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
Athene for help, and he went to the house of Paris, whom Helen was
imploring to go and fight like a man, saying: 'Would that the winds had
wafted me away, and the tides drowned me, shameless that I am, before
these things came to pass!'
Then Hector went to see his dear wife, Andromache, whose father had been
slain by Achilles early in the siege, and he found her and her nurse
carrying her little boy, Hector's son, and like a star upon her bosom
lay his beautiful and shining golden head. Now, while Helen urged Paris
to go into the fight, Andromache prayed Hector to stay with her in the
town, and fight no more lest he should be slain and leave her a widow,
and the boy an orphan, with none to protect him. The army, she said,
should come back within the walls, where they had so long been safe, not
fight in the open plain. But Hector answered that he would never shrink
from battle, 'yet I know this in my heart, the day shall come for holy
Troy to be laid low, and Priam and the people of Priam. But this and my
own death do not trouble me so much as the thought of you, when you
shall be carried as a slave to Greece, to spin at another woman's
bidding, and bear water from a Grecian well. May the heaped up earth of
my tomb cover me ere I hear thy cries and the tale of thy captivity.'
Then Hector stretched out his hands to his little boy, but the child was
afraid when he saw the great glittering helmet of his father and the
nodding horsehair crest. So Hector laid his helmet on the ground and
dandled the child in his arms, and tried to comfort his wife, and said
good-bye for the last time, for he never came back to Troy alive. He
went on his way back to the battle, and Paris went with him, in glorious
armour, and soon they were slaying the princes of the Greeks.
The battle raged till nightfall, and in the night the Greeks and Trojans
burned their dead; and the Greeks made a trench and wall round their
camp, which they needed for safety now that the Trojans came from their
town and fought in the open plain.
Next day the Trojans were so successful that they did not retreat behind
their walls at night, but lit great fires on the plain: a thousand
fires, with fifty men taking supper round each of them, and drinking
their wine to the music of flutes. But the Greeks were much discouraged,
and Agamemnon called the whole army together, and proposed that they
should launch their ships in the night and sail away home. Then Diomede
stood up, and said: 'You called me a coward lately. You are the coward!
Sail away if you are afraid to remain here, but all the rest of us will
fight till we take Troy town.'
Then all shouted in praise of Diomede, and Nestor advised them to send
five hundred young men, under his own son, Thrasymedes, to watch the
Trojans, and guard the new wall and the ditch, in case the Trojans
attacked them in the darkness. Next Nestor counselled Agamemnon to send
Ulysses and Aias to Achilles, and promise to give back Briseis, and rich
presents of gold, and beg pardon for his insolence. If Achilles would
be friends again with Agamemnon, and fight as he used to fight, the
Trojans would soon be driven back into the town.
Agamemnon was very ready to beg pardon, for he feared that the whole
army would be defeated, and cut off from their ships, and killed or kept
as slaves. So Ulysses and Aias and the old tutor of Achilles, Phoenix,
went to Achilles and argued with him, praying him to accept the rich
presents, and help the Greeks. But Achilles answered that he did not
believe a word that Agamemnon said; Agamemnon had always hated him, and
always would hate him. No; he would not cease to be angry, he would sail
away next day with all his men, and he advised the rest to come with
him. 'Why be so fierce?' said tall Aias, who seldom spoke. 'Why make so
much trouble about one girl? We offer you seven girls, and plenty of
other gifts.'
Then Achilles said that he would not sail away next day, but he would
not fight till the Trojans tried to burn his own ships, and there he
thought that Hector would find work enough to do. This was the most that
Achilles would promise, and all the Greeks were silent when Ulysses
delivered his message. But Diomede arose and said that, with or without
Achilles, fight they must; and all men, heavy at heart, went to sleep in
their huts or in the open air at their doors.
Agamemnon was much too anxious to sleep. He saw the glow of the thousand
fires of the Trojans in the dark, and heard their merry flutes, and he
groaned and pulled out his long hair by handfuls. When he was tired of
crying and groaning and tearing his hair, he thought that he would go
for advice to old Nestor. He threw a lion skin, the coverlet of his bed,
over his shoulder, took his spear, went out and met Menelaus--for he,
too, could not sleep--and Menelaus proposed to send a spy among the
Trojans, if any man were brave enough to go, for the Trojan camp was all
alight with fires, and the adventure was dangerous. Therefore the two
wakened Nestor and the other chiefs, who came just as they were, wrapped
in the fur coverlets of their beds, without any armour. First they
visited the five hundred young men set to watch the wall, and then they
crossed the ditch and sat down outside and considered what might be
done. 'Will nobody go as a spy among the Trojans?' said Nestor; he meant
would none of the young men go. Diomede said that he would take the risk
if any other man would share it with him, and, if he might choose a
companion, he would take Ulysses.
'Come, then, let us be going,' said Ulysses, 'for the night is late, and
the dawn is near.' As these two chiefs had no armour on, they borrowed
shields and leather caps from the young men of the guard, for leather
would not shine as bronze helmets shine in the firelight. The cap lent
to Ulysses was strengthened outside with rows of boars' tusks. Many of
these tusks, shaped for this purpose, have been found, with swords and
armour, in a tomb in Mycenae, the town of Agamemnon. This cap which was
lent to Ulysses had once been stolen by his grandfather, Autolycus, who
was a Master Thief, and he gave it as a present to a friend, and so,
through several hands, it had come to young Meriones of Crete, one of
the five hundred guards, who now lent it to Ulysses. So the two princes
set forth in the dark, so dark it was that though they heard a heron
cry, they could not see it as it flew away.
While Ulysses and Diomede stole through the night silently, like two
wolves among the bodies of dead men, the Trojan leaders met and
considered what they ought to do. They did not know whether the Greeks
had set sentinels and outposts, as usual, to give warning if the enemy
were approaching; or whether they were too weary to keep a good watch;
or whether perhaps they were getting ready their ships to sail homewards
in the dawn. So Hector offered a reward to any man who would creep
through the night and spy on the Greeks; he said he would give the spy
the two best horses in the Greek camp.
Now among the Trojans there was a young man named Dolon, the son of a
rich father, and he was the only boy in a family of five sisters. He was
ugly, but a very swift runner, and he cared for horses more than for
anything else in the world. Dolon arose and said, 'If you will swear to
give me the horses and chariot of Achilles, son of Peleus, I will steal
to the hut of Agamemnon and listen and find out whether the Greeks mean
to fight or flee.' Hector swore to give these horses, which were the
best in the world, to Dolon, so he took his bow and threw a grey wolf's
hide over his shoulders, and ran towards the ships of the Greeks.
Now Ulysses saw Dolon as he came, and said to Diomede, 'Let us suffer
him to pass us, and then do you keep driving him with your spear towards
the ships, and away from Troy.' So Ulysses and Diomede lay down among
the dead men who had fallen in the battle, and Dolon ran on past them
towards the Greeks. Then they rose and chased him as two greyhounds
course a hare, and, when Dolon was near the sentinels, Diomede cried
'Stand, or I will slay you with my spear!' and he threw his spear just
over Dolon's shoulder. So Dolon stood still, green with fear, and with
his teeth chattering. When the two came up, he cried, and said that his
father was a rich man, who would pay much gold, and bronze, and iron for
his ransom.
Ulysses said, 'Take heart, and put death out of your mind, and tell us
what you are doing here.' Dolon said that Hector had promised him the
horses of Achilles if he would go and spy on the Greeks. 'You set your
hopes high,' said Ulysses, 'for the horses of Achilles are not earthly
steeds, but divine; a gift of the Gods, and Achilles alone can drive
them. But, tell me, do the Trojans keep good watch, and where is Hector
with his horses?' for Ulysses thought that it would be a great adventure
to drive away the horses of Hector.
'Hector is with the chiefs, holding council at the tomb of Ilus,' said
Dolon; 'but no regular guard is set. The people of Troy, indeed, are
round their watch fires, for they have to think of the safety of their
wives and children; but the allies from far lands keep no watch, for
their wives and children are safe at home.' Then he told where all the
different peoples who fought for Priam had their stations; but, said he,
'if you want to steal horses, the best are those of Rhesus, King of the
Thracians, who has only joined us to-night. He and his men are asleep at
the furthest end of the line, and his horses are the best and greatest
that ever I saw: tall, white as snow, and swift as the wind, and his
chariot is adorned with gold and silver, and golden is his armour. Now
take me prisoner to the ships, or bind me and leave me here while you go
and try whether I have told you truth or lies.'
'No,' said Diomede, 'if I spare your life you may come spying again,'
and he drew his sword and smote off the head of Dolon. They hid his cap
and bow and spear where they could find them easily, and marked the
spot, and went through the night to the dark camp of King Rhesus, who
had no watch-fire and no guards. Then Diomede silently stabbed each
sleeping man to the heart, and Ulysses seized the dead by the feet and
threw them aside lest they should frighten the horses, which had never
been in battle, and would shy if they were led over the bodies of dead
men. Last of all Diomede killed King Rhesus, and Ulysses led forth his
horses, beating them with his bow, for he had forgotten to take the whip
from the chariot. Then Ulysses and Diomede leaped on the backs of the
horses, as they had not time to bring away the chariot, and they
galloped to the ships, stopping to pick up the spear, and bow, and cap
of Dolon. They rode to the princes, who welcomed them, and all laughed
for glee when they saw the white horses and heard that King Rhesus was
dead, for they guessed that all his army would now go home to Thrace.
This they must have done, for we never hear of them in the battles that
followed, so Ulysses and Diomede deprived the Trojans of thousands of
men. The other princes went to bed in good spirits, but Ulysses and
Diomede took a swim in the sea, and then went into hot baths, and so to
breakfast, for rosy-fingered Dawn was coming up the sky.
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.