After Hector was buried, the siege went on slowly, as it had done during
the first nine years of the war. The Greeks did not know at that time
how to besiege a city, as we saw, by way of digging trenches and building
towers, and battering the walls with machines that threw heavy stones.
The Trojans had lost courage, and dared not go into the open plain, and
they were waiting for the coming up of new armies of allies--the Amazons,
who were girl warriors from far away, and an Eastern people called the
Khita, whose king was Memnon, the son of the Bright Dawn.
Now everyone knew that, in the temple of the Goddess Pallas Athene, in
Troy, was a sacred image, which fell from heaven, called the Palladium,
and this very ancient image was the Luck of Troy. While it remained safe
in the temple people believed that Troy could never be taken, but as it
was in a guarded temple in the middle of the town, and was watched by
priestesses day and night, it seemed impossible that the Greeks should
ever enter the city secretly and steal the Luck away.
As Ulysses was the grandson of Autolycus, the Master Thief, he often
wished that the old man was with the Greeks, for if there was a thing to
steal Autolycus could steal it. But by this time Autolycus was dead, and
so Ulysses could only puzzle over the way to steal the Luck of Troy, and
wonder how his grandfather would have set about it. He prayed for help
secretly to Hermes, the God of Thieves, when he sacrificed goats to him,
and at last he had a plan.
There was a story that Anius, the King of the Isle of Delos, had three
daughters, named OEno, Spermo, and Elais, and that OEno could turn water
into wine, while Spermo could turn stones into bread, and Elais could
change mud into olive oil. Those fairy gifts, people said, were given to
the maidens by the Wine God, Dionysus, and by the Goddess of Corn,
Demeter. Now corn, and wine, and oil were sorely needed by the Greeks,
who were tired of paying much gold and bronze to the Phoenician merchants
for their supplies. Ulysses therefore went to Agamemnon one day, and
asked leave to take his ship and voyage to Delos, to bring, if he could,
the three maidens to the camp, if indeed they could do these miracles. As
no fighting was going on, Agamemnon gave Ulysses leave to depart, so he
went on board his ship, with a crew of fifty men of Ithaca, and away they
sailed, promising to return in a month.
Two or three days after that, a dirty old beggar man began to be seen in
the Greek camp. He had crawled in late one evening, dressed in a dirty
smock and a very dirty old cloak, full of holes, and stained with smoke.
Over everything he wore the skin of a stag, with half the hair worn off,
and he carried a staff, and a filthy tattered wallet, to put food in,
which swung from his neck by a cord. He came crouching and smiling up to
the door of the hut of Diomede, and sat down just within the doorway,
where beggars still sit in the East. Diomede saw him, and sent him a
loaf and two handfuls of flesh, which the beggar laid on his wallet,
between his feet, and he made his supper greedily, gnawing a bone like a
dog.
After supper Diomede asked him who he was and whence he came, and he told
a long story about how he had been a Cretan pirate, and had been taken
prisoner by the Egyptians when he was robbing there, and how he had
worked for many years in their stone quarries, where the sun had burned
him brown, and had escaped by hiding among the great stones, carried down
the Nile in a raft, for building a temple on the seashore. The raft
arrived at night, and the beggar said that he stole out from it in the
dark and found a Phoenician ship in the harbour, and the Phoenicians took
him on board, meaning to sell him somewhere as a slave. But a tempest
came on and wrecked the ship off the Isle of Tenedos, which is near Troy,
and the beggar alone escaped to the island on a plank of the ship. From
Tenedos he had come to Troy in a fisher's boat, hoping to make himself
useful in the camp, and earn enough to keep body and soul together till
he could find a ship sailing to Crete.
He made his story rather amusing, describing the strange ways of the
Egyptians; how they worshipped cats and bulls, and did everything in just
the opposite of the Greek way of doing things. So Diomede let him have a
rug and blankets to sleep on in the portico of the hut, and next day the
old wretch went begging about the camp and talking with the soldiers. Now
he was a most impudent and annoying old vagabond, and was always in
quarrels. If there was a disagreeable story about the father or
grandfather of any of the princes, he knew it and told it, so that he got
a blow from the baton of Agamemnon, and Aias gave him a kick, and
Idomeneus drubbed him with the butt of his spear for a tale about his
grandmother, and everybody hated him and called him a nuisance. He was
for ever jeering at Ulysses, who was far away, and telling tales about
Autolycus, and at last he stole a gold cup, a very large cup, with two
handles, and a dove sitting on each handle, from the hut of Nestor. The
old chief was fond of this cup, which he had brought from home, and, when
it was found in the beggar's dirty wallet, everybody cried that he must
be driven out of the camp and well whipped. So Nestor's son, young
Thrasymedes, with other young men, laughing and shouting, pushed and
dragged the beggar close up to the Scaean gate of Troy, where Thrasymedes
called with a loud voice, "O Trojans, we are sick of this shameless
beggar. First we shall whip him well, and if he comes back we shall put
out his eyes and cut off his hands and feet, and give him to the dogs to
eat. He may go to you, if he likes; if not, he must wander till he dies
of hunger."
The young men of Troy heard this and laughed, and a crowd gathered on the
wall to see the beggar punished. So Thrasymedes whipped him with his
bowstring till he was tired, and they did not leave off beating the
beggar till he ceased howling and fell, all bleeding, and lay still. Then
Thrasymedes gave him a parting kick, and went away with his friends. The
beggar lay quiet for some time, then he began to stir, and sat up, wiping
the tears from his eyes, and shouting curses and bad words after the
Greeks, praying that they might be speared in the back, and eaten by
dogs.
At last he tried to stand up, but fell down again, and began to crawl on
hands and knees towards the Scaean gate. There he sat down, within the
two side walls of the gate, where he cried and lamented. Now Helen of
the fair hands came down from the gate tower, being sorry to see any man
treated so much worse than a beast, and she spoke to the beggar and asked
him why he had been used in this cruel way?
At first he only moaned, and rubbed his sore sides, but at last he said
that he was an unhappy man, who had been shipwrecked, and was begging his
way home, and that the Greeks suspected him of being a spy sent out by
the Trojans. But he had been in Lacedaemon, her own country, he said,
and could tell her about her father, if she were, as he supposed, the
beautiful Helen, and about her brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, and her
little daughter, Hermione.
"But perhaps," he said, "you are no mortal woman, but some goddess who
favours the Trojans, and if indeed you are a goddess then I liken you to
Aphrodite, for beauty, and stature, and shapeliness." Then Helen wept;
for many a year had passed since she had heard any word of her father,
and daughter, and her brothers, who were dead, though she knew it not. So
she stretched out her white hand, and raised the beggar, who was kneeling
at her feet, and bade him follow her to her own house, within the palace
garden of King Priam.
Helen walked forward, with a bower maiden at either side, and the beggar
crawling after her. When she had entered her house, Paris was not there,
so she ordered the bath to be filled with warm water, and new clothes to
be brought, and she herself washed the old beggar and anointed him with
oil. This appears very strange to us, for though Saint Elizabeth of
Hungary used to wash and clothe beggars, we are surprised that Helen
should do so, who was not a saint. But long afterwards she herself told
the son of Ulysses, Telemachus, that she had washed his father when he
came into Troy disguised as a beggar who had been sorely beaten.
You must have guessed that the beggar was Ulysses, who had not gone to
Delos in his ship, but stolen back in a boat, and appeared disguised
among the Greeks. He did all this to make sure that nobody could
recognise him, and he behaved so as to deserve a whipping that he might
not be suspected as a Greek spy by the Trojans, but rather be pitied by
them. Certainly he deserved his name of "the much-enduring Ulysses."
Meanwhile he sat in his bath and Helen washed his feet. But when she had
done, and had anointed his wounds with olive oil, and when she had
clothed him in a white tunic and a purple mantle, then she opened her
lips to cry out with amazement, for she knew Ulysses; but he laid his
finger on her lips, saying "Hush!" Then she remembered how great danger
he was in, for the Trojans, if they found him, would put him to some
cruel death, and she sat down, trembling and weeping, while he watched
her.
"Oh thou strange one," she said, "how enduring is thy heart and how
cunning beyond measure! How hast thou borne to be thus beaten and
disgraced, and to come within the walls of Troy? Well it is for thee
that Paris, my lord, is far from home, having gone to guide Penthesilea,
the Queen of the warrior maids whom men call Amazons, who is on her way
to help the Trojans."
Then Ulysses smiled, and Helen saw that she had said a word which she
ought not to have spoken, and had revealed the secret hope of the
Trojans. Then she wept, and said, "Oh cruel and cunning! You have made
me betray the people with whom I live, though woe is me that ever I left
my own people, and my husband dear, and my child! And now if you escape
alive out of Troy, you will tell the Greeks, and they will lie in ambush
by night for the Amazons on the way to Troy and will slay them all. If
you and I were not friends long ago, I would tell the Trojans that you
are here, and they would give your body to the dogs to eat, and fix your
head on the palisade above the wall. Woe is me that ever I was born."
Ulysses answered, "Lady, as you have said, we two are friends from of
old, and your friend I will be till the last, when the Greeks break into
Troy, and slay the men, and carry the women captives. If I live till
that hour no man shall harm you, but safely and in honour you shall come
to your palace in Lacedaemon of the rifted hills. Moreover, I swear to
you a great oath, by Zeus above, and by Them that under earth punish the
souls of men who swear falsely, that I shall tell no man the thing which
you have spoken."
So when he had sworn and done that oath, Helen was comforted and dried
her tears. Then she told him how unhappy she was, and how she had lost
her last comfort when Hector died. "Always am I wretched," she said,
"save when sweet sleep falls on me. Now the wife of Thon, King of Egypt,
gave me this gift when we were in Egypt, on our way to Troy, namely, a
drug that brings sleep even to the most unhappy, and it is pressed from
the poppy heads of the garland of the God of Sleep." Then she showed him
strange phials of gold, full of this drug: phials wrought by the
Egyptians, and covered with magic spells and shapes of beasts and
flowers. "One of these I will give you," she said, "that even from Troy
town you may not go without a gift in memory of the hands of Helen." So
Ulysses took the phial of gold, and was glad in his heart, and Helen set
before him meat and wine. When he had eaten and drunk, and his strength
had come back to him, he said:
"Now I must dress me again in my old rags, and take my wallet, and my
staff, and go forth, and beg through Troy town. For here I must abide
for some days as a beggar man, lest if I now escape from your house in
the night the Trojans may think that you have told me the secrets of
their counsel, which I am carrying to the Greeks, and may be angry with
you." So he clothed himself again as a beggar, and took his staff, and
hid the phial of gold with the Egyptian drug in his rags, and in his
wallet also he put the new clothes that Helen had given him, and a sword,
and he took farewell, saying, "Be of good heart, for the end of your
sorrows is at hand. But if you see me among the beggars in the street,
or by the well, take no heed of me, only I will salute you as a beggar
who has been kindly treated by a Queen."
So they parted, and Ulysses went out, and when it was day he was with the
beggars in the streets, but by night he commonly slept near the fire of a
smithy forge, as is the way of beggars. So for some days he begged,
saying that he was gathering food to eat while he walked to some town far
away that was at peace, where he might find work to do. He was not
impudent now, and did not go to rich men's houses or tell evil tales, or
laugh, but he was much in the temples, praying to the Gods, and above all
in the temple of Pallas Athene. The Trojans thought that he was a pious
man for a beggar.
Now there was a custom in these times that men and women who were sick or
in distress, should sleep at night on the floors of the temples. They
did this hoping that the God would send them a dream to show them how
their diseases might be cured, or how they might find what they had lost,
or might escape from their distresses.
Ulysses slept in more than one temple, and once in that of Pallas Athene,
and the priests and priestesses were kind to him, and gave him food in
the morning when the gates of the temple were opened.
In the temple of Pallas Athene, where the Luck of Troy lay always on her
altar, the custom was that priestesses kept watch, each for two hours,
all through the night, and soldiers kept guard within call. So one night
Ulysses slept there, on the floor, with other distressed people, seeking
for dreams from the Gods. He lay still all through the night till the
turn of the last priestess came to watch. The priestess used to walk up
and down with bare feet among the dreaming people, having a torch in her
hand, and muttering hymns to the Goddess. Then Ulysses, when her back
was turned, slipped the gold phial out of his rags, and let it lie on the
polished floor beside him. When the priestess came back again, the light
from her torch fell on the glittering phial, and she stooped and picked
it up, and looked at it curiously. There came from it a sweet fragrance,
and she opened it, and tasted the drug. It seemed to her the sweetest
thing that ever she had tasted, and she took more and more, and then
closed the phial and laid it down, and went along murmuring her hymn.
But soon a great drowsiness came over her, and she sat down on the step
of the altar, and fell sound asleep, and the torch sunk in her hand, and
went out, and all was dark. Then Ulysses put the phial in his wallet,
and crept very cautiously to the altar, in the dark, and stole the Luck
of Troy. It was only a small black mass of what is now called meteoric
iron, which sometimes comes down with meteorites from the sky, but it was
shaped like a shield, and the people thought it an image of the warlike
shielded Goddess, fallen from Heaven. Such sacred shields, made of glass
and ivory, are found deep in the earth in the ruined cities of Ulysses'
time. Swiftly Ulysses hid the Luck in his rags and left in its place on
the altar a copy of the Luck, which he had made of blackened clay. Then
he stole back to the place where he had lain, and remained there till
dawn appeared, and the sleepers who sought for dreams awoke, and the
temple gates were opened, and Ulysses walked out with the rest of them.
He stole down a lane, where as yet no people were stirring, and crept
along, leaning on his staff, till he came to the eastern gate, at the
back of the city, which the Greeks never attacked, for they had never
drawn their army in a circle round the town. There Ulysses explained to
the sentinels that he had gathered food enough to last for a long journey
to some other town, and opened his bag, which seemed full of bread and
broken meat. The soldiers said he was a lucky beggar, and let him out.
He walked slowly along the waggon road by which wood was brought into
Troy from the forests on Mount Ida, and when he found that nobody was
within sight he slipped into the forest, and stole into a dark thicket,
hiding beneath the tangled boughs. Here he lay and slept till evening,
and then took the new clothes which Helen had given him out of his
wallet, and put them on, and threw the belt of the sword over his
shoulder, and hid the Luck of Troy in his bosom. He washed himself clean
in a mountain brook, and now all who saw him must have known that he was
no beggar, but Ulysses of Ithaca, Laertes' son.
So he walked cautiously down the side of the brook which ran between high
banks deep in trees, and followed it till it reached the river Xanthus,
on the left of the Greek lines. Here he found Greek sentinels set to
guard the camp, who cried aloud in joy and surprise, for his ship had not
yet returned from Delos, and they could not guess how Ulysses had come
back alone across the sea. So two of the sentinels guarded Ulysses to
the hut of Agamemnon, where he and Achilles and all the chiefs were
sitting at a feast. They all leaped up, but when Ulysses took the Luck
of Troy from within his mantle, they cried that this was the bravest deed
that had been done in the war, and they sacrificed ten oxen to Zeus.
"So you were the old beggar," said young Thrasymedes.
"Yes," said Ulysses, "and when next you beat a beggar, Thrasymedes, do
not strike so hard and so long."
That night all the Greeks were full of hope, for now they had the Luck of
Troy, but the Trojans were in despair, and guessed that the beggar was
the thief, and that Ulysses had been the beggar. The priestess, Theano,
could tell them nothing; they found her, with the extinguished torch
drooping in her hand, asleep, as she sat on the step of the altar, and
she never woke again.