nearly so confident, for in place of putting on his armour, and
+bidding the Greeks arm themselves, he merely dressed in his robe and
+mantle, took his sceptre, and went and told the chiefs about his dream.
+They did not feel much encouraged, so he said that he would try the
+temper of the army.  He would call them together, and propose to return
+to Greece; but, if the soldiers took him at his word, the other chiefs
+were to stop them.  This was a foolish plan, for the soldiers were
+wearying for beautiful Greece, and their homes, and wives and children.
+Therefore, when Agamemnon did as he had said, the whole army rose, like
+the sea under the west wind, and, with a shout, they rushed to the ships,
+while the dust blew in clouds from under their feet.  Then they began to
+launch their ships, and it seems that the princes were carried away in
+the rush, and were as eager as the rest to go home.
+
+But Ulysses only stood in sorrow and anger beside his ship, and never put
+hand to it, for he felt how disgraceful it was to run away.  At last he
+threw down his mantle, which his herald Eurybates of Ithaca, a
+round-shouldered, brown, curly-haired man, picked up, and he ran to find
+Agamemnon, and took his sceptre, a gold-studded staff, like a marshal's
+baton, and he gently told the chiefs whom he met that they were doing a
+shameful thing; but he drove the common soldiers back to the place of
+meeting with the sceptre.  They all returned, puzzled and chattering, but
+one lame, bandy-legged, bald, round-shouldered, impudent fellow, named
+Thersites, jumped up and made an insolent speech, insulting the princes,
+and advising the army to run away.  Then Ulysses took him and beat him
+till the blood came, and he sat down, wiping away his tears, and looking
+so foolish that the whole army laughed at him, and cheered Ulysses when
+he and Nestor bade them arm and fight.  Agamemnon still believed a good
+deal in his dream, and prayed that he might take Troy that very day, and
+kill Hector.  Thus Ulysses alone saved the army from a cowardly retreat;
+but for him the ships would have been launched in an hour.  But the
+Greeks armed and advanced in full force, all except Achilles and his
+friend Patroclus with their two or three thousand men.  The Trojans also
+took heart, knowing that Achilles would not fight, and the armies
+approached each other.  Paris himself, with two spears and a bow, and
+without armour, walked into the space between the hosts, and challenged
+any Greek prince to single combat.  Menelaus, whose wife Paris had
+carried away, was as glad as a hungry lion when he finds a stag or a
+goat, and leaped in armour from his chariot, but Paris turned and slunk
+away, like a man when he meets a great serpent on a narrow path in the
+hills.  Then Hector rebuked Paris for his cowardice, and Paris was
+ashamed and offered to end the war by fighting Menelaus.  If he himself
+fell, the Trojans must give up Helen and all her jewels; if Menelaus
+fell, the Greeks were to return without fair Helen.  The Greeks accepted
+this plan, and both sides disarmed themselves to look on at the fight in
+comfort, and they meant to take the most solemn oaths to keep peace till
+the combat was lost and won, and the quarrel settled.  Hector sent into
+Troy for two lambs, which were to be sacrificed when the oaths were
+taken.
+
+In the meantime Helen of the fair hands was at home working at a great
+purple tapestry on which she embroidered the battles of the Greeks and
+Trojans.  It was just like the tapestry at Bayeux on which Norman ladies
+embroidered the battles in the Norman Conquest of England.  Helen was
+very fond of embroidering, like poor Mary, Queen of Scots, when a
+prisoner in Loch Leven Castle.  Probably the work kept both Helen and
+Mary from thinking of their past lives and their sorrows.
+
+When Helen heard that her husband was to fight Paris, she wept, and threw
+a shining veil over her head, and with her two bower maidens went to the
+roof of the gate tower, where king Priam was sitting with the old Trojan
+chiefs.  They saw her and said that it was small blame to fight for so
+beautiful a lady, and Priam called her "dear child," and said, "I do not
+blame you, I blame the Gods who brought about this war."  But Helen said
+that she wished she had died before she left her little daughter and her
+husband, and her home: "Alas! shameless me!"  Then she told Priam the
+names of the chief Greek warriors, and of Ulysses, who was shorter by a
+head than Agamemnon, but broader in chest and shoulders.  She wondered
+that she could not see her own two brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, and
+thought that they kept aloof in shame for her sin; but the green grass
+covered their graves, for they had both died in battle, far away in
+Lacedaemon, their own country.
+
+Then the lambs were sacrificed, and the oaths were taken, and Paris put
+on his brother's armour, helmet, breastplate, shield, and leg-armour.
+Lots were drawn to decide whether Paris or Menelaus should throw his
+spear first, and, as Paris won, he threw his spear, but the point was
+blunted against the shield of Menelaus.  But when Menelaus threw his
+spear it went clean through the shield of Paris, and through the side of
+his breastplate, but only grazed his robe.  Menelaus drew his sword, and
+rushed in, and smote at the crest of the helmet of Paris, but his bronze
+blade broke into four pieces.  Menelaus caught Paris by the horsehair
+crest of his helmet, and dragged him towards the Greeks, but the chin-
+strap broke, and Menelaus turning round threw the helmet into the ranks
+of the Greeks.  But when Menelaus looked again for Paris, with a spear in
+his hand, he could see him nowhere!  The Greeks believed that the
+beautiful goddess Aphrodite, whom the Romans called Venus, hid him in a
+thick cloud of darkness and carried him to his own house, where Helen of
+the fair hands found him and said to him, "Would that thou hadst
+perished, conquered by that great warrior who was my lord!  Go forth
+again and challenge him to fight thee face to face."  But Paris had no
+more desire to fight, and the Goddess threatened Helen, and compelled her
+to remain with him in Troy, coward as he had proved himself.  Yet on
+other days Paris fought well; it seems that he was afraid of Menelaus
+because, in his heart, he was ashamed of himself.
+
+Meanwhile Menelaus was seeking for Paris everywhere, and the Trojans, who
+hated him, would have shown his hiding place.  But they knew not where he
+was, and the Greeks claimed the victory, and thought that, as Paris had
+the worst of the fight, Helen would be restored to them, and they would
+all sail home.
+
+
+
+
+TROJAN VICTORIES
+
+
+The war might now have ended, but an evil and foolish thought came to
+Pandarus, a prince of Ida, who fought for the Trojans.  He chose to shoot
+an arrow at Menelaus, contrary to the sworn vows of peace, and the arrow
+pierced the breastplate of Menelaus through the place where the clasped
+plates meet, and drew his blood.  Then Agamemnon, who loved his brother
+dearly, began to lament, saying that if he died, the army would all go
+home and Trojans would dance on the grave of Menelaus.  "Do not alarm all
+our army," said Menelaus, "the arrow has done me little harm;" and so it
+proved, for the surgeon easily drew the arrow out of the wound.
+
+Then Agamemnon hastened here and there, bidding the Greeks arm and attack
+the Trojans, who would certainly be defeated, for they had broken the
+oaths of peace.  But with his usual insolence he chose to accuse Ulysses
+and Diomede of cowardice, though Diomede was as brave as any man, and
+Ulysses had just prevented the whole army from launching their ships and
+going home.  Ulysses answered him with spirit, but Diomede said nothing
+at the moment; later he spoke his mind.  He leaped from his chariot, and
+all the chiefs leaped down and advanced in line, the chariots following
+them, while the spearmen and bowmen followed the chariots.  The Trojan
+army advanced, all shouting in their different languages, but the Greeks
+came on silently.  Then the two front lines clashed, shield against
+shield, and the noise was like the roaring of many flooded torrents among
+the hills.  When a man fell he who had slain him tried to strip off his
+armour, and his friends fought over his body to save the dead from this
+dishonour.
+
+Ulysses fought above a wounded friend, and drove his spear through head
+and helmet of a Trojan prince, and everywhere men were falling beneath
+spears and arrows and heavy stones which the warriors threw.  Here
+Menelaus speared the man who built the ships with which Paris had sailed
+to Greece; and the dust rose like a cloud, and a mist went up from the
+fighting men, while Diomede stormed across the plain like a river in
+flood, leaving dead bodies behind him as the river leaves boughs of trees
+and grass to mark its course.  Pandarus wounded Diomede with an arrow,
+but Diomede slew him, and the Trojans were being driven in flight, when
+Sarpedon and Hector turned and hurled themselves on the Greeks; and even
+Diomede shuddered when Hector came on, and charged at Ulysses, who was
+slaying Trojans as he went, and the battle swayed this way and that, and
+the arrows fell like rain.
+
+But Hector was sent into the city to bid the women pray to the goddess
+Athene for help, and he went to the house of Paris, whom Helen was
+imploring to go and fight like a man, saying: "Would that the winds had
+wafted me away, and the tides drowned me, shameless that I am, before
+these things came to pass!"
+
+Then Hector went to see his dear wife, Andromache, whose father had been
+slain by Achilles early in the siege, and he found her and her nurse
+carrying her little boy, Hector's son, and like a star upon her bosom lay
+his beautiful and shining golden head.  Now, while Helen urged Paris to
+go into the fight, Andromache prayed Hector to stay with her in the town,
+and fight no more lest he should be slain and leave her a widow, and the
+boy an orphan, with none to protect him.  The army she said, should come
+back within the walls, where they had so long been safe, not fight in the
+open plain.  But Hector answered that he would never shrink from battle,
+"yet I know this in my heart, the day shall come for holy Troy to be laid
+low, and Priam and the people of Priam.  But this and my own death do not
+trouble me so much as the thought of you, when you shall be carried as a
+slave to Greece, to spin at another woman's bidding, and bear water from
+a Grecian well.  May the heaped up earth of my tomb cover me ere I hear
+thy cries and the tale of thy captivity."
+
+Then Hector stretched out his hands to his little boy, but the child was
+afraid when he saw the great glittering helmet of his father and the
+nodding horsehair crest.  So Hector laid his helmet on the ground and
+dandled the child in his arms, and tried to comfort his wife, and said
+good-bye for the last time, for he never came back to Troy alive.  He
+went on his way back to the battle, and Paris went with him, in glorious
+armour, and soon they were slaying the princes of the Greeks.
+
+The battle raged till nightfall, and in the night the Greeks and Trojans
+burned their dead; and the Greeks made a trench and wall round their
+camp, which they needed for safety now that the Trojans came from their
+town and fought in the open plain.
+
+Next day the Trojans were so successful that they did not retreat behind
+their walls at night, but lit great fires on the plain: a thousand fires,
+with fifty men taking supper round each of them, and drinking their wine
+to the music of flutes.  But the Greeks were much discouraged, and
+Agamemnon called the whole army together, and proposed that they should
+launch their ships in the night and sail away home.  Then Diomede stood
+up, and said: "You called me a coward lately.  You are the coward!  Sail
+away if you are afraid to remain here, but all the rest of us will fight
+till we take Troy town."
+
+Then all shouted in praise of Diomede, and Nestor advised them to send
+five hundred young men, under his own son, Thrasymedes, to watch the
+Trojans, and guard the new wall and the ditch, in case the Trojans
+attacked them in the darkness.  Next Nestor counselled Agamemnon to send
+Ulysses and Aias to Achilles, and promise to give back Briseis, and rich
+presents of gold, and beg pardon for his insolence.  If Achilles would be
+friends again with Agamemnon, and fight as he used to fight, the Trojans
+would soon be driven back into the town.
+
+Agamemnon was very ready to beg pardon, for he feared that the whole army
+would be defeated, and cut off from their ships, and killed or kept as
+slaves.  So Ulysses and Aias and the old tutor of Achilles, Phoenix, went
+to Achilles and argued with him, praying him to accept the rich presents,
+and help the Greeks.  But Achilles answered that he did not believe a
+word that Agamemnon said; Agamemnon had always hated him, and always
+would hate him.  No; he would not cease to be angry, he would sail away
+next day with all his men, and he advised the rest to come with him.  "Why
+be so fierce?" said tall Aias, who seldom spoke.  "Why make so much
+trouble about one girl?  We offer you seven girls, and plenty of other
+gifts."
+
+Then Achilles said that he would not sail away next day, but he would not
+fight till the Trojans tried to burn his own ships, and there he thought
+that Hector would find work enough to do.  This was the most that
+Achilles would promise, and all the Greeks were silent when Ulysses
+delivered his message.  But Diomede arose and said that, with or without
+Achilles, fight they must; and all men, heavy at heart, went to sleep in
+their huts or in the open air at their doors.
+
+Agamemnon was much too anxious to sleep.  He saw the glow of the thousand
+fires of the Trojans in the dark, and heard their merry flutes, and he
+groaned and pulled out his long hair by handfuls.  When he was tired of
+crying and groaning and tearing his hair, he thought that he would go for
+advice to old Nestor.  He threw a lion skin, the coverlet of his bed,
+over his shoulder, took his spear, went out and met Menelaus--for he,
+too, could not sleep--and Menelaus proposed to send a spy among the
+Trojans, if any man were brave enough to go, for the Trojan camp was all
+alight with fires, and the adventure was dangerous.  Therefore the two
+wakened Nestor and the other chiefs, who came just as they were, wrapped
+in the fur coverlets of their beds, without any armour.  First they
+visited the five hundred young men set to watch the wall, and then they
+crossed the ditch and sat down outside and considered what might be done.
+"Will nobody go as a spy among the Trojans?" said Nestor; he meant would
+none of the young men go.  Diomede said that he would take the risk if
+any other man would share it with him, and, if he might choose a
+companion, he would take Ulysses.
+
+"Come, then, let us be going," said Ulysses, "for the night is late, and
+the dawn is near."  As these two chiefs had no armour on, they borrowed
+shields and leather caps from the young men of the guard, for leather
+would not shine as bronze helmets shine in the firelight.  The cap lent
+to Ulysses was strengthened outside with rows of boars' tusks.  Many of
+these tusks, shaped for this purpose, have been found, with swords and
+armour, in a tomb in Mycenae, the town of Agamemnon.  This cap which was
+lent to Ulysses had once been stolen by his grandfather, Autolycus, who
+was a Master Thief, and he gave it as a present to a friend, and so,
+through several hands, it had come to young Meriones of Crete, one of the
+five hundred guards, who now lent it to Ulysses.  So the two princes set
+forth in the dark, so dark it was that though they heard a heron cry,
+they could not see it as it flew away.
+
+While Ulysses and Diomede stole through the night silently, like two
+wolves among the bodies of dead men, the Trojan leaders met and
+considered what they ought to do.  They did not know whether the Greeks
+had set sentinels and outposts, as usual, to give warning if the enemy
+were approaching; or whether they were too weary to keep a good watch; or
+whether perhaps they were getting ready their ships to sail homewards in
+the dawn.  So Hector offered a reward to any man who would creep through
+the night and spy on the Greeks; he said he would give the spy the two
+best horses in the Greek camp.
+
+Now among the Trojans there was a young man named Dolon, the son of a
+rich father, and he was the only boy in a family of five sisters.  He was
+ugly, but a very swift runner, and he cared for horses more than for
+anything else in the world.  Dolon arose and said, "If you will swear to
+give me the horses and chariot of Achilles, son of Peleus, I will steal
+to the hut of Agamemnon and listen and find out whether the Greeks mean
+to fight or flee."  Hector swore to give these horses, which were the
+best in the world, to Dolon, so he took his bow and threw a grey wolf's
+hide over his shoulders, and ran towards the ships of the Greeks.
+
+Now Ulysses saw Dolon as he came, and said to Diomede, "Let us suffer him
+to pass us, and then do you keep driving him with your spear towards the
+ships, and away from Troy."  So Ulysses and Diomede lay down among the
+dead men who had fallen in the battle, and Dolon ran on past them towards
+the Greeks.  Then they rose and chased him as two greyhounds course a
+hare, and, when Dolon was near the sentinels, Diomede cried "Stand, or I
+will slay you with my spear!" and he threw his spear just over Dolon's
+shoulder.  So Dolon stood still, green with fear, and with his teeth
+chattering.  When the two came up, he cried, and said that his father was
+a rich man, who would pay much gold, and bronze, and iron for his ransom.
+
+Ulysses said, "Take heart, and put death out of your mind, and tell us
+what you are doing here."  Dolon said that Hector had promised him the
+horses of Achilles if he would go and spy on the Greeks.  "You set your
+hopes high," said Ulysses, "for the horses of Achilles are not earthly
+steeds, but divine; a gift of the Gods, and Achilles alone can drive
+them.  But, tell me, do the Trojans keep good watch, and where is Hector
+with his horses?" for Ulysses thought that it would be a great adventure
+to drive away the horses of Hector.
+
+"Hector is with the chiefs, holding council at the tomb of Ilus," said
+Dolon; "but no regular guard is set.  The people of Troy, indeed, are
+round their watch fires, for they have to think of the safety of their
+wives and children; but the allies from far lands keep no watch, for
+their wives and children are safe at home."  Then he told where all the
+different peoples who fought for Priam had their stations; but, said he,
+"if you want to steal horses, the best are those of Rhesus, King of the
+Thracians, who has only joined us to-night.  He and his men are asleep at
+the furthest end of the line, and his horses are the best and greatest
+that ever I saw: tall, white as snow, and swift as the wind, and his
+chariot is adorned with gold and silver, and golden is his armour.  Now
+take me prisoner to the ships, or bind me and leave me here while you go
+and try whether I have told you truth or lies."
+
+"No," said Diomede, "if I spare your life you may come spying again," and
+he drew his sword and smote off the head of Dolon.  They hid his cap and
+bow and spear where they could find them easily, and marked the spot, and
+went through the night to the dark camp of King Rhesus, who had no watch-
+fire and no guards.  Then Diomede silently stabbed each sleeping man to
+the heart, and Ulysses seized the dead by the feet and threw them aside
+lest they should frighten the horses, which had never been in battle, and
+would shy if they were led over the bodies of dead men.  Last of all
+Diomede killed King Rhesus, and Ulysses led forth his horses, beating
+them with his bow, for he had forgotten to take the whip from the
+chariot.  Then Ulysses and Diomede leaped on the backs of the horses, as
+they had not time to bring away the chariot, and they galloped to the
+ships, stopping to pick up the spear, and bow, and cap of Dolon.  They
+rode to the princes, who welcomed them, and all laughed for glee when
+they saw the white horses and heard that King Rhesus was dead, for they
+guessed that all his army would now go home to Thrace.  This they must
+have done, for we never hear of them in the battles that followed, so
+Ulysses and Diomede deprived the Trojans of thousands of men.  The other
+princes went to bed in good spirits, but Ulysses and Diomede took a swim
+in the sea, and then went into hot baths, and so to breakfast, for rosy-
+fingered Dawn was coming up the sky.
+
+
+
+
+BATTLE AT THE SHIPS
+
+
+With dawn Agamemnon awoke, and fear had gone out of his heart.  He put on
+his armour, and arrayed the chiefs on foot in front of their chariots,
+and behind them came the spearmen, with the bowmen and slingers on the
+wings of the army.  Then a great black cloud spread over the sky, and red
+was the rain that fell from it.  The Trojans gathered on a height in the
+plain, and Hector, shining in armour, went here and there, in front and
+rear, like a star that now gleams forth and now is hidden in a cloud.
+
+The armies rushed on each other and hewed each other down, as reapers cut
+their way through a field of tall corn.  Neither side gave ground, though
+the helmets of the bravest Trojans might be seen deep in the ranks of the
+Greeks; and the swords of the bravest Greeks rose and fell in the ranks
+of the Trojans, and all the while the arrows showered like rain.  But at
+noon-day, when the weary woodman rests from cutting trees, and takes his
+dinner in the quiet hills, the Greeks of the first line made a charge,
+Agamemnon running in front of them, and he speared two Trojans, and took
+their breastplates, which he laid in his chariot, and then he speared one
+brother of Hector and struck another down with his sword, and killed two
+more who vainly asked to be made prisoners of war.  Footmen slew footmen,
+and chariot men slew chariot men, and they broke into the Trojan line as
+fire falls on a forest in a windy day, leaping and roaring and racing
+through the trees.  Many an empty chariot did the horses hurry madly
+through the field, for the charioteers were lying dead, with the greedy
+vultures hovering above them, flapping their wide wings.  Still Agamemnon
+followed and slew the hindmost Trojans, but the rest fled till they came
+to the gates, and the oak tree that grew outside the gates, and there
+they stopped.
+
+But Hector held his hands from fighting, for in the meantime he was
+making his men face the enemy and form up in line and take breath, and
+was encouraging them, for they had retreated from the wall of the Greeks
+across the whole plain, past the hill that was the tomb of Ilus, a king
+of old, and past the place of the wild fig-tree.  Much ado had Hector to
+rally the Trojans, but he knew that when men do turn again they are hard
+to beat.  So it proved, for when the Trojans had rallied and formed in
+line, Agamemnon slew a Thracian chief who had come to fight for Troy
+before King Rhesus came.  But the eldest brother of the slain man smote
+Agamemnon through the arm with his spear, and, though Agamemnon slew him
+in turn, his wound bled much and he was in great pain, so he leaped into
+his chariot and was driven back to the ships.
+
+Then Hector gave the word to charge, as a huntsman cries on his hounds
+against a lion, and he rushed forward at the head of the Trojan line,
+slaying as he went.  Nine chiefs of the Greeks he slew, and fell upon the
+spearmen and scattered them, as the spray of the waves is scattered by
+the wandering wind.
+
+Now the ranks of the Greeks were broken, and they would have been driven
+among their ships and killed without mercy, had not Ulysses and Diomede
+stood firm in the centre, and slain four Trojan leaders.  The Greeks
+began to come back and face their enemies in line of battle again, though
+Hector, who had been fighting on the Trojan right, rushed against them.
+But Diomede took good aim with his spear at the helmet of Hector, and
+struck it fairly.  The spear-point did not go through the helmet, but
+Hector was stunned and fell; and, when he came to himself, he leaped into
+his chariot, and his squire drove him against the Pylians and Cretans,
+under Nestor and Idomeneus, who were on the left wing of the Greek army.
+Then Diomede fought on till Paris, who stood beside the pillar on the
+hillock that was the tomb of old King Ilus, sent an arrow clean through
+his foot.  Ulysses went and stood in front of Diomede, who sat down, and
+Ulysses drew the arrow from his foot, and Diomede stepped into his
+chariot and was driven back to the ships.
+
+Ulysses was now the only Greek chief that still fought in the centre.  The
+Greeks all fled, and he was alone in the crowd of Trojans, who rushed on
+him as hounds and hunters press round a wild boar that stands at bay in a
+wood.  "They are cowards that flee from the fight," said Ulysses to
+himself; "but I will stand here, one man against a multitude."  He
+covered the front of his body with his great shield, that hung by a belt
+round his neck, and he smote four Trojans and wounded a fifth.  But the
+brother of the wounded man drove a spear through the shield and
+breastplate of Ulysses, and tore clean through his side.  Then Ulysses
+turned on this Trojan, and he fled, and Ulysses sent a spear through his
+shoulder and out at his breast, and he died.  Ulysses dragged from his
+own side the spear that had wounded him, and called thrice with a great
+voice to the other Greeks, and Menelaus and Aias rushed to rescue him,
+for many Trojans were round him, like jackals round a wounded stag that a
+man has struck with an arrow.  But Aias ran and covered the wounded
+Ulysses with his huge shield till he could climb into the chariot of
+Menelaus, who drove him back to the ships.
+
+Meanwhile, Hector was slaying the Greeks on the left of their battle, and
+Paris struck the Greek surgeon, Machaon, with an arrow; and Idomeneus
+bade Nestor put Machaon in his chariot and drive him to Nestor's hut,
+where his wound might be tended.  Meanwhile, Hector sped to the centre of
+the line, where Aias was slaying the Trojans; but Eurypylus, a Greek
+chief, was wounded by an arrow from the bow of Paris, and his friends
+guarded him with their shields and spears.
+
+Thus the best of the Greeks were wounded and out of the battle, save
+Aias, and the spearmen were in flight.  Meanwhile Achilles was standing
+by the stern of his ship watching the defeat of the Greeks, but when he
+saw Machaon being carried past, sorely wounded, in the chariot of Nestor,
+he bade his friend Patroclus, whom he loved better than all the rest, to
+go and ask how Machaon did.  He was sitting drinking wine with Nestor
+when Patroclus came, and Nestor told Patroclus how many of the chiefs
+were wounded, and though Patroclus was in a hurry Nestor began a very
+long story about his own great deeds of war, done when he was a young
+man.  At last he bade Patroclus tell Achilles that, if he would not fight
+himself, he should at least send out his men under Patroclus, who should
+wear the splendid armour of Achilles.  Then the Trojans would think that
+Achilles himself had returned to the battle, and they would be afraid,
+for none of them dared to meet Achilles hand to hand.
+
+So Patroclus ran off to Achilles; but, on his way, he met the wounded
+Eurypylus, and he took him to his hut and cut the arrow out of his thigh
+with a knife, and washed the wound with warm water, and rubbed over it a
+bitter root to take the pain away.  Thus he waited for some time with
+Eurypylus, but the advice of Nestor was in the end to cause the death of
+Patroclus.  The battle now raged more fiercely, while Agamemnon and
+Diomede and Ulysses could only limp about leaning on their spears; and
+again Agamemnon wished to moor the ships near shore, and embark in the
+night and run away.  But Ulysses was very angry with him, and said: "You
+should lead some other inglorious army, not us, who will fight on till
+every soul of us perish, rather than flee like cowards!  Be silent, lest
+the soldiers hear you speaking of flight, such words as no man should
+utter.  I wholly scorn your counsel, for the Greeks will lose heart if,
+in the midst of battle, you bid them launch the ships."
+
+Agamemnon was ashamed, and, by Diomede's advice, the wounded kings went
+down to the verge of the war to encourage the others, though they were
+themselves unable to fight.  They rallied the Greeks, and Aias led them
+and struck Hector full in the breast with a great rock, so that his
+friends carried him out of the battle to the river side, where they
+poured water over him, but he lay fainting on the ground, the black blood
+gushing up from his mouth.  While Hector lay there, and all men thought
+that he would die, Aias and Idomeneus were driving back the Trojans, and
+it seemed that, even without Achilles and his men, the Greeks were able
+to hold their own against the Trojans.  But the battle was never lost
+while Hector lived.  People in those days believed in "omens:" they
+thought that the appearance of birds on the right or left hand meant good
+or bad luck.  Once during the battle a Trojan showed Hector an unlucky
+bird, and wanted him to retreat into the town.  But Hector said, "One
+omen is the best: to fight for our own country."  While Hector lay
+between death and life the Greeks were winning, for the Trojans had no
+other great chief to lead them.  But Hector awoke from his faint, and
+leaped to his feet and ran here and there, encouraging the men of Troy.
+Then the most of the Greeks fled when they saw him; but Aias and
+Idomeneus, and the rest of the bravest, formed in a square between the
+Trojans and the ships, and down on them came Hector and Aeneas and Paris,
+throwing their spears, and slaying on every hand.  The Greeks turned and
+ran, and the Trojans would have stopped to strip the armour from the
+slain men, but Hector cried: "Haste to the ships and leave the spoils of
+war.  I will slay any man who lags behind!"
+
+On this, all the Trojans drove their chariots down into the ditch that
+guarded the ships of the Greeks, as when a great wave sweeps at sea over
+the side of a vessel; and the Greeks were on the ship decks, thrusting
+with very long spears, used in sea fights, and the Trojans were boarding
+the ships, and striking with swords and axes.  Hector had a lighted torch
+and tried to set fire to the ship of Aias; but Aias kept him back with
+the long spear, and slew a Trojan, whose lighted torch fell from his
+hand.  And Aias kept shouting: "Come on, and drive away Hector; it is not
+to a dance that he is calling his men, but to battle."
+
+The dead fell in heaps, and the living ran over them to mount the heaps
+of slain and climb the ships.  Hector rushed forward like a sea wave
+against a great steep rock, but like the rock stood the Greeks; still the
+Trojans charged past the beaks of the foremost ships, while Aias,
+thrusting with a spear more than twenty feet long, leaped from deck to
+deck like a man that drives four horses abreast, and leaps from the back
+of one to the back of another.  Hector seized with his hand the stern of
+the ship of Protesilaus, the prince whom Paris shot when he leaped ashore
+on the day when the Greeks first landed; and Hector kept calling: "Bring
+fire!" and even Aias, in this strange sea fight on land, left the decks
+and went below, thrusting with his spear through the portholes.  Twelve
+men lay dead who had brought fire against the ship which Aias guarded.
+
+
+
+
+THE SLAYING AND AVENGING OF PATROCLUS
+
+
+At this moment, when torches were blazing round the ships, and all seemed
+lost, Patroclus came out of the hut of Eurypylus, whose wound he had been
+tending, and he saw that the Greeks were in great danger, and ran weeping
+to Achilles.  "Why do you weep," said Achilles, "like a little girl that
+runs by her mother's side, and plucks at her gown and looks at her with
+tears in her eyes, till her mother takes her up in her arms?  Is there
+bad news from home that your father is dead, or mine; or are you sorry
+that the Greeks are getting what they deserve for their folly?"  Then
+Patroclus told Achilles how Ulysses and many other princes were wounded
+and could not fight, and begged to be allowed to put on Achilles' armour
+and lead his men, who were all fresh and unwearied, into the battle, for
+a charge of two thousand fresh warriors might turn the fortune of the
+day.
+
+Then Achilles was sorry that he had sworn not to fight himself till
+Hector brought fire to his own ships.  He would lend Patroclus his
+armour, and his horses, and his men; but Patroclus must only drive the
+Trojans from the ships, and not pursue them.  At this moment Aias was
+weary, so many spears smote his armour, and he could hardly hold up his
+great shield, and Hector cut off his spear-head with the sword; the
+bronze head fell ringing on the ground, and Aias brandished only the
+pointless shaft.  So he shrank back and fire blazed all over his ship;
+and Achilles saw it, and smote his thigh, and bade Patroclus make haste.
+Patroclus armed himself in the shining armour of Achilles, which all
+Trojans feared, and leaped into the chariot where Automedon, the squire,
+had harnessed Xanthus and Balius, two horses that were the children, men
+said, of the West Wind, and a led horse was harnessed beside them in the
+side traces.  Meanwhile the two thousand men of Achilles, who were called
+Myrmidons, had met in armour, five companies of four hundred apiece,
+under five chiefs of noble names.  Forth they came, as eager as a pack of
+wolves that have eaten a great red deer and run to slake their thirst
+with the dark water of a well in the hills.
+
+So all in close array, helmet touching helmet and shield touching shield,
+like a moving wall of shining bronze, the men of Achilles charged, and
+Patroclus, in the chariot led the way.  Down they came at full speed on
+the flank of the Trojans, who saw the leader, and knew the bright armour
+and the horses of the terrible Achilles, and thought that he had returned
+to the war.  Then each Trojan looked round to see by what way he could
+escape, and when men do that in battle they soon run by the way they have
+chosen.  Patroclus rushed to the ship of Protesilaus, and slew the leader
+of the Trojans there, and drove them out, and quenched the fire; while
+they of Troy drew back from the ships, and Aias and the other unwounded
+Greek princes leaped among them, smiting with sword and spear.  Well did
+Hector know that the break in the battle had come again; but even so he
+stood, and did what he might, while the Trojans were driven back in
+disorder across the ditch, where the poles of many chariots were broken
+and the horses fled loose across the plain.
+
+The horses of Achilles cleared the ditch, and Patroclus drove them
+between the Trojans and the wall of their own town, slaying many men,
+and, chief of all, Sarpedon, king of the Lycians; and round the body of
+Sarpedon the Trojans rallied under Hector, and the fight swayed this way
+and that, and there was such a noise of spears and swords smiting shields
+and helmets as when many woodcutters fell trees in a glen of the hills.
+At last the Trojans gave way, and the Greeks stripped the armour from the
+body of brave Sarpedon; but men say that Sleep and Death, like two winged
+angels, bore his body away to his own country.  Now Patroclus forgot how
+Achilles had told him not to pursue the Trojans across the plain, but to
+return when he had driven them from the ships.  On he raced, slaying as
+he went, even till he reached the foot of the wall of Troy.  Thrice he
+tried to climb it, but thrice he fell back.
+
+Hector was in his chariot in the gateway, and he bade his squire lash his
+horses into the war, and struck at no other man, great or small, but
+drove straight against Patroclus, who stood and threw a heavy stone at
+Hector; which missed him, but killed his charioteer.  Then Patroclus
+leaped on the charioteer to strip his armour, but Hector stood over the
+body, grasping it by the head, while Patroclus dragged at the feet, and
+spears and arrows flew in clouds around the fallen man.  At last, towards
+sunset, the Greeks drew him out of the war, and Patroclus thrice charged
+into the thick of the Trojans.  But the helmet of Achilles was loosened
+in the fight, and fell from the head of Patroclus, and he was wounded
+from behind, and Hector, in front, drove his spear clean through his
+body.  With his last breath Patroclus prophesied: "Death stands near
+thee, Hector, at the hands of noble Achilles."  But Automedon was driving
+back the swift horses, carrying to Achilles the news that his dearest
+friend was slain.
+
+After Ulysses was wounded, early in this great battle, he was not able to
+fight for several days, and, as the story is about Ulysses, we must tell
+quite shortly how Achilles returned to the war to take vengeance for
+Patroclus, and how he slew Hector.  When Patroclus fell, Hector seized
+the armour which the Gods had given to Peleus, and Peleus to his son
+Achilles, while Achilles had lent it to Patroclus that he might terrify
+the Trojans.  Retiring out of reach of spears, Hector took off his own
+armour and put on that of Achilles, and Greeks and Trojans fought for the
+dead body of Patroclus.  Then Zeus, the chief of the Gods, looked down
+and said that Hector should never come home out of the battle to his
+wife, Andromache.  But Hector returned into the fight around the dead
+Patroclus, and here all the best men fought, and even Automedon, who had
+been driving the chariot of Patroclus.  Now when the Trojans seemed to
+have the better of the fight, the Greeks sent Antilochus, a son of old
+Nestor, to tell Achilles that his friend was slain, and Antilochus ran,
+and Aias and his brother protected the Greeks who were trying to carry
+the body of Patroclus back to the ships.
+
+Swiftly Antilochus came running to Achilles, saying: "Fallen is
+Patroclus, and they are fighting round his naked body, for Hector has his
+armour."  Then Achilles said never a word, but fell on the floor of his
+hut, and threw black ashes on his yellow hair, till Antilochus seized his
+hands, fearing that he would cut his own throat with his dagger, for very
+sorrow.  His mother, Thetis, arose from the sea to comfort him, but he
+said that he desired to die if he could not slay Hector, who had slain
+his friend.  Then Thetis told him that he could not fight without armour,
+and now he had none; but she would go to the God of armour-making and
+bring from him such a shield and helmet and breastplate as had never been
+seen by men.
+
+Meanwhile the fight raged round the dead body of Patroclus, which was
+defiled with blood and dust, near the ships, and was being dragged this
+way and that, and torn and wounded.  Achilles could not bear this sight,
+yet his mother had warned him not to enter without armour the battle
+where stones and arrows and spears were flying like hail; and he was so
+tall and broad that he could put on the arms of no other man.  So he went
+down to the ditch as he was, unarmed, and as he stood high above it,
+against the red sunset, fire seemed to flow from his golden hair like the
+beacon blaze that soars into the dark sky when an island town is attacked
+at night, and men light beacons that their neighbours may see them and
+come to their help from other isles.  There Achilles stood in a splendour
+of fire, and he shouted aloud, as clear as a clarion rings when men fall
+on to attack a besieged city wall.  Thrice Achilles shouted mightily, and
+thrice the horses of the Trojans shuddered for fear and turned back from
+the onslaught,--and thrice the men of Troy were confounded and shaken
+with terror.  Then the Greeks drew the body of Patroclus out of the dust
+and the arrows, and laid him on a bier, and Achilles followed, weeping,
+for he had sent his friend with chariot and horses to the war; but home
+again he welcomed him never more.  Then the sun set and it was night.
+
+Now one of the Trojans wished Hector to retire within the walls of Troy,
+for certainly Achilles would to-morrow be foremost in the war.  But
+Hector said, "Have ye not had your fill of being shut up behind walls?
+Let Achilles fight; I will meet him in the open field."  The Trojans
+cheered, and they camped in the plain, while in the hut of Achilles women
+washed the dead body of Patroclus, and Achilles swore that he would slay
+Hector.
+
+In the dawn came Thetis, bearing to Achilles the new splendid armour that
+the God had made for him.  Then Achilles put on that armour, and roused
+his men; but Ulysses, who knew all the rules of honour, would not let him
+fight till peace had been made, with a sacrifice and other ceremonies,
+between him and Agamemnon, and till Agamemnon had given him all the
+presents which Achilles had before refused.  Achilles did not want them;
+he wanted only to fight, but Ulysses made him obey, and do what was
+usual.  Then the gifts were brought, and Agamemnon stood up, and said
+that he was sorry for his insolence, and the men took breakfast, but
+Achilles would neither eat nor drink.  He mounted his chariot, but the
+horse Xanthus bowed his head till his long mane touched the ground, and,
+being a fairy horse, the child of the West Wind, he spoke (or so men
+said), and these were his words: "We shall bear thee swiftly and
+speedily, but thou shalt be slain in fight, and thy dying day is near at
+hand."  "Well I know it," said Achilles, "but I will not cease from
+fighting till I have given the Trojans their fill of war."
+
+So all that day he chased and slew the Trojans.  He drove them into the
+river, and, though the river came down in a red flood, he crossed, and
+slew them on the plain.  The plain caught fire, the bushes and long dry
+grass blazed round him, but he fought his way through the fire, and drove
+the Trojans to their walls.  The gates were thrown open, and the Trojans
+rushed through like frightened fawns, and then they climbed to the
+battlements, and looked down in safety, while the whole Greek army
+advanced in line under their shields.
+
+But Hector stood still, alone, in front of the gate, and old Priam, who
+saw Achilles rushing on, shining like a star in his new armour, called
+with tears to Hector, "Come within the gate!  This man has slain many of
+my sons, and if he slays thee whom have I to help me in my old age?"  His
+mother also called to Hector, but he stood firm, waiting for Achilles.
+Now the story says that he was afraid, and ran thrice in full armour
+round Troy, with Achilles in pursuit.  But this cannot be true, for no
+mortal men could run thrice, in heavy armour, with great shields that
+clanked against their ankles, round the town of Troy: moreover Hector was
+the bravest of men, and all the Trojan women were looking down at him
+from the walls.
+
+We cannot believe that he ran away, and the story goes on to tell that he
+asked Achilles to make an agreement with him.  The conqueror in the fight
+should give back the body of the fallen to be buried by his friends, but
+should keep his armour.  But Achilles said that he could make no
+agreement with Hector, and threw his spear, which flew over Hector's
+shoulder.  Then Hector threw his spear, but it could not pierce the
+shield which the God had made for Achilles.  Hector had no other spear,
+and Achilles had one, so Hector cried, "Let me not die without honour!"
+and drew his sword, and rushed at Achilles, who sprang to meet him, but
+before Hector could come within a sword-stroke Achilles had sent his
+spear clean through the neck of Hector.  He fell in the dust and Achilles
+said, "Dogs and birds shall tear your flesh unburied."  With his dying
+breath Hector prayed him to take gold from Priam, and give back his body
+to be burned in Troy.  But Achilles said, "Hound! would that I could
+bring myself to carve and eat thy raw flesh, but dogs shall devour it,
+even if thy father offered me thy weight in gold."  With his last words
+Hector prophesied and said, "Remember me in the day when Paris shall slay
+thee in the Scaean gate."  Then his brave soul went to the land of the
+Dead, which the Greeks called Hades.  To that land Ulysses sailed while
+he was still a living man, as the story tells later.
+
+Then Achilles did a dreadful deed; he slit the feet of dead Hector from
+heel to ankle, and thrust thongs through, and bound him by the thongs to
+his chariot and trailed the body in the dust.  All the women of Troy who
+were on the walls raised a shriek, and Hector's wife, Andromache, heard
+the sound.  She had been in an inner room of her house, weaving a purple
+web, and embroidering flowers on it, and she was calling her bower
+maidens to make ready a bath for Hector when he should come back tired
+from battle.  But when she heard the cry from the wall she trembled, and
+the shuttle with which she was weaving fell from her hands.  "Surely I
+heard the cry of my husband's mother," she said, and she bade two of her
+maidens come with her to see why the people lamented.
+
+She ran swiftly, and reached the battlements, and thence she saw her dear
+husband's body being whirled through the dust towards the ships, behind
+the chariot of Achilles.  Then night came over her eyes and she fainted.
+But when she returned to herself she cried out that now none would defend
+her little boy, and other children would push him away from feasts,
+saying, "Out with you; no father of thine is at our table," and his
+father, Hector, would lie naked at the ships, unclad, unburned,
+unlamented.  To be unburned and unburied was thought the greatest of
+misfortunes, because the dead man unburned could not go into the House of
+Hades, God of the Dead, but must always wander, alone and comfortless, in
+the dark borderland between the dead and the living.
+
+
+
+
+THE CRUELTY OF ACHILLES, AND THE RANSOMING OF HECTOR
+
+
+When Achilles was asleep that night the ghost of Patroclus came, saying,
+"Why dost thou not burn and bury me? for the other shadows of dead men
+suffer me not to come near them, and lonely I wander along the dark
+dwelling of Hades."  Then Achilles awoke, and he sent men to cut down
+trees, and make a huge pile of fagots and logs.  On this they laid
+Patroclus, covered with white linen, and then they slew many cattle, and
+Achilles cut the throats of twelve Trojan prisoners of war, meaning to
+burn them with Patroclus to do him honour.  This was a deed of shame, for
+Achilles was mad with sorrow and anger for the death of his friend.  Then
+they drenched with wine the great pile of wood, which was thirty yards
+long and broad, and set fire to it, and the fire blazed all through the
+night and died down in the morning.  They put the white bones of
+Patroclus in a golden casket, and laid it in the hut of Achilles, who
+said that, when he died, they must burn his body, and mix the ashes with
+the ashes of his friend, and build over it a chamber of stone, and cover
+the chamber with a great hill of earth, and set a pillar of stone above
+it.  This is one of the hills on the plain of Troy, but the pillar has
+fallen from the tomb, long ago.
+
+Then, as the custom was, Achilles held games--chariot races, foot races,
+boxing, wrestling, and archery--in honour of Patroclus.  Ulysses won the
+prize for the foot race, and for the wrestling, so now his wound must
+have been healed.
+
+But Achilles still kept trailing Hector's dead body each day round the
+hill that had been raised for the tomb of Patroclus, till the Gods in
+heaven were angry, and bade Thetis tell her son that he must give back
+the dead body to Priam, and take ransom for it, and they sent a messenger
+to Priam to bid him redeem the body of his son.  It was terrible for
+Priam to have to go and humble himself before Achilles, whose hands had
+been red with the blood of his sons, but he did not disobey the Gods.  He
+opened his chests, and took out twenty-four beautiful embroidered changes
+of raiment; and he weighed out ten heavy bars, or talents, of gold, and
+chose a beautiful golden cup, and he called nine of his sons, Paris, and
+Helenus, and Deiphobus, and the rest, saying, "Go, ye bad sons, my shame;
+would that Hector lived and all of you were dead!" for sorrow made him
+angry; "go, and get ready for me a wain, and lay on it these treasures."
+So they harnessed mules to the wain, and placed in it the treasures, and,
+after praying, Priam drove through the night to the hut of Achilles.  In
+he went, when no man looked for him, and kneeled to Achilles, and kissed
+his terrible death-dealing hands.  "Have pity on me, and fear the Gods,
+and give me back my dead son," he said, "and remember thine own father.
+Have pity on me, who have endured to do what no man born has ever done
+before, to kiss the hands that slew my sons."
+
+Then Achilles remembered his own father, far away, who now was old and
+weak: and he wept, and Priam wept with him, and then Achilles raised
+Priam from his knees and spoke kindly to him, admiring how beautiful he
+still was in his old age, and Priam himself wondered at the beauty of
+Achilles.  And Achilles thought how Priam had long been rich and happy,
+like his own father, Peleus, and now old age and weakness and sorrow were
+laid upon both of them, for Achilles knew that his own day of death was
+at hand, even at the doors.  So Achilles bade the women make ready the
+body of Hector for burial, and they clothed him in a white mantle that
+Priam had brought, and laid him in the wain; and supper was made ready,
+and Priam and Achilles ate and drank together, and the women spread a bed
+for Priam, who would not stay long, but stole away back to Troy while
+Achilles was asleep.
+
+All the women came out to meet him, and to lament for Hector.  They
+carried the body into the house of Andromache and laid it on a bed, and
+the women gathered around, and each in turn sang her song over the great
+dead warrior.  His mother bewailed him, and his wife, and Helen of the
+fair hands, clad in dark mourning raiment, lifted up her white arms, and
+said: "Hector, of all my brethren in Troy thou wert the dearest, since
+Paris brought me hither.  Would that ere that day I had died!  For this
+is now the twentieth year since I came, and in all these twenty years
+never heard I a word from thee that was bitter and unkind; others might
+upbraid me, thy sisters or thy mother, for thy father was good to me as
+if he had been my own; but then thou wouldst restrain them that spoke
+evil by the courtesy of thy heart and thy gentle words.  Ah! woe for
+thee, and woe for me, whom all men shudder at, for there is now none in
+wide Troyland to be my friend like thee, my brother and my friend!"
+
+So Helen lamented, but now was done all that men might do; a great pile
+of wood was raised, and Hector was burned, and his ashes were placed in a
+golden urn, in a dark chamber of stone, within a hollow hill.
+
+
+
+
+HOW ULYSSES STOLE THE LUCK OF TROY
+
+
+After Hector was buried, the siege went on slowly, as it had done during
+the first nine years of the war.  The Greeks did not know at that time
+how to besiege a city, as we saw, by way of digging trenches and building
+towers, and battering the walls with machines that threw heavy stones.
+The Trojans had lost courage, and dared not go into the open plain, and
+they were waiting for the coming up of new armies of allies--the Amazons,
+who were girl warriors from far away, and an Eastern people called the
+Khita, whose king was Memnon, the son of the Bright Dawn.
+
+Now everyone knew that, in the temple of the Goddess Pallas Athene, in
+Troy, was a sacred image, which fell from heaven, called the Palladium,
+and this very ancient image was the Luck of Troy.  While it remained safe
+in the temple people believed that Troy could never be taken, but as it
+was in a guarded temple in the middle of the town, and was watched by
+priestesses day and night, it seemed impossible that the Greeks should
+ever enter the city secretly and steal the Luck away.
+
+As Ulysses was the grandson of Autolycus, the Master Thief, he often
+wished that the old man was with the Greeks, for if there was a thing to
+steal Autolycus could steal it.  But by this time Autolycus was dead, and
+so Ulysses could only puzzle over the way to steal the Luck of Troy, and
+wonder how his grandfather would have set about it.  He prayed for help
+secretly to Hermes, the God of Thieves, when he sacrificed goats to him,
+and at last he had a plan.
+
+There was a story that Anius, the King of the Isle of Delos, had three
+daughters, named OEno, Spermo, and Elais, and that OEno could turn water
+into wine, while Spermo could turn stones into bread, and Elais could
+change mud into olive oil.  Those fairy gifts, people said, were given to
+the maidens by the Wine God, Dionysus, and by the Goddess of Corn,
+Demeter.  Now corn, and wine, and oil were sorely needed by the Greeks,
+who were tired of paying much gold and bronze to the Phoenician merchants
+for their supplies.  Ulysses therefore went to Agamemnon one day, and
+asked leave to take his ship and voyage to Delos, to bring, if he could,
+the three maidens to the camp, if indeed they could do these miracles.  As
+no fighting was going on, Agamemnon gave Ulysses leave to depart, so he
+went on board his ship, with a crew of fifty men of Ithaca, and away they
+sailed, promising to return in a month.
+
+Two or three days after that, a dirty old beggar man began to be seen in
+the Greek camp.  He had crawled in late one evening, dressed in a dirty
+smock and a very dirty old cloak, full of holes, and stained with smoke.
+Over everything he wore the skin of a stag, with half the hair worn off,
+and he carried a staff, and a filthy tattered wallet, to put food in,
+which swung from his neck by a cord.  He came crouching and smiling up to
+the door of the hut of Diomede, and sat down just within the doorway,
+where beggars still sit in the East.  Diomede saw him, and sent him a
+loaf and two handfuls of flesh, which the beggar laid on his wallet,
+between his feet, and he made his supper greedily, gnawing a bone like a
+dog.
+
+After supper Diomede asked him who he was and whence he came, and he told
+a long story about how he had been a Cretan pirate, and had been taken
+prisoner by the Egyptians when he was robbing there, and how he had
+worked for many years in their stone quarries, where the sun had burned
+him brown, and had escaped by hiding among the great stones, carried down
+the Nile in a raft, for building a temple on the seashore.  The raft
+arrived at night, and the beggar said that he stole out from it in the
+dark and found a Phoenician ship in the harbour, and the Phoenicians took
+him on board, meaning to sell him somewhere as a slave.  But a tempest
+came on and wrecked the ship off the Isle of Tenedos, which is near Troy,
+and the beggar alone escaped to the island on a plank of the ship.  From
+Tenedos he had come to Troy in a fisher's boat, hoping to make himself
+useful in the camp, and earn enough to keep body and soul together till
+he could find a ship sailing to Crete.
+
+He made his story rather amusing, describing the strange ways of the
+Egyptians; how they worshipped cats and bulls, and did everything in just
+the opposite of the Greek way of doing things.  So Diomede let him have a
+rug and blankets to sleep on in the portico of the hut, and next day the
+old wretch went begging about the camp and talking with the soldiers.  Now
+he was a most impudent and annoying old vagabond, and was always in
+quarrels.  If there was a disagreeable story about the father or
+grandfather of any of the princes, he knew it and told it, so that he got
+a blow from the baton of Agamemnon, and Aias gave him a kick, and
+Idomeneus drubbed him with the butt of his spear for a tale about his
+grandmother, and everybody hated him and called him a nuisance.  He was
+for ever jeering at Ulysses, who was far away, and telling tales about
+Autolycus, and at last he stole a gold cup, a very large cup, with two
+handles, and a dove sitting on each handle, from the hut of Nestor.  The
+old chief was fond of this cup, which he had brought from home, and, when
+it was found in the beggar's dirty wallet, everybody cried that he must
+be driven out of the camp and well whipped.  So Nestor's son, young
+Thrasymedes, with other young men, laughing and shouting, pushed and
+dragged the beggar close up to the Scaean gate of Troy, where Thrasymedes
+called with a loud voice, "O Trojans, we are sick of this shameless
+beggar.  First we shall whip him well, and if he comes back we shall put
+out his eyes and cut off his hands and feet, and give him to the dogs to
+eat.  He may go to you, if he likes; if not, he must wander till he dies
+of hunger."
+
+The young men of Troy heard this and laughed, and a crowd gathered on the
+wall to see the beggar punished.  So Thrasymedes whipped him with his
+bowstring till he was tired, and they did not leave off beating the
+beggar till he ceased howling and fell, all bleeding, and lay still.  Then
+Thrasymedes gave him a parting kick, and went away with his friends.  The
+beggar lay quiet for some time, then he began to stir, and sat up, wiping
+the tears from his eyes, and shouting curses and bad words after the
+Greeks, praying that they might be speared in the back, and eaten by
+dogs.
+
+At last he tried to stand up, but fell down again, and began to crawl on
+hands and knees towards the Scaean gate.  There he sat down, within the
+two side walls of the gate, where he cried and lamented.  Now Helen of
+the fair hands came down from the gate tower, being sorry to see any man
+treated so much worse than a beast, and she spoke to the beggar and asked
+him why he had been used in this cruel way?
+
+At first he only moaned, and rubbed his sore sides, but at last he said
+that he was an unhappy man, who had been shipwrecked, and was begging his
+way home, and that the Greeks suspected him of being a spy sent out by
+the Trojans.  But he had been in Lacedaemon, her own country, he said,
+and could tell her about her father, if she were, as he supposed, the
+beautiful Helen, and about her brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, and her
+little daughter, Hermione.
+
+"But perhaps," he said, "you are no mortal woman, but some goddess who
+favours the Trojans, and if indeed you are a goddess then I liken you to
+Aphrodite, for beauty, and stature, and shapeliness."  Then Helen wept;
+for many a year had passed since she had heard any word of her father,
+and daughter, and her brothers, who were dead, though she knew it not.  So
+she stretched out her white hand, and raised the beggar, who was kneeling
+at her feet, and bade him follow her to her own house, within the palace
+garden of King Priam.
+
+Helen walked forward, with a bower maiden at either side, and the beggar
+crawling after her.  When she had entered her house, Paris was not there,
+so she ordered the bath to be filled with warm water, and new clothes to
+be brought, and she herself washed the old beggar and anointed him with
+oil.  This appears very strange to us, for though Saint Elizabeth of
+Hungary used to wash and clothe beggars, we are surprised that Helen
+should do so, who was not a saint.  But long afterwards she herself told
+the son of Ulysses, Telemachus, that she had washed his father when he
+came into Troy disguised as a beggar who had been sorely beaten.
+
+You must have guessed that the beggar was Ulysses, who had not gone to
+Delos in his ship, but stolen back in a boat, and appeared disguised
+among the Greeks.  He did all this to make sure that nobody could
+recognise him, and he behaved so as to deserve a whipping that he might
+not be suspected as a Greek spy by the Trojans, but rather be pitied by
+them.  Certainly he deserved his name of "the much-enduring Ulysses."
+
+Meanwhile he sat in his bath and Helen washed his feet.  But when she had
+done, and had anointed his wounds with olive oil, and when she had
+clothed him in a white tunic and a purple mantle, then she opened her
+lips to cry out with amazement, for she knew Ulysses; but he laid his
+finger on her lips, saying "Hush!"  Then she remembered how great danger
+he was in, for the Trojans, if they found him, would put him to some
+cruel death, and she sat down, trembling and weeping, while he watched
+her.
+
+"Oh thou strange one," she said, "how enduring is thy heart and how
+cunning beyond measure!  How hast thou borne to be thus beaten and
+disgraced, and to come within the walls of Troy?  Well it is for thee
+that Paris, my lord, is far from home, having gone to guide Penthesilea,
+the Queen of the warrior maids whom men call Amazons, who is on her way
+to help the Trojans."
+
+Then Ulysses smiled, and Helen saw that she had said a word which she
+ought not to have spoken, and had revealed the secret hope of the
+Trojans.  Then she wept, and said, "Oh cruel and cunning!  You have made
+me betray the people with whom I live, though woe is me that ever I left
+my own people, and my husband dear, and my child!  And now if you escape
+alive out of Troy, you will tell the Greeks, and they will lie in ambush
+by night for the Amazons on the way to Troy and will slay them all.  If
+you and I were not friends long ago, I would tell the Trojans that you
+are here, and they would give your body to the dogs to eat, and fix your
+head on the palisade above the wall.  Woe is me that ever I was born."
+
+Ulysses answered, "Lady, as you have said, we two are friends from of
+old, and your friend I will be till the last, when the Greeks break into
+Troy, and slay the men, and carry the women captives.  If I live till
+that hour no man shall harm you, but safely and in honour you shall come
+to your palace in Lacedaemon of the rifted hills.  Moreover, I swear to
+you a great oath, by Zeus above, and by Them that under earth punish the
+souls of men who swear falsely, that I shall tell no man the thing which
+you have spoken."
+
+So when he had sworn and done that oath, Helen was comforted and dried
+her tears.  Then she told him how unhappy she was, and how she had lost
+her last comfort when Hector died.  "Always am I wretched," she said,
+"save when sweet sleep falls on me.  Now the wife of Thon, King of Egypt,
+gave me this gift when we were in Egypt, on our way to Troy, namely, a
+drug that brings sleep even to the most unhappy, and it is pressed from
+the poppy heads of the garland of the God of Sleep."  Then she showed him
+strange phials of gold, full of this drug: phials wrought by the
+Egyptians, and covered with magic spells and shapes of beasts and
+flowers.  "One of these I will give you," she said, "that even from Troy
+town you may not go without a gift in memory of the hands of Helen."  So
+Ulysses took the phial of gold, and was glad in his heart, and Helen set
+before him meat and wine.  When he had eaten and drunk, and his strength
+had come back to him, he said:
+
+"Now I must dress me again in my old rags, and take my wallet, and my
+staff, and go forth, and beg through Troy town.  For here I must abide
+for some days as a beggar man, lest if I now escape from your house in
+the night the Trojans may think that you have told me the secrets of
+their counsel, which I am carrying to the Greeks, and may be angry with
+you."  So he clothed himself again as a beggar, and took his staff, and
+hid the phial of gold with the Egyptian drug in his rags, and in his
+wallet also he put the new clothes that Helen had given him, and a sword,
+and he took farewell, saying, "Be of good heart, for the end of your
+sorrows is at hand.  But if you see me among the beggars in the street,
+or by the well, take no heed of me, only I will salute you as a beggar
+who has been kindly treated by a Queen."
+
+So they parted, and Ulysses went out, and when it was day he was with the
+beggars in the streets, but by night he commonly slept near the fire of a
+smithy forge, as is the way of beggars.  So for some days he begged,
+saying that he was gathering food to eat while he walked to some town far
+away that was at peace, where he might find work to do.  He was not
+impudent now, and did not go to rich men's houses or tell evil tales, or
+laugh, but he was much in the temples, praying to the Gods, and above all
+in the temple of Pallas Athene.  The Trojans thought that he was a pious
+man for a beggar.
+
+Now there was a custom in these times that men and women who were sick or
+in distress, should sleep at night on the floors of the temples.  They
+did this hoping that the God would send them a dream to show them how
+their diseases might be cured, or how they might find what they had lost,
+or might escape from their distresses.
+
+Ulysses slept in more than one temple, and once in that of Pallas Athene,
+and the priests and priestesses were kind to him, and gave him food in
+the morning when the gates of the temple were opened.
+
+In the temple of Pallas Athene, where the Luck of Troy lay always on her
+altar, the custom was that priestesses kept watch, each for two hours,
+all through the night, and soldiers kept guard within call.  So one night
+Ulysses slept there, on the floor, with other distressed people, seeking
+for dreams from the Gods.  He lay still all through the night till the
+turn of the last priestess came to watch.  The priestess used to walk up
+and down with bare feet among the dreaming people, having a torch in her
+hand, and muttering hymns to the Goddess.  Then Ulysses, when her back
+was turned, slipped the gold phial out of his rags, and let it lie on the
+polished floor beside him.  When the priestess came back again, the light
+from her torch fell on the glittering phial, and she stooped and picked
+it up, and looked at it curiously.  There came from it a sweet fragrance,
+and she opened it, and tasted the drug.  It seemed to her the sweetest
+thing that ever she had tasted, and she took more and more, and then
+closed the phial and laid it down, and went along murmuring her hymn.
+
+But soon a great drowsiness came over her, and she sat down on the step
+of the altar, and fell sound asleep, and the torch sunk in her hand, and
+went out, and all was dark.  Then Ulysses put the phial in his wallet,
+and crept very cautiously to the altar, in the dark, and stole the Luck
+of Troy.  It was only a small black mass of what is now called meteoric
+iron, which sometimes comes down with meteorites from the sky, but it was
+shaped like a shield, and the people thought it an image of the warlike
+shielded Goddess, fallen from Heaven.  Such sacred shields, made of glass
+and ivory, are found deep in the earth in the ruined cities of Ulysses'
+time.  Swiftly Ulysses hid the Luck in his rags and left in its place on
+the altar a copy of the Luck, which he had made of blackened clay.  Then
+he stole back to the place where he had lain, and remained there till
+dawn appeared, and the sleepers who sought for dreams awoke, and the
+temple gates were opened, and Ulysses walked out with the rest of them.
+
+He stole down a lane, where as yet no people were stirring, and crept
+along, leaning on his staff, till he came to the eastern gate, at the
+back of the city, which the Greeks never attacked, for they had never
+drawn their army in a circle round the town.  There Ulysses explained to
+the sentinels that he had gathered food enough to last for a long journey
+to some other town, and opened his bag, which seemed full of bread and
+broken meat.  The soldiers said he was a lucky beggar, and let him out.
+He walked slowly along the waggon road by which wood was brought into
+Troy from the forests on Mount Ida, and when he found that nobody was
+within sight he slipped into the forest, and stole into a dark thicket,
+hiding beneath the tangled boughs.  Here he lay and slept till evening,
+and then took the new clothes which Helen had given him out of his
+wallet, and put them on, and threw the belt of the sword over his
+shoulder, and hid the Luck of Troy in his bosom.  He washed himself clean
+in a mountain brook, and now all who saw him must have known that he was
+no beggar, but Ulysses of Ithaca, Laertes' son.
+
+So he walked cautiously down the side of the brook which ran between high
+banks deep in trees, and followed it till it reached the river Xanthus,
+on the left of the Greek lines.  Here he found Greek sentinels set to
+guard the camp, who cried aloud in joy and surprise, for his ship had not
+yet returned from Delos, and they could not guess how Ulysses had come
+back alone across the sea.  So two of the sentinels guarded Ulysses to
+the hut of Agamemnon, where he and Achilles and all the chiefs were
+sitting at a feast.  They all leaped up, but when Ulysses took the Luck
+of Troy from within his mantle, they cried that this was the bravest deed
+that had been done in the war, and they sacrificed ten oxen to Zeus.
+
+"So you were the old beggar," said young Thrasymedes.
+
+"Yes," said Ulysses, "and when next you beat a beggar, Thrasymedes, do
+not strike so hard and so long."
+
+That night all the Greeks were full of hope, for now they had the Luck of
+Troy, but the Trojans were in despair, and guessed that the beggar was
+the thief, and that Ulysses had been the beggar.  The priestess, Theano,
+could tell them nothing; they found her, with the extinguished torch
+drooping in her hand, asleep, as she sat on the step of the altar, and
+she never woke again.
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLES WITH THE AMAZONS AND MEMNON--THE DEATH OF ACHILLES
+
+
+Ulysses thought much and often of Helen, without whose kindness he could
+not have saved the Greeks by stealing the Luck of Troy.  He saw that,
+though she remained as beautiful as when the princes all sought her hand,
+she was most unhappy, knowing herself to be the cause of so much misery,
+and fearing what the future might bring.  Ulysses told nobody about the
+secret which she had let fall, the coming of the Amazons.
+
+The Amazons were a race of warlike maids, who lived far away on the banks
+of the river Thermodon.  They had fought against Troy in former times,
+and one of the great hill-graves on the plain of Troy covered the ashes
+of an Amazon, swift-footed Myrine.  People believed that they were the
+daughters of the God of War, and they were reckoned equal in battle to
+the bravest men.  Their young Queen, Penthesilea, had two reasons for
+coming to fight at Troy: one was her ambition to win renown, and the
+other her sleepless sorrow for having accidentally killed her sister,
+Hippolyte, when hunting.  The spear which she threw at a stag struck
+Hippolyte and slew her, and Penthesilea cared no longer for her own life,
+and desired to fall gloriously in battle.  So Penthesilea and her
+bodyguard of twelve Amazons set forth from the wide streams of Thermodon,
+and rode into Troy.  The story says that they did not drive in chariots,
+like all the Greek and Trojan chiefs, but rode horses, which must have
+been the manner of their country.
+
+Penthesilea was the tallest and most beautiful of the Amazons, and shone
+among her twelve maidens like the moon among the stars, or the bright
+Dawn among the Hours which follow her chariot wheels.  The Trojans
+rejoiced when they beheld her, for she looked both terrible and
+beautiful, with a frown on her brow, and fair shining eyes, and a blush
+on her cheeks.  To the Trojans she came like Iris, the Rainbow, after a
+storm, and they gathered round her cheering, and throwing flowers and
+kissing her stirrup, as the people of Orleans welcomed Joan of Arc when
+she came to deliver them.  Even Priam was glad, as is a man long blind,
+when he has been healed, and again looks upon the light of the sun.  Priam
+held a great feast, and gave to Penthesilea many beautiful gifts: cups of
+gold, and embroideries, and a sword with a hilt of silver, and she vowed
+that she would slay Achilles.  But when Andromache, the wife of Hector,
+heard her she said within herself, "Ah, unhappy girl, what is this boast
+of thine!  Thou hast not the strength to fight the unconquerable son of
+Peleus, for if Hector could not slay him, what chance hast thou?  But the
+piled-up earth covers Hector!"
+
+In the morning Penthesilea sprang up from sleep and put on her glorious
+armour, with spear in hand, and sword at side, and bow and quiver hung
+behind her back, and her great shield covering her side from neck to
+stirrup, and mounted her horse, and galloped to the plain.  Beside her
+charged the twelve maidens of her bodyguard, and all the company of
+Hector's brothers and kinsfolk.  These headed the Trojan lines, and they
+rushed towards the ships of the Greeks.
+
+Then the Greeks asked each other, "Who is this that leads the Trojans as
+Hector led them, surely some God rides in the van of the charioteers!"
+Ulysses could have told them who the new leader of the Trojans was, but
+it seems that he had not the heart to fight against women, for his name
+is not mentioned in this day's battle.  So the two lines clashed, and the
+plain of Troy ran red with blood, for Penthesilea slew Molios, and
+Persinoos, and Eilissos, and Antiphates, and Lernos high of heart, and
+Hippalmos of the loud warcry, and Haemonides, and strong Elasippus, while
+her maidens Derinoe and Clonie slew each a chief of the Greeks.  But
+Clonie fell beneath the spear of Podarkes, whose hand Penthesilea cut off
+with the sword, while Idomeneus speared the Amazon Bremousa, and Meriones
+of Crete slew Evadre, and Diomede killed Alcibie and Derimacheia in close
+fight with the sword, so the company of the Twelve were thinned, the
+bodyguard of Penthesilea.
+
+The Trojans and Greeks kept slaying each other, but Penthesilea avenged
+her maidens, driving the ranks of Greece as a lioness drives the cattle
+on the hills, for they could not stand before her.  Then she shouted,
+"Dogs! to-day shall you pay for the sorrows of Priam!  Where is Diomede,
+where is Achilles, where is Aias, that, men say, are your bravest?  Will
+none of them stand before my spear?"  Then she charged again, at the head
+of the Household of Priam, brothers and kinsmen of Hector, and where they
+came the Greeks fell like yellow leaves before the wind of autumn.  The
+white horse that Penthesilea rode, a gift from the wife of the North
+Wind, flashed like lightning through a dark cloud among the companies of
+the Greeks, and the chariots that followed the charge of the Amazon
+rocked as they swept over the bodies of the slain.  Then the old Trojans,
+watching from the walls, cried: "This is no mortal maiden but a Goddess,
+and to-day she will burn the ships of the Greeks, and they will all
+perish in Troyland, and see Greece never more again."
+
+Now it so was that Aias and Achilles had not heard the din and the cry of
+war, for both had gone to weep over the great new grave of Patroclus.
+Penthesilea and the Trojans had driven back the Greeks within their
+ditch, and they were hiding here and there among the ships, and torches
+were blazing in men's hands to burn the ships, as in the day of the
+valour of Hector: when Aias heard the din of battle, and called to
+Achilles to make speed towards the ships.
+
+So they ran swiftly to their huts, and armed themselves, and Aias fell
+smiting and slaying upon the Trojans, but Achilles slew five of the
+bodyguard of Penthesilea.  She, beholding her maidens fallen, rode
+straight against Aias and Achilles, like a dove defying two falcons, and
+cast her spear, but it fell back blunted from the glorious shield that
+the God had made for the son of Peleus.  Then she threw another spear at
+Aias, crying, "I am the daughter of the God of War," but his armour kept
+out the spear, and he and Achilles laughed aloud.  Aias paid no more heed
+to the Amazon, but rushed against the Trojan men; while Achilles raised
+the heavy spear that none but he could throw, and drove it down through
+breastplate and breast of Penthesilea, yet still her hand grasped her
+sword-hilt.  But, ere she could draw her sword, Achilles speared her
+horse, and horse and rider fell, and died in their fall.
+
+There lay fair Penthesilea in the dust, like a tall poplar tree that the
+wind has overthrown, and her helmet fell, and the Greeks who gathered
+round marvelled to see her lie so beautiful in death, like Artemis, the
+Goddess of the Woods, when she sleeps alone, weary with hunting on the
+hills.  Then the heart of Achilles was pierced with pity and sorrow,
+thinking how she might have been his wife in his own country, had he
+spared her, but he was never to see pleasant Phthia, his native land,
+again.  So Achilles stood and wept over Penthesilea dead.
+
+Now the Greeks, in pity and sorrow, held their hands, and did not pursue
+the Trojans who had fled, nor did they strip the armour from Penthesilea
+and her twelve maidens, but laid the bodies on biers, and sent them back
+in peace to Priam.  Then the Trojans burned Penthesilea in the midst of
+her dead maidens, on a great pile of dry wood, and placed their ashes in
+a golden casket, and buried them all in the great hill-grave of Laomedon,
+an ancient King of Troy, while the Greeks with lamentation buried them
+whom the Amazon had slain.
+
+The old men of Troy and the chiefs now held a council, and Priam said
+that they must not yet despair, for, if they had lost many of their
+bravest warriors, many of the Greeks had also fallen.  Their best plan
+was to fight only with arrows from the walls and towers, till King Memnon
+came to their rescue with a great army of Aethiopes.  Now Memnon was the
+son of the bright Dawn, a beautiful Goddess who had loved and married a
+mortal man, Tithonus.  She had asked Zeus, the chief of the Gods, to make
+her lover immortal, and her prayer was granted.  Tithonus could not die,
+but he began to grow grey, and then white haired, with a long white
+beard, and very weak, till nothing of him seemed to be left but his
+voice, always feebly chattering like the grasshoppers on a summer day.
+
+Memnon was the most beautiful of men, except Paris and Achilles, and his
+home was in a country that borders on the land of sunrising.  There he
+was reared by the lily maidens called Hesperides, till he came to his
+full strength, and commanded the whole army of the Aethiopes.  For their
+arrival Priam wished to wait, but Polydamas advised that the Trojans
+should give back Helen to the Greeks, with jewels twice as valuable as
+those which she had brought from the house of Menelaus.  Then Paris was
+very angry, and said that Polydamas was a coward, for it was little to
+Paris that Troy should be taken and burned in a month if for a month he
+could keep Helen of the fair hands.
+
+At length Memnon came, leading a great army of men who had nothing white
+about them but the teeth, so fiercely the sun burned on them in their own
+country.  The Trojans had all the more hopes of Memnon because, on his
+long journey from the land of sunrising, and the river Oceanus that
+girdles the round world, he had been obliged to cross the country of the
+Solymi.  Now the Solymi were the fiercest of men and rose up against
+Memnon, but he and his army fought them for a whole day, and defeated
+them, and drove them to the hills.  When Memnon came, Priam gave him a
+great cup of gold, full of wine to the brim, and Memnon drank the wine at
+one draught.  But he did not make great boasts of what he could do, like
+poor Penthesilea, "for," said he, "whether I am a good man at arms will
+be known in battle, where the strength of men is tried.  So now let us
+turn to sleep, for to wake and drink wine all through the night is an ill
+beginning of war."
+
+Then Priam praised his wisdom, and all men betook them to bed, but the
+bright Dawn rose unwillingly next day, to throw light on the battle where
+her son was to risk his fife.  Then Memnon led out the dark clouds of his
+men into the plain, and the Greeks foreboded evil when they saw so great
+a new army of fresh and unwearied warriors, but Achilles, leading them in
+his shining armour, gave them courage.  Memnon fell upon the left wing of
+the Greeks, and on the men of Nestor, and first he slew Ereuthus, and
+then attacked Nestor's young son, Antilochus, who, now that Patroclus had
+fallen, was the dearest friend of Achilles.  On him Memnon leaped, like a
+lion on a kid, but Antilochus lifted a huge stone from the plain, a
+pillar that had been set on the tomb of some great warrior long ago, and
+the stone smote full on the helmet of Memnon, who reeled beneath the
+stroke.  But Memnon seized his heavy spear, and drove it through shield
+and corselet of Antilochus, even into his heart, and he fell and died
+beneath his father's eyes.  Then Nestor in great sorrow and anger strode
+across the body of Antilochus and called to his other son, Thrasymedes,
+"Come and drive afar this man that has slain thy brother, for if fear be
+in thy heart thou art no son of mine, nor of the race of Periclymenus,
+who stood up in battle even against the strong man Heracles!"
+
+But Memnon was too strong for Thrasymedes, and drove him off, while old
+Nestor himself charged sword in hand, though Memnon bade him begone, for
+he was not minded to strike so aged a man, and Nestor drew back, for he
+was weak with age.  Then Memnon and his army charged the Greeks, slaying
+and stripping the dead.  But Nestor had mounted his chariot and driven to
+Achilles, weeping, and imploring him to come swiftly and save the body of
+Antilochus, and he sped to meet Memnon, who lifted a great stone, the
+landmark of a field, and drove it against the shield of the son of
+Peleus.  But Achilles was not shaken by the blow; he ran forward, and
+wounded Memnon over the rim of his shield.  Yet wounded as he was Memnon
+fought on and struck his spear through the arm of Achilles, for the
+Greeks fought with no sleeves of bronze to protect their arms.
+
+Then Achilles drew his great sword, and flew on Memnon, and with sword-
+strokes they lashed at each other on shield and helmet, and the long
+horsehair crests of the helmets were shorn off, and flew down the wind,
+and their shields rang terribly beneath the sword strokes.  They thrust
+at each others' throats between shield and visor of the helmet, they
+smote at knee, and thrust at breast, and the armour rang about their
+bodies, and the dust from beneath their feet rose up in a cloud around
+them, like mist round the falls of a great river in flood.  So they
+fought, neither of them yielding a step, till Achilles made so rapid a
+thrust that Memnon could not parry it, and the bronze sword passed clean
+through his body beneath the breast-bone, and he fell, and his armour
+clashed as he fell.
+
+Then Achilles, wounded as he was and weak from loss of blood, did not
+stay to strip the golden armour of Memnon, but shouted his warcry, and
+pressed on, for he hoped to enter the gate of Troy with the fleeing
+Trojans, and all the Greeks followed after him.  So they pursued, slaying
+as they went, and the Scaean gate was choked with the crowd of men,
+pursuing and pursued.  In that hour would the Greeks have entered Troy,
+and burned the city, and taken the women captive, but Paris stood on the
+tower above the gate, and in his mind was anger for the death of his
+brother Hector.  He tried the string of his bow, and found it frayed, for
+all day he had showered his arrows on the Greeks; so he chose a new
+bowstring, and fitted it, and strung the bow, and chose an arrow from his
+quiver, and aimed at the ankle of Achilles, where it was bare beneath the
+greave, or leg-guard of metal, that the God had fashioned for him.
+Through the ankle flew the arrow, and Achilles wheeled round, weak as he
+was, and stumbled, and fell, and the armour that the God had wrought was
+defiled with dust and blood.
+
+Then Achilles rose again, and cried: "What coward has smitten me with a
+secret arrow from afar?  Let him stand forth and meet me with sword and
+spear!"  So speaking he seized the shaft with his strong hands and tore
+it out of the wound, and much blood gushed, and darkness came over his
+eyes.  Yet he staggered forward, striking blindly, and smote Orythaon, a
+dear friend of Hector, through the helmet, and others he smote, but now
+his force failed him, and he leaned on his spear, and cried his warcry,
+and said, "Cowards of Troy, ye shall not all escape my spear, dying as I
+am."  But as he spoke he fell, and all his armour rang around him, yet
+the Trojans stood apart and watched; and as hunters watch a dying lion
+not daring to go nigh him, so the Trojans stood in fear till Achilles
+drew his latest breath.  Then from the wall the Trojan women raised a
+great cry of joy over him who had slain the noble Hector: and thus was
+fulfilled the prophecy of Hector, that Achilles should fall in the Scaean
+gateway, by the hand of Paris.
+
+Then the best of the Trojans rushed forth from the gate to seize the body
+of Achilles, and his glorious armour, but the Greeks were as eager to
+carry the body to the ships that it might have due burial.  Round the
+dead Achilles men fought long and sore, and both sides were mixed, Greeks
+and Trojans, so that men dared not shoot arrows from the walls of Troy
+lest they should kill their own friends.  Paris, and Aeneas, and Glaucus,
+who had been the friend of Sarpedon, led the Trojans, and Aias and
+Ulysses led the Greeks, for we are not told that Agamemnon was fighting
+in this great battle of the war.  Now as angry wild bees flock round a
+man who is taking their honeycombs, so the Trojans gathered round Aias,
+striving to stab him, but he set his great shield in front, and smote and
+slew all that came within reach of his spear.  Ulysses, too, struck down
+many, and though a spear was thrown and pierced his leg near the knee he
+stood firm, protecting the body of Achilles.  At last Ulysses caught the
+body of Achilles by the hands, and heaved it upon his back, and so limped
+towards the ships, but Aias and the men of Aias followed, turning round
+if ever the Trojans ventured to come near, and charging into the midst of
+them.  Thus very slowly they bore the dead Achilles across the plain,
+through the bodies of the fallen and the blood, till they met Nestor in
+his chariot and placed Achilles therein, and swiftly Nestor drove to the
+ships.
+
+There the women, weeping, washed Achilles' comely body, and laid him on a
+bier with a great white mantle over him, and all the women lamented and
+sang dirges, and the first was Briseis, who loved Achilles better than
+her own country, and her father, and her brothers whom he had slain in
+war.  The Greek princes, too, stood round the body, weeping and cutting
+off their long locks of yellow hair, a token of grief and an offering to
+the dead.
+
+Men say that forth from the sea came Thetis of the silver feet, the
+mother of Achilles, with her ladies, the deathless maidens of the waters.
+They rose up from their glassy chambers below the sea, moving on, many
+and beautiful, like the waves on a summer day, and their sweet song
+echoed along the shores, and fear came upon the Greeks.  Then they would
+have fled, but Nestor cried: "Hold, flee not, young lords of the
+Achaeans!  Lo, she that comes from the sea is his mother, with the
+deathless maidens of the waters, to look on the face of her dead son."
+Then the sea nymphs stood around the dead Achilles and clothed him in the
+garments of the Gods, fragrant raiment, and all the Nine Muses, one to
+the other replying with sweet voices, began their lament.
+
+Next the Greeks made a great pile of dry wood, and laid Achilles on it,
+and set fire to it, till the flames had consumed his body except the
+white ashes.  These they placed in a great golden cup and mingled with
+them the ashes of Patroclus, and above all they built a tomb like a hill,
+high on a headland above the sea, that men for all time may see it as
+they go sailing by, and may remember Achilles.  Next they held in his
+honour foot races and chariot races, and other games, and Thetis gave
+splendid prizes.  Last of all, when the games were ended, Thetis placed
+before the chiefs the glorious armour that the God had made for her son
+on the night after the slaying of Patroclus by Hector.  "Let these arms
+be the prize of the best of the Greeks," she said, "and of him that saved
+the body of Achilles out of the hands of the Trojans."
+
+Then stood up on one side Aias and on the other Ulysses, for these two
+had rescued the body, and neither thought himself a worse warrior than
+the other.  Both were the bravest of the brave, and if Aias was the
+taller and stronger, and upheld the fight at the ships on the day of the
+valour of Hector; Ulysses had alone withstood the Trojans, and refused to
+retreat even when wounded, and his courage and cunning had won for the
+Greeks the Luck of Troy.  Therefore old Nestor arose and said: "This is a
+luckless day, when the best of the Greeks are rivals for such a prize.  He
+who is not the winner will be heavy at heart, and will not stand firm by
+us in battle, as of old, and hence will come great loss to the Greeks.
+Who can be a just judge in this question, for some men will love Aias
+better, and some will prefer Ulysses, and thus will arise disputes among
+ourselves.  Lo! have we not here among us many Trojan prisoners, waiting
+till their friends pay their ransom in cattle and gold and bronze and
+iron?  These hate all the Greeks alike, and will favour neither Aias nor
+Ulysses.  Let _them_ be the judges, and decide who is the best of the
+Greeks, and the man who has done most harm to the Trojans."
+
+Agamemnon said that Nestor had spoken wisely.  The Trojans were then made
+to sit as judges in the midst of the Assembly, and Aias and Ulysses
+spoke, and told the stories of their own great deeds, of which we have
+heard already, but Aias spoke roughly and discourteously, calling Ulysses
+a coward and a weakling.  "Perhaps the Trojans know," said Ulysses
+quietly, "whether they think that I deserve what Aias has said about me,
+that I am a coward; and perhaps Aias may remember that he did not find me
+so weak when we wrestled for a prize at the funeral of Patroclus."
+
+Then the Trojans all with one voice said that Ulysses was the best man
+among the Greeks, and the most feared by them, both for his courage and
+his skill in stratagems of war.  On this, the blood of Aias flew into his
+face, and he stood silent and unmoving, and could not speak a word, till
+his friends came round him and led him away to his hut, and there he sat
+down and would not eat or drink, and the night fell.
+
+Long he sat, musing in his mind, and then rose and put on all his armour,
+and seized a sword that Hector had given him one day when they two fought
+in a gentle passage of arms, and took courteous farewell of each other,
+and Aias had given Hector a broad sword-belt, wrought with gold.  This
+sword, Hector's gift, Aias took, and went towards the hut of Ulysses,
+meaning to carve him limb from limb, for madness had come upon him in his
+great grief.  Rushing through the night to slay Ulysses he fell upon the
+flock of sheep that the Greeks kept for their meat.  And up and down
+among them he went, smiting blindly till the dawn came, and, lo! his
+senses returned to him, and he saw that he had not smitten Ulysses, but
+stood in a pool of blood among the sheep that he had slain.  He could not
+endure the disgrace of his madness, and he fixed the sword, Hector's
+gift, with its hilt firmly in the ground, and went back a little way, and
+ran and fell upon the sword, which pierced his heart, and so died the
+great Aias, choosing death before a dishonoured life.
+
+
+
+
+ULYSSES SAILS TO SEEK THE SON OF ACHILLES.--THE VALOUR OF EURYPYLUS
+
+
+When the Greeks found Aias lying dead, slain by his own hand, they made
+great lament, and above all the brother of Aias, and his wife Tecmessa
+bewailed him, and the shores of the sea rang with their sorrow.  But of
+all no man was more grieved than Ulysses, and he stood up and said:
+"Would that the sons of the Trojans had never awarded to me the arms of
+Achilles, for far rather would I have given them to Aias than that this
+loss should have befallen the whole army of the Greeks.  Let no man blame
+me, or be angry with me, for I have not sought for wealth, to enrich
+myself, but for honour only, and to win a name that will be remembered
+among men in times to come."  Then they made a great fire of wood, and
+burned the body of Aias, lamenting him as they had sorrowed for Achilles.
+
+Now it seemed that though the Greeks had won the Luck of Troy and had
+defeated the Amazons and the army of Memnon, they were no nearer taking
+Troy than ever.  They had slain Hector, indeed, and many other Trojans,
+but they had lost the great Achilles, and Aias, and Patroclus, and
+Antilochus, with the princes whom Penthesilea and Memnon slew, and the
+bands of the dead chiefs were weary of fighting, and eager to go home.
+The chiefs met in council, and Menelaus arose and said that his heart was
+wasted with sorrow for the death of so many brave men who had sailed to
+Troy for his sake.  "Would that death had come upon me before I gathered
+this host," he said, "but come, let the rest of us launch our swift
+ships, and return each to our own country."
+
+He spoke thus to try the Greeks, and see of what courage they were, for
+his desire was still to burn Troy town and to slay Paris with his own
+hand.  Then up rose Diomede, and swore that never would the Greeks turn
+cowards.  No! he bade them sharpen their swords, and make ready for
+battle.  The prophet Calchas, too, arose and reminded the Greeks how he
+had always foretold that they would take Troy in the tenth year of the
+siege, and how the tenth year had come, and victory was almost in their
+hands.  Next Ulysses stood up and said that, though Achilles was dead,
+and there was no prince to lead his men, yet a son had been born to
+Achilles, while he was in the isle of Scyros, and that son he would bring
+to fill his father's place.
+
+"Surely he will come, and for a token I will carry to him those unhappy
+arms of the great Achilles.  Unworthy am I to wear them, and they bring
+back to my mind our sorrow for Aias.  But his son will wear them, in the
+front of the spearmen of Greece and in the thickest ranks of Troy shall
+the helmet of Achilles shine, as it was wont to do, for always he fought
+among the foremost."  Thus Ulysses spoke, and he and Diomede, with fifty
+oarsmen, went on board a swift ship, and sitting all in order on the
+benches they smote the grey sea into foam, and Ulysses held the helm and
+steered them towards the isle of Scyros.
+
+Now the Trojans had rest from war for a while, and Priam, with a heavy
+heart, bade men take his chief treasure, the great golden vine, with
+leaves and clusters of gold, and carry it to the mother of Eurypylus, the
+king of the people who dwell where the wide marshlands of the river
+Cayster clang with the cries of the cranes and herons and wild swans.  For
+the mother of Eurypylus had sworn that never would she let her son go to
+the war unless Priam sent her the vine of gold, a gift of the gods to an
+ancient King of Troy.
+
+With a heavy heart, then, Priam sent the golden vine, but Eurypylus was
+glad when he saw it, and bade all his men arm, and harness the horses to
+the chariots, and glad were the Trojans when the long line of the new
+army wound along the road and into the town.  Then Paris welcomed
+Eurypylus who was his nephew, son of his sister Astyoche, a daughter of
+Priam; but the grandfather of Eurypylus was the famous Heracles, the
+strongest man who ever lived on earth.  So Paris brought Eurypylus to his
+house, where Helen sat working at her embroideries with her four bower
+maidens, and Eurypylus marvelled when he saw her, she was so beautiful.
+But the Khita, the people of Eurypylus, feasted in the open air among the
+Trojans, by the light of great fires burning, and to the music of pipes
+and flutes.  The Greeks saw the fires, and heard the merry music, and
+they watched all night lest the Trojans should attack the ships before
+the dawn.  But in the dawn Eurypylus rose from sleep and put on his
+armour, and hung from his neck by the belt the great shield on which were
+fashioned, in gold of many colours and in silver, the Twelve Adventures
+of Heracles, his grandfather; strange deeds that he did, fighting with
+monsters and giants and with the Hound of Hades, who guards the dwellings
+of the dead.  Then Eurypylus led on his whole army, and with the brothers
+of Hector he charged against the Greeks, who were led by Agamemnon.
+
+In that battle Eurypylus first smote Nireus, who was the most beautiful
+of the Greeks now that Achilles had fallen.  There lay Nireus, like an
+apple tree, all covered with blossoms red and white, that the wind has
+overthrown in a rich man's orchard.  Then Eurypylus would have stripped
+off his armour, but Machaon rushed in, Machaon who had been wounded and
+taken to the tent of Nestor, on the day of the Valour of Hector, when he
+brought fire against the ships.  Machaon drove his spear through the left
+shoulder of Eurypylus, but Eurypylus struck at his shoulder with his
+sword, and the blood flowed; nevertheless, Machaon stooped, and grasped a
+great stone, and sent it against the helmet of Eurypylus.  He was shaken,
+but he did not fall, he drove his spear through breastplate and breast of
+Machaon, who fell and died.  With his last breath he said, "Thou, too,
+shalt fall," but Eurypylus made answer, "So let it be!  Men cannot live
+for ever, and such is the fortune of war."
+
+Thus the battle rang, and shone, and shifted, till few of the Greeks kept
+steadfast, except those with Menelaus and Agamemnon, for Diomede and
+Ulysses were far away upon the sea, bringing from Scyros the son of
+Achilles.  But Teucer slew Polydamas, who had warned Hector to come
+within the walls of Troy; and Menelaus wounded Deiphobus, the bravest of
+the sons of Priam who were still in arms, for many had fallen; and
+Agamemnon slew certain spearmen of the Trojans.  Round Eurypylus fought
+Paris, and Aeneas, who wounded Teucer with a great stone, breaking in his
+helmet, but he drove back in his chariot to the ships.  Menelaus and
+Agamemnon stood alone and fought in the crowd of Trojans, like two wild
+boars that a circle of hunters surrounds with spears, so fiercely they
+stood at bay.  There they would both have fallen, but Idomeneus, and
+Meriones of Crete, and Thrasymedes, Nestor's son, ran to their rescue,
+and fiercer grew the fighting.  Eurypylus desired to slay Agamemnon and
+Menelaus, and end the war, but, as the spears of the Scots encompassed
+King James at Flodden Field till he ran forward, and fell within a
+lance's length of the English general, so the men of Crete and Pylos
+guarded the two princes with their spears.
+
+There Paris was wounded in the thigh with a spear, and he retreated a
+little way, and showered his arrows among the Greeks; and Idomeneus
+lifted and hurled a great stone at Eurypylus which struck his spear out
+of his hand, and he went back to find it, and Menelaus and Agamemnon had
+a breathing space in the battle.  But soon Eurypylus returned, crying on
+his men, and they drove back foot by foot the ring of spears round
+Agamemnon, and Aeneas and Paris slew men of Crete and of Mycenae till the
+Greeks were pushed to the ditch round the camp; and then great stones and
+spears and arrows rained down on the Trojans and the people of Eurypylus
+from the battlements and towers of the Grecian wall.  Now night fell, and
+Eurypylus knew that he could not win the wall in the dark, so he withdrew
+his men, and they built great fires, and camped upon the plain.
+
+The case of the Greeks was now like that of the Trojans after the death
+of Hector.  They buried Machaon and the other chiefs who had fallen, and
+they remained within their ditch and their wall, for they dared not come
+out into the open plain.  They knew not whether Ulysses and Diomede had
+come safely to Scyros, or whether their ship had been wrecked or driven
+into unknown seas.  So they sent a herald to Eurypylus, asking for a
+truce, that they might gather their dead and burn them, and the Trojans
+and Khita also buried their dead.
+
+Meanwhile the swift ship of Ulysses had swept through the sea to Scyros,
+and to the palace of King Lycomedes.  There they found Neoptolemus, the
+son of Achilles, in the court before the doors.  He was as tall as his
+father, and very like him in face and shape, and he was practising the
+throwing of the spear at a mark.  Right glad were Ulysses and Diomede to
+behold him, and Ulysses told Neoptolemus who they were, and why they
+came, and implored him to take pity on the Greeks and help them.
+
+"My friend is Diomede, Prince of Argos," said Ulysses, "and I am Ulysses
+of Ithaca.  Come with us, and we Greeks will give you countless gifts,
+and I myself will present you with the armour of your father, such as it
+is not lawful for any other mortal man to wear, seeing that it is golden,
+and wrought by the hands of a God.  Moreover, when we have taken Troy,
+and gone home, Menelaus will give you his daughter, the beautiful
+Hermione, to be your wife, with gold in great plenty."
+
+Then Neoptolemus answered: "It is enough that the Greeks need my sword.
+To-morrow we shall sail for Troy."  He led them into the palace to dine,
+and there they found his mother, beautiful Deidamia, in mourning raiment,
+and she wept when she heard that they had come to take her son away.  But
+Neoptolemus comforted her, promising to return safely with the spoils of
+Troy, "or, even if I fall," he said, "it will be after doing deeds worthy
+of my father's name."  So next day they sailed, leaving Deidamia
+mournful, like a swallow whose nest a serpent has found, and has killed
+her young ones; even so she wailed, and went up and down in the house.
+But the ship ran swiftly on her way, cleaving the dark waves till Ulysses
+showed Neoptolemus the far off snowy crest of Mount Ida; and Tenedos, the
+island near Troy; and they passed the plain where the tomb of Achilles
+stands, but Ulysses did not tell the son that it was his father's tomb.
+
+Now all this time the Greeks, shut up within their wall and fighting from
+their towers, were looking back across the sea, eager to spy the ship of
+Ulysses, like men wrecked on a desert island, who keep watch every day
+for a sail afar off, hoping that the seamen will touch at their isle and
+have pity upon them, and carry them home, so the Greeks kept watch for
+the ship bearing Neoptolemus.
+
+Diomede, too, had been watching the shore, and when they came in sight of
+the ships of the Greeks, he saw that they were being besieged by the
+Trojans, and that all the Greek army was penned up within the wall, and
+was fighting from the towers.  Then he cried aloud to Ulysses and
+Neoptolemus, "Make haste, friends, let us arm before we land, for some
+great evil has fallen upon the Greeks.  The Trojans are attacking our
+wall, and soon they will burn our ships, and for us there will be no
+return."
+
+Then all the men on the ship of Ulysses armed themselves, and
+Neoptolemus, in the splendid armour of his father, was the first to leap
+ashore.  The Greeks could not come from the wall to welcome him, for they
+were fighting hard and hand-to-hand with Eurypylus and his men.  But they
+glanced back over their shoulders and it seemed to them that they saw
+Achilles himself, spear and sword in hand, rushing to help them.  They
+raised a great battle-cry, and, when Neoptolemus reached the battlements,
+he and Ulysses, and Diomede leaped down to the plain, the Greeks
+following them, and they all charged at once on the men of Eurypylus,
+with levelled spears, and drove them from the wall.
+
+Then the Trojans trembled, for they knew the shields of Diomede and
+Ulysses, and they thought that the tall chief in the armour of Achilles
+was Achilles himself, come back from the land of the dead to take
+vengeance for Antilochus.  The Trojans fled, and gathered round
+Eurypylus, as in a thunderstorm little children, afraid of the lightning
+and the noise, run and cluster round their father, and hide their faces
+on his knees.
+
+But Neoptolemus was spearing the Trojans, as a man who carries at night a
+beacon of fire in his boat on the sea spears the fishes that flock
+around, drawn by the blaze of the flame.  Cruelly he avenged his father's
+death on many a Trojan, and the men whom Achilles had led followed
+Achilles' son, slaying to right and left, and smiting the Trojans, as
+they ran, between the shoulders with the spear.  Thus they fought and
+followed while daylight lasted, but when night fell, they led Neoptolemus
+to his father's hut, where the women washed him in the bath, and then he
+was taken to feast with Agamemnon and Menelaus and the princes.  They all
+welcomed him, and gave him glorious gifts, swords with silver hilts, and
+cups of gold and silver, and they were glad, for they had driven the
+Trojans from their wall, and hoped that to-morrow they would slay
+Eurypylus, and take Troy town.
+
+But their hope was not to be fulfilled, for though next day Eurypylus met
+Neoptolemus in the battle, and was slain by him, when the Greeks chased
+the Trojans into their city so great a storm of lightning and thunder and
+rain fell upon them that they retreated again to their camp.  They
+believed that Zeus, the chief of the Gods, was angry with them, and the
+days went by, and Troy still stood unconquered.
+
+
+
+
+THE SLAYING OF PARIS
+
+
+When the Greeks were disheartened, as they often were, they consulted
+Calchas the prophet.  He usually found that they must do something, or
+send for somebody, and in doing so they diverted their minds from their
+many misfortunes.  Now, as the Trojans were fighting more bravely than
+before, under Deiphobus, a brother of Hector, the Greeks went to Calchas
+for advice, and he told them that they must send Ulysses and Diomede to
+bring Philoctetes the bowman from the isle of Lemnos.  This was an
+unhappy deserted island, in which the married women, some years before,
+had murdered all their husbands, out of jealousy, in a single night.  The
+Greeks had landed in Lemnos, on their way to Troy, and there Philoctetes
+had shot an arrow at a great water dragon which lived in a well within a
+cave in the lonely hills.  But when he entered the cave the dragon bit
+him, and, though he killed it at last, its poisonous teeth wounded his
+foot.  The wound never healed, but dripped with venom, and Philoctetes,
+in terrible pain, kept all the camp awake at night by his cries.
+
+The Greeks were sorry for him, but he was not a pleasant companion,
+shrieking as he did, and exuding poison wherever he came.  So they left
+him on the lonely island, and did not know whether he was alive or dead.
+Calchas ought to have told the Greeks not to desert Philoctetes at the
+time, if he was so important that Troy, as the prophet now said, could
+not be taken without him.  But now, as he must give some advice, Calchas
+said that Philoctetes must be brought back, so Ulysses and Diomede went
+to bring him.  They sailed to Lemnos, a melancholy place they found it,
+with no smoke rising from the ruinous houses along the shore.  As they
+were landing they learned that Philoctetes was not dead, for his dismal
+old cries of pain, _ototototoi, ai, ai; pheu, pheu; ototototoi_, came
+echoing from a cave on the beach.  To this cave the princes went, and
+found a terrible-looking man, with long, dirty, dry hair and beard; he
+was worn to a skeleton, with hollow eyes, and lay moaning in a mass of
+the feathers of sea birds.  His great bow and his arrows lay ready to his
+hand: with these he used to shoot the sea birds, which were all that he
+had to eat, and their feathers littered all the floor of his cave, and
+they were none the better for the poison that dripped from his wounded
+foot.
+
+When this horrible creature saw Ulysses and Diomede coming near, he
+seized his bow and fitted a poisonous arrow to the string, for he hated
+the Greeks, because they had left him in the desert isle.  But the
+princes held up their hands in sign of peace, and cried out that they had
+come to do him kindness, so he laid down his bow, and they came in and
+sat on the rocks, and promised that his wound should be healed, for the
+Greeks were very much ashamed of having deserted him.  It was difficult
+to resist Ulysses when he wished to persuade any one, and at last
+Philoctetes consented to sail with them to Troy.  The oarsmen carried him
+down to the ship on a litter, and there his dreadful wound was washed
+with warm water, and oil was poured into it, and it was bound up with
+soft linen, so that his pain grew less fierce, and they gave him a good
+supper and wine enough, which he had not tasted for many years.
+
+Next morning they sailed, and had a fair west wind, so that they soon
+landed among the Greeks and carried Philoctetes on shore.  Here
+Podaleirius, the brother of Machaon, being a physician, did all that
+could be done to heal the wound, and the pain left Philoctetes.  He was
+taken to the hut of Agamemnon, who welcomed him, and said that the Greeks
+repented of their cruelty.  They gave him seven female slaves to take
+care of him, and twenty swift horses, and twelve great vessels of bronze,
+and told him that he was always to live with the greatest chiefs and feed
+at their table.  So he was bathed, and his hair was cut and combed and
+anointed with oil, and soon he was eager and ready to fight, and to use
+his great bow and poisoned arrows on the Trojans.  The use of poisoned
+arrow-tips was thought unfair, but Philoctetes had no scruples.
+
+Now in the next battle Paris was shooting down the Greeks with his
+arrows, when Philoctetes saw him, and cried: "Dog, you are proud of your
+archery and of the arrow that slew the great Achilles.  But, behold, I am
+a better bowman than you, by far, and the bow in my hands was borne by
+the strong man Heracles!"  So he cried and drew the bowstring to his
+breast and the poisoned arrowhead to the bow, and the bowstring rang, and
+the arrow flew, and did but graze the hand of Paris.  Then the bitter
+pain of the poison came upon him, and the Trojans carried him into their
+city, where the physicians tended him all night.  But he never slept, and
+lay tossing in agony till dawn, when he said: "There is but one hope.
+Take me to OEnone, the nymph of Mount Ida!"
+
+Then his friends laid Paris on a litter, and bore him up the steep path
+to Mount Ida.  Often had he climbed it swiftly, when he was young, and
+went to see the nymph who loved him; but for many a day he had not trod
+the path where he was now carried in great pain and fear, for the poison
+turned his blood to fire.  Little hope he had, for he knew how cruelly he
+had deserted OEnone, and he saw that all the birds which were disturbed
+in the wood flew away to the left hand, an omen of evil.
+
+At last the bearers reached the cave where the nymph OEnone lived, and
+they smelled the sweet fragrance of the cedar fire that burned on the
+floor of the cave, and they heard the nymph singing a melancholy song.
+Then Paris called to her in the voice which she had once loved to hear,
+and she grew very pale, and rose up, saying to herself, "The day has come
+for which I have prayed.  He is sore hurt, and has come to bid me heal
+his wound."  So she came and stood in the doorway of the dark cave, white
+against the darkness, and the bearers laid Paris on the litter at the
+feet of OEnone, and he stretched forth his hands to touch her knees, as
+was the manner of suppliants.  But she drew back and gathered her robe
+about her, that he might not touch it with his hands.
+
+Then he said: "Lady, despise me not, and hate me not, for my pain is more
+than I can bear.  Truly it was by no will of mine that I left you lonely
+here, for the Fates that no man may escape led me to Helen.  Would that I
+had died in your arms before I saw her face!  But now I beseech you in
+the name of the Gods, and for the memory of our love, that you will have
+pity on me and heal my hurt, and not refuse your grace and let me die
+here at your feet."
+
+Then OEnone answered scornfully: "Why have you come here to me?  Surely
+for years you have not come this way, where the path was once worn with
+your feet.  But long ago you left me lonely and lamenting, for the love
+of Helen of the fair hands.  Surely she is much more beautiful than the
+love of your youth, and far more able to help you, for men say that she
+can never know old age and death.  Go home to Helen and let her take away
+your pain."
+
+Thus OEnone spoke, and went within the cave, where she threw herself down
+among the ashes of the hearth and sobbed for anger and sorrow.  In a
+little while she rose and went to the door of the cave, thinking that
+Paris had not been borne away back to Troy, but she found him not; for
+his bearers had carried him by another path, till he died beneath the
+boughs of the oak trees.  Then his bearers carried him swiftly down to
+Troy, where his mother bewailed him, and Helen sang over him as she had
+sung over Hector, remembering many things, and fearing to think of what
+her own end might be.  But the Trojans hastily built a great pile of dry
+wood, and thereon laid the body of Paris and set fire to it, and the
+flame went up through the darkness, for now night had fallen.
+
+But OEnone was roaming in the dark woods, crying and calling after Paris,
+like a lioness whose cubs the hunters have carried away.  The moon rose
+to give her light, and the flame of the funeral fire shone against the
+sky, and then OEnone knew that Paris had died--beautiful Paris--and that
+the Trojans were burning his body on the plain at the foot of Mount Ida.
+Then she cried that now Paris was all her own, and that Helen had no more
+hold on him: "And though when he was living he left me, in death we shall
+not be divided," she said, and she sped down the hill, and through the
+thickets where the wood nymphs were wailing for Paris, and she reached
+the plain, and, covering her head with her veil like a bride, she rushed
+through the throng of Trojans.  She leaped upon the burning pile of wood,
+she clasped the body of Paris in her arms, and the flame of fire consumed
+the bridegroom and the bride, and their ashes mingled.  No man could
+divide them any more, and the ashes were placed in a golden cup, within a
+chamber of stone, and the earth was mounded above them.  On that grave
+the wood nymphs planted two rose trees, and their branches met and
+plaited together.
+
+This was the end of Paris and OEnone.
+
+
+
+
+HOW ULYSSES INVENTED THE DEVICE OF THE HORSE OF TREE
+
+
+After Paris died, Helen was not given back to Menelaus.  We are often
+told that only fear of the anger of Paris had prevented the Trojans from
+surrendering Helen and making peace.  Now Paris could not terrify them,
+yet for all that the men of the town would not part with Helen, whether
+because she was so beautiful, or because they thought it dishonourable to
+yield her to the Greeks, who might put her to a cruel death.  So Helen
+was taken by Deiphobus, the brother of Paris, to live in his own house,
+and Deiphobus was at this time the best warrior and the chief captain of
+the men of Troy.
+
+Meanwhile, the Greeks made an assault against the Trojan walls and fought
+long and hardily; but, being safe behind the battlements, and shooting
+through loopholes, the Trojans drove them back with loss of many of their
+men.  It was in vain that Philoctetes shot his poisoned arrows, they fell
+back from the stone walls, or stuck in the palisades of wood above the
+walls, and the Greeks who tried to climb over were speared, or crushed
+with heavy stones.  When night fell, they retreated to the ships and held
+a council, and, as usual, they asked the advice of the prophet Calchas.
+It was the business of Calchas to go about looking at birds, and taking
+omens from what he saw them doing, a way of prophesying which the Romans
+also used, and some savages do the same to this day.  Calchas said that
+yesterday he had seen a hawk pursuing a dove, which hid herself in a hole
+in a rocky cliff.  For a long while the hawk tried to find the hole, and
+follow the dove into it, but he could not reach her.  So he flew away for
+a short distance and hid himself; then the dove fluttered out into the
+sunlight, and the hawk swooped on her and killed her.
+
+The Greeks, said Calchas, ought to learn a lesson from the hawk, and take
+Troy by cunning, as by force they could do nothing.  Then Ulysses stood
+up and described a trick which it is not easy to understand.  The Greeks,
+he said, ought to make an enormous hollow horse of wood, and place the
+bravest men in the horse.  Then all the rest of the Greeks should embark
+in their ships and sail to the Isle of Tenedos, and lie hidden behind the
+island.  The Trojans would then come out of the city, like the dove out
+of her hole in the rock, and would wander about the Greek camp, and
+wonder why the great horse of tree had been made, and why it had been
+left behind.  Lest they should set fire to the horse, when they would
+soon have found out the warriors hidden in it, a cunning Greek, whom the
+Trojans did not know by sight, should be left in the camp or near it.  He
+would tell the Trojans that the Greeks had given up all hope and gone
+home, and he was to say that they feared the Goddess Pallas was angry
+with them, because they had stolen her image that fell from heaven, and
+was called the Luck of Troy.  To soothe Pallas and prevent her from
+sending great storms against the ships, the Trojans (so the man was to
+say) had built this wooden horse as an offering to the Goddess.  The
+Trojans, believing this story, would drag the horse into Troy, and, in
+the night, the princes would come out, set fire to the city, and open the
+gates to the army, which would return from Tenedos as soon as darkness
+came on.
+
+The prophet was much pleased with the plan of Ulysses, and, as two birds
+happened to fly away on the right hand, he declared that the stratagem
+would certainly be lucky.  Neoptolemus, on the other hand, voted for
+taking Troy, without any trick, by sheer hard fighting.  Ulysses replied
+that if Achilles could not do that, it could not be done at all, and that
+Epeius, a famous carpenter, had better set about making the horse at
+once.
+
+Next day half the army, with axes in their hands, were sent to cut down
+trees on Mount Ida, and thousands of planks were cut from the trees by
+Epeius and his workmen, and in three days he had finished the horse.
+Ulysses then asked the best of the Greeks to come forward and go inside
+the machine; while one, whom the Greeks did not know by sight, should
+volunteer to stay behind in the camp and deceive the Trojans.  Then a
+young man called Sinon stood up and said that he would risk himself and
+take the chance that the Trojans might disbelieve him, and burn him
+alive.  Certainly, none of the Greeks did anything more courageous, yet
+Sinon had not been considered brave.
+
+Had he fought in the front ranks, the Trojans would have known him; but
+there were many brave fighters who would not have dared to do what Sinon
+undertook.
+
+Then old Nestor was the first that volunteered to go into the horse; but
+Neoptolemus said that, brave as he was, he was too old, and that he must
+depart with the army to Tenedos.  Neoptolemus himself would go into the
+horse, for he would rather die than turn his back on Troy.  So
+Neoptolemus armed himself and climbed into the horse, as did Menelaus,
+Ulysses, Diomede, Thrasymedes (Nestor's son), Idomeneus, Philoctetes,
+Meriones, and all the best men except Agamemnon, while Epeius himself
+entered last of all.  Agamemnon was not allowed by the other Greeks to
+share their adventure, as he was to command the army when they returned
+from Tenedos.  They meanwhile launched their ships and sailed away.
+
+But first Menelaus had led Ulysses apart, and told him that if they took
+Troy (and now they must either take it or die at the hands of the
+Trojans), he would owe to Ulysses the glory.  When they came back to
+Greece, he wished to give Ulysses one of his own cities, that they might
+always be near each other.  Ulysses smiled and shook his head; he could
+not leave Ithaca, his own rough island kingdom.  "But if we both live
+through the night that is coming," he said, "I may ask you for one gift,
+and giving it will make you none the poorer."  Then Menelaus swore by the
+splendour of Zeus that Ulysses could ask him for no gift that he would
+not gladly give; so they embraced, and both armed themselves and went up
+into the horse.  With them were all the chiefs except Nestor, whom they
+would not allow to come, and Agamemnon, who, as chief general, had to
+command the army.  They swathed themselves and their arms in soft silks,
+that they might not ring and clash, when the Trojans, if they were so
+foolish, dragged the horse up into their town, and there they sat in the
+dark waiting.  Meanwhile, the army burned their huts and launched their
+ships, and with oars and sails made their way to the back of the isle of
+Tenedos.
+
+
+
+
+THE END OF TROY AND THE SAVING OF HELEN
+
+
+From the walls the Trojans saw the black smoke go up thick into the sky,
+and the whole fleet of the Greeks sailing out to sea.  Never were men so
+glad, and they armed themselves for fear of an ambush, and went
+cautiously, sending forth scouts in front of them, down to the seashore.
+Here they found the huts burned down and the camp deserted, and some of
+the scouts also caught Sinon, who had hid himself in a place where he was
+likely to be found.  They rushed on him with fierce cries, and bound his
+hands with a rope, and kicked and dragged him along to the place where
+Priam and the princes were wondering at the great horse of tree.  Sinon
+looked round upon them, while some were saying that he ought to be
+tortured with fire to make him tell all the truth about the horse.  The
+chiefs in the horse must have trembled for fear lest torture should wring
+the truth out of Sinon, for then the Trojans would simply burn the
+machine and them within it.
+
+But Sinon said: "Miserable man that I am, whom the Greeks hate and the
+Trojans are eager to slay!"  When the Trojans heard that the Greeks hated
+him, they were curious, and asked who he was, and how he came to be
+there.  "I will tell you all, oh King!" he answered Priam.  "I was a
+friend and squire of an unhappy chief, Palamedes, whom the wicked Ulysses
+hated and slew secretly one day, when he found him alone, fishing in the
+sea.  I was angry, and in my folly I did not hide my anger, and my words
+came to the ears of Ulysses.  From that hour he sought occasion to slay
+me.  Then Calchas--" here he stopped, saying: "But why tell a long tale?
+If you hate all Greeks alike, then slay me; this is what Agamemnon and
+Ulysses desire; Menelaus would thank you for my head."
+
+The Trojans were now more curious than before.  They bade him go on, and
+he said that the Greeks had consulted an Oracle, which advised them to
+sacrifice one of their army to appease the anger of the Gods and gain a
+fair wind homewards.  "But who was to be sacrificed?  They asked Calchas,
+who for fifteen days refused to speak.  At last, being bribed by Ulysses,
+he pointed to me, Sinon, and said that I must be the victim.  I was bound
+and kept in prison, while they built their great horse as a present for
+Pallas Athene the Goddess.  They made it so large that you Trojans might
+never be able to drag it into your city; while, if you destroyed it, the
+Goddess might turn her anger against you.  And now they have gone home to
+bring back the image that fell from heaven, which they had sent to
+Greece, and to restore it to the Temple of Pallas Athene, when they have
+taken your town, for the Goddess is angry with them for that theft of
+Ulysses."
+
+The Trojans were foolish enough to believe the story of Sinon, and they
+pitied him and unbound his hands.  Then they tied ropes to the wooden
+horse, and laid rollers in front of it, like men launching a ship, and
+they all took turns to drag the horse up to the Scaean gate.  Children
+and women put their hands to the ropes and hauled, and with shouts and
+dances, and hymns they toiled, till about nightfall the horse stood in
+the courtyard of the inmost castle.
+
+Then all the people of Troy began to dance, and drink, and sing.  Such
+sentinels as were set at the gates got as drunk as all the rest, who
+danced about the city till after midnight, and then they went to their
+homes and slept heavily.
+
+Meanwhile the Greek ships were returning from behind Tenedos as fast as
+the oarsmen could row them.
+
+One Trojan did not drink or sleep; this was Deiphobus, at whose house
+Helen was now living.  He bade her come with them, for he knew that she
+was able to speak in the very voice of all men and women whom she had
+ever seen, and he armed a few of his friends and went with them to the
+citadel.  Then he stood beside the horse, holding Helen's hand, and
+whispered to her that she must call each of the chiefs in the voice of
+his wife.  She was obliged to obey, and she called Menelaus in her own
+voice, and Diomede in the voice of his wife, and Ulysses in the very
+voice of Penelope.  Then Menelaus and Diomede were eager to answer, but
+Ulysses grasped their hands and whispered the word "Echo!"  Then they
+remembered that this was a name of Helen, because she could speak in all
+voices, and they were silent; but Anticlus was still eager to answer,
+till Ulysses held his strong hand over his mouth.  There was only
+silence, and Deiphobus led Helen back to his house.  When they had gone
+away Epeius opened the side of the horse, and all the chiefs let
+themselves down softly to the ground.  Some rushed to the gate, to open
+it, and they killed the sleeping sentinels and let in the Greeks.  Others
+sped with torches to burn the houses of the Trojan princes, and terrible
+was the slaughter of men, unarmed and half awake, and loud were the cries
+of the women.  But Ulysses had slipped away at the first, none knew
+where.  Neoptolemus ran to the palace of Priam, who was sitting at the
+altar in his courtyard, praying vainly to the Gods, for Neoptolemus slew
+the old man cruelly, and his white hair was dabbled in his blood.  All
+through the city was fighting and slaying; but Menelaus went to the house
+of Deiphobus, knowing that Helen was there.
+
+In the doorway he found Deiphobus lying dead in all his armour, a spear
+standing in his breast.  There were footprints marked in blood, leading
+through the portico and into the hall.  There Menelaus went, and found
+Ulysses leaning, wounded, against one of the central pillars of the great
+chamber, the firelight shining on his armour.
+
+"Why hast thou slain Deiphobus and robbed me of my revenge?" said
+Menelaus.  "You swore to give me a gift," said Ulysses, "and will you
+keep your oath?"  "Ask what you will," said Menelaus; "it is yours and my
+oath cannot be broken."  "I ask the life of Helen of the fair hands,"
+said Ulysses "this is my own life-price that I pay back to her, for she
+saved my life when I took the Luck of Troy, and I swore that hers should
+be saved."
+
+Then Helen stole, glimmering in white robes, from a recess in the dark
+hall, and fell at the feet of Menelaus; her golden hair lay in the dust
+of the hearth, and her hands moved to touch his knees.  His drawn sword
+fell from the hands of Menelaus, and pity and love came into his heart,
+and he raised her from the dust and her white arms were round his neck,
+and they both wept.  That night Menelaus fought no more, but they tended
+the wound of Ulysses, for the sword of Deiphobus had bitten through his
+helmet.
+
+When dawn came Troy lay in ashes, and the women were being driven with
+spear shafts to the ships, and the men were left unburied, a prey to dogs
+and all manner of birds.  Thus the grey city fell, that had lorded it for
+many centuries.  All the gold and silver and rich embroideries, and ivory
+and amber, the horses and chariots, were divided among the army; all but
+a treasure of silver and gold, hidden in a chest within a hollow of the
+wall, and this treasure was found, not very many years ago, by men
+digging deep on the hill where Troy once stood.  The women, too, were
+given to the princes, and Neoptolemus took Andromache to his home in
+Argos, to draw water from the well and to be the slave of a master, and
+Agamemnon carried beautiful Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, to his
+palace in Mycenae, where they were both slain in one night.  Only Helen
+was led with honour to the ship of Menelaus.
+
+The story of all that happened to Ulysses on his way home from Troy is
+told in another book, "Tales of the Greek Seas."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF TROY: ULYSSES THE SACKER OF
+CITIES***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 1973.txt or 1973.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/7/1973
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+