Tales of Troy and Greece
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Title: Tales of Troy and Greece
Author: Andrew Lang
Illustrator: H. J. Ford
Release date: May 10, 2010 [eBook #32326]
Language: English
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TALES OF TROY AND GREECE
[Illustration: THE STEALING OF HELEN.]
[_See_ p. 15.]
TALES OF TROY AND GREECE
by
ANDREW LANG
Illustrated by H. J. Ford
Dover Publications, Inc.
Mineola, New York
Bibliographical Note
This Dover edition, first published in 2006, is an unabridged
republication of the 1941 printing of the work originally published by
Longmans, Green and Co., London and New York, in 1907. We have slightly
repositioned a few of the illustrations.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501
TO
H. RIDER HAGGARD
CONTENTS
_ULYSSES THE SACKER OF CITIES_
PAGE
I. THE BOYHOOD AND PARENTS OF ULYSSES 1
II. HOW PEOPLE LIVED IN THE TIME OF ULYSSES 5
III. THE WOOING OF HELEN OF THE FAIR HANDS 9
IV. THE STEALING OF HELEN 13
V. TROJAN VICTORIES 30
VI. BATTLE AT THE SHIPS 38
VII. THE SLAYING AND AVENGING OF PATROCLUS 45
VIII. THE CRUELTY OF ACHILLES, AND THE RANSOMING OF
HECTOR 53
IX. HOW ULYSSES STOLE THE LUCK OF TROY 56
X. THE BATTLES WITH THE AMAZONS AND MEMNON--THE
DEATH OF ACHILLES 66
XI. ULYSSES SAILS TO SEEK THE SON OF ACHILLES--THE
VALOUR OF EURYPYLUS 79
XII. THE SLAYING OF PARIS 87
XIII. HOW ULYSSES INVENTED THE DEVICE OF THE HORSE
OF TREE 92
XIV. THE END OF TROY AND THE SAVING OF HELEN 96
_THE WANDERINGS OF ULYSSES_
I. THE SLAYING OF AGAMEMNON AND THE SORROWS
OF ULYSSES 101
II. THE ENCHANTRESS CIRCE, THE LAND OF THE DEAD,
THE SIRENS 110
III. THE WHIRLPOOL, THE SEA MONSTER, AND THE CATTLE
OF THE SUN 118
IV. HOW TELEMACHUS WENT TO SEEK HIS FATHER 122
V. HOW ULYSSES ESCAPED FROM THE ISLAND OF CALYPSO 128
VI. HOW ULYSSES WAS WRECKED, YET REACHED
PHAEACIA 133
VII. HOW ULYSSES CAME TO HIS OWN COUNTRY, AND
FOR SAFETY DISGUISED HIMSELF AS AN OLD
BEGGAR MAN 145
VIII. ULYSSES COMES DISGUISED AS A BEGGAR TO HIS OWN
PALACE 153
IX. THE SLAYING OF THE WOOERS 163
X. THE END 168
_THE FLEECE OF GOLD_
I. THE CHILDREN OF THE CLOUD. 172
II. THE SEARCH FOR THE FLEECE 180
III. THE WINNING OF THE FLEECE 191
_THESEUS_
I. THE WEDDING OF AETHRA 201
II. THE BOYHOOD OF THESEUS 205
III. ADVENTURES OF THESEUS 211
IV. THESEUS FINDS HIS FATHER 226
V. HERALDS COME FOR TRIBUTE 233
VI. THESEUS IN CRETE 239
VII. THE SLAYING OF THE MINOTAUR 247
_PERSEUS_
I. THE PRISON OF DANAE 254
II. THE VOW OF PERSEUS 261
III. PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA 279
IV. HOW PERSEUS AVENGED DANAE 284
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE STEALING OF HELEN _Frontispiece_
MAP OF GREECE _facing p. 1_
ULYSSES, WHEN A YOUTH, FIGHTS THE WILD BOAR
AND GETS HIS WOUND IN HIS THIGH " 4
HELEN POINTS OUT THE CHIEF HEROES IN THE
GREEK HOST TO PRIAM " 28
ACHILLES PITIES PENTHESILEA AFTER SLAYING HER " 70
PARIS COMES BACK TO OENONE " 90
MENELAUS REFRAINS FROM KILLING HELEN AT THE
INTERCESSION OF ULYSSES " 100
CIRCE SENDS THE SWINE (THE COMPANIONS OF
ULYSSES) TO THE STYES " 112
THE ADVENTURE WITH SCYLLA " 120
CALYPSO TAKES PITY ON ULYSSES " 130
HOW ULYSSES MET NAUSICAA " 136
ULYSSES SHOOTS THE FIRST ARROW AT THE WOOERS " 164
KING ATHAMAS STEALS NEPHELE'S CLOTHES SO THAT
SHE CANNOT FLOAT AWAY WITH HER SISTERS " 174
HOW THE SERPENT THAT GUARDED THE GOLDEN
FLEECE WAS SLAIN " 198
THESEUS TRIES TO LIFT THE STONE " 208
HOW THESEUS SLEW THE MINOTAUR " 248
PERSEUS IN THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES " 272
THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA " 282
TALES OF TROY AND GREECE
[Illustration: GREECE]
TALES OF TROY
ULYSSES THE SACKER OF CITIES
I
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.
[Illustration: ULYSSES, WHEN A YOUTH, FIGHTS THE WILD BOAR AND GETS HIS
WOUND IN HIS THIGH.]
II
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.
III
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, whose
story is to be told later, 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.
IV
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 full 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.
[Illustration: HELEN POINTS OUT THE CHIEF HEROES IN THE GREEK HOST TO
PRIAM.]
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.
V
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
Athênê 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.
VI
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.
VII
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 spearhead 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.
VIII
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.
IX
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 Athênê, 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 Athênê. 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
Athênê, 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 Athênê, 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.
X
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 Myrinê. 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,
Hippolytê, when hunting. The spear which she threw at a stag struck
Hippolytê 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 Derinoê and Cloniê slew each a chief of the Greeks.
But Cloniê 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 Evadrê, and Diomede killed Alcibiê 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.
[Illustration: ACHILLES PITIES PENTHESILEA AFTER SLAYING HER.]
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 life. 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.
XI
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
Caycus 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 Astyochê, 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.
XII
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.'
[Illustration: PARIS COMES BACK TO OENONE.]
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.
XIII
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 Greeks (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.
XIV
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 Athênê 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 Athênê, 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.
[Illustration: MENELAUS REFRAINS FROM KILLING HELEN AT THE INTERCESSION
OF ULYSSES.]
THE WANDERINGS OF ULYSSES
I
THE SLAYING OF AGAMEMNON AND THE SORROWS OF ULYSSES
The Greeks left Troy a mass of smouldering ashes; the marks of fire are
still to be seen in the ruins on the hill which is now called Hissarlik.
The Greeks had many troubles on their way home, and years passed before
some of the chiefs reached their own cities. As for Agamemnon, while he
was at Troy his wife, Clytaemnestra, the sister of Helen, had fallen in
love with a young man named Aegisthus, who wished to be king, so he
married Clytaemnestra, just as if Agamemnon had been dead. Meanwhile
Agamemnon was sailing home with his share of the wealth of Troy, and
many a storm drove him out of his course. At last he reached the
harbour, about seven miles from his city of Mycenae, and he kissed the
earth when he landed, thinking that all his troubles were over, and that
he would find his son and daughter, Orestes and Electra, grown up, and
his wife happy because of his return.
But Aegisthus had set, a year before, a watchman on a high tower, to
come with the news as soon as Agamemnon landed, and the watchman ran to
Mycenae with the good news. Aegisthus placed twenty armed men in a
hidden place in the great hall, and then he shouted for his chariots
and horses, and drove down to meet Agamemnon, and welcome him, and carry
him to his own palace. Then he gave a great feast, and when men had
drunk much wine, the armed men, who had been hiding behind curtains,
rushed out, with sword and spear, and fell on Agamemnon and his company.
Though taken by surprise they drew their swords, and fought so well for
their lives that none were left alive, not one, neither of the company
of Agamemnon nor of the company of Aegisthus; they were all slain in the
hall except Aegisthus, who had hidden himself when the fray began. The
bodies lay round the great mixing bowl of wine, and about the tables,
and the floor ran with blood. Before Agamemnon died he saw Clytaemnestra
herself stab Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, whom he had brought from
Troy.
In the town of Agamemnon, Mycenae, deep down in the earth, have been
found five graves, with bones of men and women, and these bones were all
covered with beautiful ornaments of gold, hundreds of them, and swords
and daggers inlaid with gold, and golden cups, and a sceptre of gold and
crystal, and two gold breastplates. There were also golden masks that
had been made to cover the faces of the dead kings, and who knows but
that one of these masks may show us the features of the famous
Agamemnon?
Ulysses, of course, knew nothing about these murders at the time, for he
was being borne by the winds into undiscovered seas. But later he heard
all the story from the ghost of a dead prophet, in the Land of the Dead,
and he determined to be very cautious if ever he reached his own island,
for who knew what the young men might do, that had grown up since he
sailed to Troy?
Of the other Greeks Nestor soon and safely arrived at his town of Pylos,
but Menelaus and Helen were borne by the winds to Egypt and other
strange countries, and the ship of the brother of Aias was wrecked on a
rock, and there he was drowned, and Calchas the prophet died on land, on
his way across Greece.
When Ulysses left Troy the wind carried him to the coast of Thrace,
where the people were allies of the Trojans. It was a king of the
Thracians that Diomede killed when he and Ulysses stole into the camp of
the Trojans in the night, and drove away the white horses of the king,
as swift as the winds. Ismarus was the name of the Thracian town where
Ulysses landed, and his men took it and plundered it, yet Ulysses
allowed no one to harm the priest of Apollo, Maron, but protected him
and his wife and child, in their house within the holy grove of the God.
Maron was grateful, and gave Ulysses twelve talents, or little wedges,
of gold, and a great bowl of silver, and twelve large clay jars, as big
as barrels, full of the best and strongest wine. It was so strong that
men put into the mixing bowl but one measure of wine to twenty measures
of water. These presents Ulysses stored up in his ship, and lucky for
him it was that he was kind to Maron.
Meanwhile his men, instead of leaving the town with their plunder, sat
eating and drinking till dawn. By that time the people of the town had
warned their neighbours in the country farms, who all came down in full
armour, and attacked the men of Ulysses. In this fight he lost
seventy-two men, six from each of his twelve ships, and it was only by
hard fighting that the others were able to get on board their ships and
sail away.
A great storm arose and beat upon the ships, and it seems that Ulysses
and his men were driven into Fairyland, where they remained for ten
years. We have heard that King Arthur and Thomas the Rhymer were carried
into Fairyland, but what adventures they met with there we do not know.
About Ulysses we have the stories which are now to be told. For ten days
his ships ran due south, and, on the tenth, they reached the land of the
Lotus Eaters, who eat food of flowers. They went on shore and drew
water, and three men were sent to try to find the people of that
country, who were a quiet, friendly people, and gave the fruit of the
lotus to the strange sailors. Now whoever tastes of that fruit has no
mind ever to go home, but to sit between the setting sun and the rising
moon, dreaming happy dreams, and forgetting the world. The three men ate
the lotus, and sat down to dream, but Ulysses went after them, and drove
them to the ships, and bound their hands and feet, and threw them on
board, and sailed away. Then he with his ships reached the coast of the
land of the Cyclopes, which means the round-eyed men, men with only one
eye apiece, set in the middle of their foreheads. They lived not in
houses, but in caves among the hills, and they had no king and no laws,
and did not plough or sow, but wheat and vines grew wild, and they kept
great flocks of sheep.
There was a beautiful wild desert island lying across the opening of a
bay; the isle was full of wild goats, and made a bar against the waves,
so that ships could lie behind it safely, run up on the beach, for there
was no tide in that sea. There Ulysses ran up his ships, and the men
passed the time in hunting wild goats, and feasting on fresh meat and
the wine of Maron, the priest of Apollo. Next day Ulysses left all the
ships and men there, except his own ship, and his own crew, and went to
see what kind of people lived on the mainland, for as yet none had been
seen. He found a large cave close to the sea, with laurels growing on
the rocky roof, and a wall of rough stones built round a court in front.
Ulysses left all his men but twelve with the ship; filled a goat skin
with the strong wine of Maron, put some corn flour in a sack, and went
up to the cave. Nobody was there, but there were all the things that are
usually in a dairy, baskets full of cheese, pails and bowls full of milk
and whey, and kids and lambs were playing in their folds.
All seemed very quiet and pleasant. The men wanted to take as much
cheese as they could carry back to the ship, but Ulysses wished to see
the owner of the cave. His men, making themselves at home, lit a fire,
and toasted and ate the cheeses, far within the cave. Then a shadow
thrown by the setting sun fell across the opening of the cave, and a
monstrous man entered, and threw down a dry trunk of a tree that he
carried for firewood. Next he drove in the ewes of his flock, leaving
the rams in the yard, and he picked up a huge flat stone, and set it so
as to make a shut door to the cave, for twenty-four yoke of horses could
not have dragged away that stone. Lastly the man milked his ewes, and
put the milk in pails to drink at supper. All this while Ulysses and his
men sat quiet and in great fear, for they were shut up in a cave with a
one-eyed giant, whose cheese they had been eating.
Then the giant, when he had lit the fire, happened to see the men, and
asked them who they were. Ulysses said that they were Greeks, who had
taken Troy, and were wandering lost on the seas, and he asked the man to
be kind to them in the name of their chief God, Zeus.
'We Cyclopes,' said the giant, 'do not care for Zeus or the Gods, for we
think that we are better men than they. Where is your ship?' Ulysses
answered that it had been wrecked on the coast, to which the man made no
answer, but snatched up two of the twelve, knocked out their brains on
the floor, tore the bodies limb from limb, roasted them at his fire, ate
them, and, after drinking many pailfuls of milk, lay down and fell
asleep. Now Ulysses had a mind to drive his sword-point into the giant's
liver, and he felt for the place with his hand. But he remembered that,
even if he killed the giant, he could not move the huge stone that was
the door of the cave, so he and his men would die of hunger, when they
had eaten all the cheeses.
In the morning the giant ate two more men for breakfast, drove out his
ewes, and set the great stone in the doorway again, as lightly as a man
would put a quiverlid on a quiver of arrows. Then away he went, driving
his flock to graze on the green hills.
Ulysses did not give way to despair. The giant had left his stick in the
cave: it was as large as the mast of a great ship. From this Ulysses cut
a portion six feet long, and his men cut and rubbed as if they were
making a spear shaft: Ulysses then sharpened it to a point, and hardened
the point in the fire. It was a thick rounded bar of wood, and the men
cast lots to choose four, who should twist the bar in the giant's eye
when he fell asleep at night. Back he came at sunset, and drove his
flocks into the cave, rams and all. Then he put up his stone door,
milked his ewes, and killed two men and cooked them.
Ulysses meanwhile had filled one of the wooden ivy bowls full of the
strong wine of Maron, without putting a drop of water into it. This
bowl he offered to the giant, who had never heard of wine. He drank one
bowl after another, and when he was merry he said that he would make
Ulysses a present. 'What is your name?' he asked. 'My name is _Nobody_,'
said Ulysses. 'Then I shall eat the others first and Nobody last,' said
the giant. 'That shall be your gift.' Then he fell asleep.
Ulysses took his bar of wood, and made the point red-hot in the fire.
Next his four men rammed it into the giant's one eye, and held it down,
while Ulysses twirled it round, and the eye hissed like red-hot iron
when men dip it into cold water, which is the strength of iron. The
Cyclops roared and leaped to his feet, and shouted for help to the other
giants who lived in the neighbouring caves. 'Who is troubling you,
Polyphemus,' they answered. 'Why do you wake us out of our sleep?' The
giant answered, 'Nobody is killing me by his cunning, not at all in fair
fight.' 'Then if nobody is harming you nobody can help you,' shouted a
giant. 'If you are ill pray to your father, Poseidon, who is the god of
the sea.' So the giants all went back to bed, and Ulysses laughed low to
see how his cunning had deceived them. Then the giant went and took down
his door and sat in the doorway, stretching out his arms, so as to catch
his prisoners as they went out.
But Ulysses had a plan. He fastened sets of three rams together with
twisted withies, and bound a man to each ram in the middle, so that the
blind giant's hands would only feel the two outside rams. The biggest
and strongest ram Ulysses seized, and held on by his hands and feet to
its fleece, under its belly, and then all the sheep, went out through
the doorway, and the giant felt them, but did not know that they were
carrying out the men. 'Dear ram!' he said to the biggest, which carried
Ulysses, 'you do not come out first, as usual, but last, as if you were
slow with sorrow for your master, whose eye Nobody has blinded!'
Then all the rams went out into the open country, and Ulysses unfastened
his men, and drove the sheep down to his ship and so on board. His crew
wept when they heard of the death of six of their friends, but Ulysses
made them row out to sea. When he was just so far away from the cave as
to be within hearing distance he shouted at the Cyclops and mocked him.
Then that giant broke off the rocky peak of a great hill and threw it in
the direction of the sound. The rock fell in front of the ship, and
raised a wave that drove it back to shore, but Ulysses punted it off
with a long pole, and his men rowed out again, far out. Ulysses again
shouted to the giant, 'If any one asks who blinded you, say that it was
Ulysses, Laertes' son, of Ithaca, the stormer of cities.'
Then the giant prayed to the Sea God, his father, that Ulysses might
never come home, or if he did, that he might come late and lonely, with
loss of all his men, and find sorrow in his house. Then the giant heaved
and threw another rock, but it fell at the stern of the ship, and the
wave drove the ship further out to sea, to the shore of the island.
There Ulysses and his men landed, and killed some of the giant's sheep,
and took supper, and drank wine.
But the Sea God heard the prayer of his son the blind giant.
Ulysses and his men sailed on, in what direction and for how long we do
not know, till they saw far off an island that shone in the sea. When
they came nearer they found that it had a steep cuff of bronze, with a
palace on the top. Here lived Aeolus, the King of the Winds, with his
six sons and six daughters. He received Ulysses kindly on his island,
and entertained him for a whole month. Then he gave him a leather bag,
in which he had bound the ways of all the noisy winds. This bag was
fastened with a silver cord, and Aeolus left no wind out except the West
Wind, which would blow Ulysses straight home to Ithaca. Where he was we
cannot guess, except that he was to the west of his own island.
So they sailed for nine days and nights towards the east, and Ulysses
always held the helm and steered, but on the tenth day he fell asleep.
Then his men said to each other, 'What treasure is it that he keeps in
the leather bag, a present from King Aeolus? No doubt the bag is full of
gold and silver, while we have only empty hands.' So they opened the bag
when they were so near Ithaca that they could see people lighting fires
on the shore. Then out rushed all the winds, and carried the ship into
unknown seas, and when Ulysses woke he was so miserable that he had a
mind to drown himself. But he was of an enduring heart, and he lay
still, and the ship came back to the isle of Aeolus, who cried, 'Away
with you! You are the most luckless of living men: you must be hated by
the Gods.'
Thus Aeolus drove them away, and they sailed for seven days and nights,
till they saw land, and came to a harbour with a narrow entrance, and
with tall steep rocks on either side. The other eleven ships sailed into
the haven, but Ulysses did not venture in; he fastened his ship to a
rock at the outer end of the harbour. The place must have been very far
north, for, as it was summer, the sun had hardly set till dawn began
again, as it does in Norway and Iceland, where there are many such
narrow harbours within walls of rock. These places are called _fiords_.
Ulysses sent three men to spy out the country, and at a well outside the
town they met a damsel drawing water; she was the child of the king of
the people, the Laestrygonians. The damsel led them to her father's
house; he was a giant and seized one of the men of Ulysses, meaning to
kill and eat him. The two other men fled to the ships, but the
Laestrygonians ran along the tops of the cliffs and threw down great
rocks, sinking the vessels and killing the sailors. When Ulysses saw
this he drew his sword and cut the cable that fastened his ship to the
rock outside the harbour, and his crew rowed for dear life and so
escaped, weeping for the death of their friends. Thus the prayer of the
blind Cyclops was being fulfilled, for now out of twelve ships Ulysses
had but one left.
II
THE ENCHANTRESS CIRCE, THE LAND OF THE DEAD, THE SIRENS
On they sailed till they came to an island, and there they landed. What
the place was they did not know, but it was called Aeaea, and here lived
Circe, the enchantress, sister of the wizard king Æêtes, who was the
Lord of the Fleece of Gold, that Jason won from him by help of the
king's daughter, Medea. For two days Ulysses and his men lay on land
beside their ship, which they anchored in a bay of the island. On the
third morning Ulysses took his sword and spear, and climbed to the top
of a high hill, whence he saw the smoke rising out of the wood where
Circe had her palace. He thought of going to the house, but it seemed
better to return to his men and send some of them to spy out the place.
Since the adventure of the Cyclops Ulysses did not care to risk himself
among unknown people, and for all that he knew there might be man-eating
giants on the island. So he went back, and, as he came to the bank of
the river, he found a great red deer drinking under the shadow of the
green boughs. He speared the stag, and, tying his feet together, slung
the body from his neck, and so, leaning on his spear, he came to his
fellows. Glad they were to see fresh venison, which they cooked, and so
dined with plenty of wine.
Next morning Ulysses divided his men into two companies, Eurylochus led
one company and he himself the other. Then they put two marked pieces of
wood, one for Eurylochus, one for Ulysses, in a helmet, to decide who
should go to the house in the wood. They shook the helmet, and the lot
of Eurylochus leaped out, and, weeping for fear, he led his twenty-two
men away into the forest. Ulysses and the other twenty-two waited, and,
when Eurylochus came back alone, he was weeping, and unable to speak for
sorrow. At last he told his story: they had come to the beautiful house
of Circe, within the wood, and tame wolves and lions were walking about
in front of the house. They wagged their tails, and jumped up, like
friendly dogs, round the men of Ulysses, who stood in the gateway and
heard Circe singing in a sweet voice, as she went up and down before the
loom at which she was weaving. Then one of the men of Ulysses called to
her, and she came out, a beautiful lady in white robes covered with
jewels of gold. She opened the doors and bade them come in, but
Eurylochus hid himself and watched, and saw Circe and her maidens mix
honey and wine for the men, and bid them sit down on chairs at tables,
but, when they had drunk of her cup, she touched them with her wand.
Then they were all changed into swine, and Circe drove them out and shut
them up in the styes.
When Ulysses heard that he slung his sword-belt round his shoulders,
seized his bow, and bade Eurylochus come back with him to the house of
Circe; but Eurylochus was afraid. Alone went Ulysses through the woods,
and in a dell he met a most beautiful young man, who took his hand and
said, 'Unhappy one! how shalt thou free thy friends from so great an
enchantress?' Then the young man plucked a plant from the ground; the
flower was as white as milk, but the root was black: it is a plant that
men may not dig up, but to the Gods all things are easy, and the young
man was the cunning God Hermes, whom Autolycus, the grandfather of
Ulysses, used to worship. 'Take this herb of grace,' he said, 'and when
Circe has made thee drink of the cup of her enchantments the herb will
so work that they shall have no power over thee. Then draw thy sword,
and rush at her, and make her swear that she will not harm thee with her
magic.'
Then Hermes departed, and Ulysses went to the house of Circe, and she
asked him to enter, and seated him on a chair, and gave him the
enchanted cup to drink, and then smote him with her wand and bade him go
to the styes of the swine. But Ulysses drew his sword, and Circe, with a
great cry, fell at his feet, saying, 'Who art thou on whom the cup has
no power? Truly thou art Ulysses of Ithaca, for the God Hermes has told
me that he should come to my island on his way from Troy. Come now, fear
not; let us be friends!'
[Illustration: CIRCE SENDS THE SWINE (THE COMPANIONS OF ULYSSES) TO THE
STYES.]
Then the maidens of Circe came to them, fairy damsels of the wells and
woods and rivers. They threw covers of purple silk over the chairs,
and on the silver tables they placed golden baskets, and mixed wine in a
silver bowl, and heated water, and bathed Ulysses in a polished bath,
and clothed him in new raiment, and led him to the table and bade him
eat and drink. But he sat silent, neither eating nor drinking, in sorrow
for his company, till Circe called them out from the styes and
disenchanted them. Glad they were to see Ulysses, and they embraced him,
and wept for joy.
So they went back to their friends at the ship, and told them how Circe
would have them all to live with her; but Eurylochus tried to frighten
them, saying that she would change them into wolves and lions. Ulysses
drew his sword to cut off the head of Eurylochus for his cowardice, but
the others prayed that he might be left alone to guard the ship. So
Ulysses left him; but Eurylochus had not the courage to be alone, and
slunk behind them to the house of Circe. There she welcomed them all,
and gave them a feast, and there they dwelt for a whole year, and then
they wearied for their wives and children, and longed to return to
Ithaca. They did not guess by what a strange path they must sail.
When Ulysses was alone with Circe at night he told her that his men were
home-sick, and would fain go to Ithaca. Then
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