Troy, was a sacred image, which fell from heaven, called the Palladium,
and this very ancient image was the Luck of Troy. While it remained safe
in the temple people believed that Troy could never be taken, but as it
was in a guarded temple in the middle of the town, and was watched by
priestesses day and night, it seemed impossible that the Greeks should
ever enter the city secretly and steal the Luck away.
As Ulysses was the grandson of Autolycus, the Master Thief, he often
wished that the old man was with the Greeks, for if there was a thing to
steal Autolycus could steal it. But by this time Autolycus was dead, and
so Ulysses could only puzzle over the way to steal the Luck of Troy, and
wonder how his grandfather would have set about it. He prayed for help
secretly to Hermes, the God of Thieves, when he sacrificed goats to him,
and at last he had a plan.
There was a story that Anius, the King of the Isle of Delos, had three
daughters, named Oeno, Spermo, and Elais, and that Oeno could turn
water into wine, while Spermo could turn stones into bread, and Elais
could change mud into olive oil. Those fairy gifts, people said, were
given to the maidens by the Wine God, Dionysus, and by the Goddess of
Corn, Demeter. Now corn, and wine, and oil were sorely needed by the
Greeks, who were tired of paying much gold and bronze to the Phoenician
merchants for their supplies. Ulysses therefore went to Agamemnon one
day, and asked leave to take his ship and voyage to Delos, to bring, if
he could, the three maidens to the camp, if indeed they could do these
miracles. As no fighting was going on, Agamemnon gave Ulysses leave to
depart, so he went on board his ship, with a crew of fifty men of
Ithaca, and away they sailed, promising to return in a month.
Two or three days after that, a dirty old beggar man began to be seen in
the Greek camp. He had crawled in late one evening, dressed in a dirty
smock and a very dirty old cloak, full of holes, and stained with smoke.
Over everything he wore the skin of a stag, with half the hair worn off,
and he carried a staff, and a filthy tattered wallet, to put food in,
which swung from his neck by a cord. He came crouching and smiling up to
the door of the hut of Diomede, and sat down just within the doorway,
where beggars still sit in the East. Diomede saw him, and sent him a
loaf and two handfuls of flesh, which the beggar laid on his wallet,
between his feet, and he made his supper greedily, gnawing a bone like a
dog.
After supper Diomede asked him who he was and whence he came, and he
told a long story about how he had been a Cretan pirate, and had been
taken prisoner by the Egyptians when he was robbing there, and how he
had worked for many years in their stone quarries, where the sun had
burned him brown, and had escaped by hiding among the great stones,
carried down the Nile in a raft, for building a temple on the seashore.
The raft arrived at night, and the beggar said that he stole out from it
in the dark and found a Phoenician ship in the harbour, and the
Phoenicians took him on board, meaning to sell him somewhere as a slave.
But a tempest came on and wrecked the ship off the Isle of Tenedos,
which is near Troy, and the beggar alone escaped to the island on a
plank of the ship. From Tenedos he had come to Troy in a fisher's boat,
hoping to make himself useful in the camp, and earn enough to keep body
and soul together till he could find a ship sailing to Crete.
He made his story rather amusing, describing the strange ways of the
Egyptians; how they worshipped cats and bulls, and did everything in
just the opposite of the Greek way of doing things. So Diomede let him
have a rug and blankets to sleep on in the portico of the hut, and next
day the old wretch went begging about the camp and talking with the
soldiers. Now he was a most impudent and annoying old vagabond, and was
always in quarrels. If there was a disagreeable story about the father
or grandfather of any of the princes, he knew it and told it, so that he
got a blow from the baton of Agamemnon, and Aias gave him a kick, and
Idomeneus drubbed him with the butt of his spear for a tale about his
grandmother, and everybody hated him and called him a nuisance. He was
for ever jeering at Ulysses, who was far away, and telling tales about
Autolycus, and at last he stole a gold cup, a very large cup, with two
handles, and a dove sitting on each handle, from the hut of Nestor. The
old chief was fond of this cup, which he had brought from home, and,
when it was found in the beggar's dirty wallet, everybody cried that he
must be driven out of the camp and well whipped. So Nestor's son, young
Thrasymedes, with other young men, laughing and shouting, pushed and
dragged the beggar close up to the Scaean gate of Troy, where
Thrasymedes called with a loud voice, 'O Trojans, we are sick of this
shameless beggar. First we shall whip him well, and if he comes back we
shall put out his eyes and cut off his hands and feet, and give him to
the dogs to eat. He may go to you, if he likes; if not, he must wander
till he dies of hunger.'
The young men of Troy heard this and laughed, and a crowd gathered on
the wall to see the beggar punished. So Thrasymedes whipped him with his
bowstring till he was tired, and they did not leave off beating the
beggar till he ceased howling and fell, all bleeding, and lay still.
Then Thrasymedes gave him a parting kick, and went away with his
friends. The beggar lay quiet for some time, then he began to stir, and
sat up, wiping the tears from his eyes, and shouting curses and bad
words after the Greeks, praying that they might be speared in the back,
and eaten by dogs.
At last he tried to stand up, but fell down again, and began to crawl on
hands and knees towards the Scaean gate. There he sat down, within the
two side walls of the gate, where he cried and lamented. Now Helen of
the fair hands came down from the gate tower, being sorry to see any man
treated so much worse than a beast, and she spoke to the beggar and
asked him why he had been used in this cruel way?
At first he only moaned, and rubbed his sore sides, but at last he said
that he was an unhappy man, who had been shipwrecked, and was begging
his way home, and that the Greeks suspected him of being a spy sent out
by the Trojans. But he had been in Lacedaemon, her own country, he said,
and could tell her about her father, if she were, as he supposed, the
beautiful Helen, and about her brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, and her
little daughter, Hermione.
'But perhaps,' he said, 'you are no mortal woman, but some goddess who
favours the Trojans, and if indeed you are a goddess then I liken you to
Aphrodite, for beauty, and stature, and shapeliness.' Then Helen wept;
for many a year had passed since she had heard any word of her father,
and daughter, and her brothers, who were dead, though she knew it not.
So she stretched out her white hand, and raised the beggar, who was
kneeling at her feet, and bade him follow her to her own house, within
the palace garden of King Priam.
Helen walked forward, with a bower maiden at either side, and the beggar
crawling after her. When she had entered her house, Paris was not there,
so she ordered the bath to be filled with warm water, and new clothes to
be brought, and she herself washed the old beggar and anointed him with
oil. This appears very strange to us, for though Saint Elizabeth of
Hungary used to wash and clothe beggars, we are surprised that Helen
should do so, who was not a saint. But long afterwards she herself told
the son of Ulysses, Telemachus, that she had washed his father when he
came into Troy disguised as a beggar who had been sorely beaten.
You must have guessed that the beggar was Ulysses, who had not gone to
Delos in his ship, but stolen back in a boat, and appeared disguised
among the Greeks. He did all this to make sure that nobody could
recognise him, and he behaved so as to deserve a whipping that he might
not be suspected as a Greek spy by the Trojans, but rather be pitied by
them. Certainly he deserved his name of 'the much-enduring Ulysses.'
Meanwhile he sat in his bath and Helen washed his feet. But when she had
done, and had anointed his wounds with olive oil, and when she had
clothed him in a white tunic and a purple mantle, then she opened her
lips to cry out with amazement, for she knew Ulysses; but he laid his
finger on her lips, saying 'Hush!' Then she remembered how great danger
he was in, for the Trojans, if they found him, would put him to some
cruel death, and she sat down, trembling and weeping, while he watched
her.
'Oh thou strange one,' she said, 'how enduring is thy heart and how
cunning beyond measure! How hast thou borne to be thus beaten and
disgraced, and to come within the walls of Troy? Well it is for thee
that Paris, my lord, is far from home, having gone to guide Penthesilea,
the Queen of the warrior maids whom men call Amazons, who is on her way
to help the Trojans.'
Then Ulysses smiled, and Helen saw that she had said a word which she
ought not to have spoken, and had revealed the secret hope of the
Trojans. Then she wept, and said, 'Oh cruel and cunning! You have made
me betray the people with whom I live, though woe is me that ever I left
my own people, and my husband dear, and my child! And now if you escape
alive out of Troy, you will tell the Greeks, and they will lie in ambush
by night for the Amazons on the way to Troy and will slay them all. If
you and I were not friends long ago, I would tell the Trojans that you
are here, and they would give your body to the dogs to eat, and fix your
head on the palisade above the wall. Woe is me that ever I was born.'
Ulysses answered, 'Lady, as you have said, we two are friends from of
old, and your friend I will be till the last, when the Greeks break into
Troy, and slay the men, and carry the women captives. If I live till
that hour no man shall harm you, but safely and in honour you shall come
to your palace in Lacedaemon of the rifted hills. Moreover, I swear to
you a great oath, by Zeus above, and by Them that under earth punish the
souls of men who swear falsely, that I shall tell no man the thing which
you have spoken.'
So when he had sworn and done that oath, Helen was comforted and dried
her tears. Then she told him how unhappy she was, and how she had lost
her last comfort when Hector died. 'Always am I wretched,' she said,
'save when sweet sleep falls on me. Now the wife of Thon, King of Egypt,
gave me this gift when we were in Egypt, on our way to Troy, namely, a
drug that brings sleep even to the most unhappy, and it is pressed from
the poppy heads of the garland of the God of Sleep.' Then she showed him
strange phials of gold, full of this drug: phials wrought by the
Egyptians, and covered with magic spells and shapes of beasts and
flowers. 'One of these I will give you,' she said, 'that even from Troy
town you may not go without a gift in memory of the hands of Helen.' So
Ulysses took the phial of gold, and was glad in his heart, and Helen set
before him meat and wine. When he had eaten and drunk, and his strength
had come back to him, he said:
'Now I must dress me again in my old rags, and take my wallet, and my
staff, and go forth, and beg through Troy town. For here I must abide
for some days as a beggar man, lest if I now escape from your house in
the night the Trojans may think that you have told me the secrets of
their counsel, which I am carrying to the Greeks, and may be angry with
you.' So he clothed himself again as a beggar, and took his staff, and
hid the phial of gold with the Egyptian drug in his rags, and in his
wallet also he put the new clothes that Helen had given him, and a
sword, and he took farewell, saying, 'Be of good heart, for the end of
your sorrows is at hand. But if you see me among the beggars in the
street, or by the well, take no heed of me, only I will salute you as a
beggar who has been kindly treated by a Queen.'
So they parted, and Ulysses went out, and when it was day he was with
the beggars in the streets, but by night he commonly slept near the fire
of a smithy forge, as is the way of beggars. So for some days he begged,
saying that he was gathering food to eat while he walked to some town
far away that was at peace, where he might find work to do. He was not
impudent now, and did not go to rich men's houses or tell evil tales, or
laugh, but he was much in the temples, praying to the Gods, and above
all in the temple of Pallas Athene. The Trojans thought that he was a
pious man for a beggar.
Now there was a custom in these times that men and women who were sick
or in distress, should sleep at night on the floors of the temples. They
did this hoping that the God would send them a dream to show them how
their diseases might be cured, or how they might find what they had
lost, or might escape from their distresses.
Ulysses slept in more than one temple, and once in that of Pallas
Athene, and the priests and priestesses were kind to him, and gave him
food in the morning when the gates of the temple were opened.
In the temple of Pallas Athene, where the Luck of Troy lay always on her
altar, the custom was that priestesses kept watch, each for two hours,
all through the night, and soldiers kept guard within call. So one night
Ulysses slept there, on the floor, with other distressed people, seeking
for dreams from the Gods. He lay still all through the night till the
turn of the last priestess came to watch. The priestess used to walk up
and down with bare feet among the dreaming people, having a torch in her
hand, and muttering hymns to the Goddess. Then Ulysses, when her back
was turned, slipped the gold phial out of his rags, and let it lie on
the polished floor beside him. When the priestess came back again, the
light from her torch fell on the glittering phial, and she stooped and
picked it up, and looked at it curiously. There came from it a sweet
fragrance, and she opened it, and tasted the drug. It seemed to her the
sweetest thing that ever she had tasted, and she took more and more, and
then closed the phial and laid it down, and went along murmuring her
hymn.
But soon a great drowsiness came over her, and she sat down on the step
of the altar, and fell sound asleep, and the torch sunk in her hand, and
went out, and all was dark. Then Ulysses put the phial in his wallet,
and crept very cautiously to the altar, in the dark, and stole the Luck
of Troy. It was only a small black mass of what is now called meteoric
iron, which sometimes comes down with meteorites from the sky, but it
was shaped like a shield, and the people thought it an image of the
warlike shielded Goddess, fallen from Heaven. Such sacred shields, made
of glass and ivory, are found deep in the earth in the ruined cities of
Ulysses' time. Swiftly Ulysses hid the Luck in his rags and left in its
place on the altar a copy of the Luck, which he had made of blackened
clay. Then he stole back to the place where he had lain, and remained
there till dawn appeared, and the sleepers who sought for dreams awoke,
and the temple gates were opened, and Ulysses walked out with the rest
of them.
He stole down a lane, where as yet no people were stirring, and crept
along, leaning on his staff, till he came to the eastern gate, at the
back of the city, which the Greeks never attacked, for they had never
drawn their army in a circle round the town. There Ulysses explained to
the sentinels that he had gathered food enough to last for a long
journey to some other town, and opened his bag, which seemed full of
bread and broken meat. The soldiers said he was a lucky beggar, and let
him out. He walked slowly along the waggon road by which wood was
brought into Troy from the forests on Mount Ida, and when he found that
nobody was within sight he slipped into the forest, and stole into a
dark thicket, hiding beneath the tangled boughs. Here he lay and slept
till evening, and then took the new clothes which Helen had given him
out of his wallet, and put them on, and threw the belt of the sword over
his shoulder, and hid the Luck of Troy in his bosom. He washed himself
clean in a mountain brook, and now all who saw him must have known that
he was no beggar, but Ulysses of Ithaca, Laertes' son.
So he walked cautiously down the side of the brook which ran between
high banks deep in trees, and followed it till it reached the river
Xanthus, on the left of the Greek lines. Here he found Greek sentinels
set to guard the camp, who cried aloud in joy and surprise, for his
ship had not yet returned from Delos, and they could not guess how
Ulysses had come back alone across the sea. So two of the sentinels
guarded Ulysses to the hut of Agamemnon, where he and Achilles and all
the chiefs were sitting at a feast. They all leaped up, but when Ulysses
took the Luck of Troy from within his mantle, they cried that this was
the bravest deed that had been done in the war, and they sacrificed ten
oxen to Zeus.
'So you were the old beggar,' said young Thrasymedes.
'Yes,' said Ulysses, 'and when next you beat a beggar, Thrasymedes, do
not strike so hard and so long.'
That night all the Greeks were full of hope, for now they had the Luck
of Troy, but the Trojans were in despair, and guessed that the beggar
was the thief, and that Ulysses had been the beggar. The priestess,
Theano, could tell them nothing; they found her, with the extinguished
torch drooping in her hand, asleep, as she sat on the step of the altar,
and she never woke again.
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 Myrine. People believed that they were
the daughters of the God of War, and they were reckoned equal in battle
to the bravest men. Their young Queen, Penthesilea, had two reasons for
coming to fight at Troy: one was her ambition to win renown, and the
other her sleepless sorrow for having accidentally killed her sister,
Hippolyte, when hunting. The spear which she threw at a stag struck
Hippolyte and slew her, and Penthesilea cared no longer for her own
life, and desired to fall gloriously in battle. So Penthesilea and her
bodyguard of twelve Amazons set forth from the wide streams of
Thermodon, and rode into Troy. The story says that they did not drive in
chariots, like all the Greek and Trojan chiefs, but rode horses, which
must have been the manner of their country.
Penthesilea was the tallest and most beautiful of the Amazons, and shone
among her twelve maidens like the moon among the stars, or the bright
Dawn among the Hours which follow her chariot wheels. The Trojans
rejoiced when they beheld her, for she looked both terrible and
beautiful, with a frown on her brow, and fair shining eyes, and a blush
on her cheeks. To the Trojans she came like Iris, the Rainbow, after a
storm, and they gathered round her cheering, and throwing flowers and
kissing her stirrup, as the people of Orleans welcomed Joan of Arc when
she came to deliver them. Even Priam was glad, as is a man long blind,
when he has been healed, and again looks upon the light of the sun.
Priam held a great feast, and gave to Penthesilea many beautiful gifts:
cups of gold, and embroideries, and a sword with a hilt of silver, and
she vowed that she would slay Achilles. But when Andromache, the wife of
Hector, heard her she said within herself, 'Ah, unhappy girl, what is
this boast of thine! Thou hast not the strength to fight the
unconquerable son of Peleus, for if Hector could not slay him, what
chance hast thou? But the piled-up earth covers Hector!'
In the morning Penthesilea sprang up from sleep and put on her glorious
armour, with spear in hand, and sword at side, and bow and quiver hung
behind her back, and her great shield covering her side from neck to
stirrup, and mounted her horse, and galloped to the plain. Beside her
charged the twelve maidens of her bodyguard, and all the company of
Hector's brothers and kinsfolk. These headed the Trojan lines, and they
rushed towards the ships of the Greeks.
Then the Greeks asked each other, 'Who is this that leads the Trojans as
Hector led them, surely some God rides in the van of the charioteers!'
Ulysses could have told them who the new leader of the Trojans was, but
it seems that he had not the heart to fight against women, for his name
is not mentioned in this day's battle. So the two lines clashed, and the
plain of Troy ran red with blood, for Penthesilea slew Molios, and
Persinoos, and Eilissos, and Antiphates, and Lernos high of heart, and
Hippalmos of the loud warcry, and Haemonides, and strong Elasippus,
while her maidens Derinoe and Clonie slew each a chief of the Greeks.
But Clonie fell beneath the spear of Podarkes, whose hand Penthesilea
cut off with the sword, while Idomeneus speared the Amazon Bremousa,
and Meriones of Crete slew Evadre, and Diomede killed Alcibie and
Derimacheia in close fight with the sword, so the company of the Twelve
were thinned, the bodyguard of Penthesilea.
The Trojans and Greeks kept slaying each other, but Penthesilea avenged
her maidens, driving the ranks of Greece as a lioness drives the cattle
on the hills, for they could not stand before her. Then she shouted,
'Dogs! to-day shall you pay for the sorrows of Priam! Where is Diomede,
where is Achilles, where is Aias, that, men say, are your bravest? Will
none of them stand before my spear?' Then she charged again, at the head
of the Household of Priam, brothers and kinsmen of Hector, and where
they came the Greeks fell like yellow leaves before the wind of autumn.
The white horse that Penthesilea rode, a gift from the wife of the North
Wind, flashed like lightning through a dark cloud among the companies of
the Greeks, and the chariots that followed the charge of the Amazon
rocked as they swept over the bodies of the slain. Then the old Trojans,
watching from the walls, cried: 'This is no mortal maiden but a Goddess,
and to-day she will burn the ships of the Greeks, and they will all
perish in Troyland, and see Greece never more again.'
Now it so was that Aias and Achilles had not heard the din and the cry
of war, for both had gone to weep over the great new grave of Patroclus.
Penthesilea and the Trojans had driven back the Greeks within their
ditch, and they were hiding here and there among the ships, and torches
were blazing in men's hands to burn the ships, as in the day of the
valour of Hector: when Aias heard the din of battle, and called to
Achilles to make speed towards the ships.
So they ran swiftly to their huts, and armed themselves, and Aias fell
smiting and slaying upon the Trojans, but Achilles slew five of the
bodyguard of Penthesilea. She, beholding her maidens fallen, rode
straight against Aias and Achilles, like a dove defying two falcons, and
cast her spear, but it fell back blunted from the glorious shield that
the God had made for the son of Peleus. Then she threw another spear at
Aias, crying, 'I am the daughter of the God of War,' but his armour kept
out the spear, and he and Achilles laughed aloud. Aias paid no more heed
to the Amazon, but rushed against the Trojan men; while Achilles raised
the heavy spear that none but he could throw, and drove it down through
breastplate and breast of Penthesilea, yet still her hand grasped her
sword-hilt. But, ere she could draw her sword, Achilles speared her
horse, and horse and rider fell, and died in their fall.
There lay fair Penthesilea in the dust, like a tall poplar tree that the
wind has overthrown, and her helmet fell, and the Greeks who gathered
round marvelled to see her lie so beautiful in death, like Artemis, the
Goddess of the Woods, when she sleeps alone, weary with hunting on the
hills. Then the heart of Achilles was pierced with pity and sorrow,
thinking how she might have been his wife in his own country, had he
spared her, but he was never to see pleasant Phthia, his native land,
again. So Achilles stood and wept over Penthesilea dead.