When lovely Helen, whose days were dull and joyless in the absence of her husband, heard that a foreign prince in gorgeous array had arrived on the island of Cythera, she was pricked with womanly curiosity to see this stranger and his martial retinue. To satisfy this desire, she arranged a solemn offering in the temple of Artemis, on Cythera, and entered the sanctuary at the very moment Paris was completing the rites of his own sacrifice. When he saw the queen, the hands he had lifted in prayer sank to his sides, and his spirit filled with wonder, for it seemed to him that he again beheld Aphrodite, the goddess who had appeared to him when he was a shepherd on Mount Ida. Word of Helen’s beauty had come to him long ago and he had been eager to see her charms with his own eyes, but he had thought that the woman the goddess of love had promised him must be far fairer than the descriptions of Helen sounded to him. Besides, he had always had in mind a virgin, not the wife of another. But now that he beheld the queen of Sparta face to face and saw that her beauty rivalled that of Aphrodite, he suddenly knew with great clearness that this, and this only, could be the woman the goddess of love had promised him in reward for his judgment. The errand with which his father had entrusted him, the whole purpose of his journey, of his warlike array, vanished from his mind. He was convinced that he and those thousands of armed men had set out only to conquer Helen. While he stood silent, lost in the contemplation of her beauty, Helen too looked with undisguised pleasure at this handsome prince from Asia with his long curly locks and sumptuous robes of purple and gold. The image of her husband faded from her memory and in its place rose up the radiance and youth of this stranger.
But Helen tore herself away, returned to the palace in Sparta, tried to blot that fair image from her heart and rouse herself to long for Menelaus, who was still in Pylos. But soon Paris, with a select few in his train, appeared in the city of Sparta, and by stressing the importance of his mission gained entrance to the halls of the king, even though Menelaus himself was absent. The queen received him with the hospitality due to strangers and the distinction to which the sons of kings are entitled. And his skill on the lyre, the grace and sweetness of his words and his ardent love overwhelmed the unguarded heart of Helen. When Paris saw her falter in her faithfulness, he forgot the cause of his father, of his people, and, indeed, remembered nothing but Aphrodite’s beguiling promise. He assembled the armed followers who had come to Sparta with him, and tempting them with the prospect of rich plunder, won their consent to help him in the plan he had conceived. Then he stormed the palace, seized the treasures of Menelaus, and carried off beautiful Helen who, to be sure, resisted—yet followed him to his fleet not altogether against her will.
While he was crossing the Aegean, the wind died down and the hurrying ships were becalmed on a quiet sea. The waves parted at the prow of the ship which bore Paris and Helen, and age-old Nereus lifted his head wreathed in waterweeds out of the salt foam, and the drops oozed from his hair and his curling beard. The ship stood as if nailed to the surface of the sea, and the sea seemed like a wall of bronze built about the ribs of the vessel. Then Nereus called out to them in terrible prophecy: “Birds of ill omen fly before you, accursed robber! The Achaeans will come with their armies; they will snatch you from your sinful union and shatter the ancient kingdom of Priam. Alas, how many horses I behold! How many men! How many dead bodies the descendants of Dardanus will owe to you! Already Pallas is donning her helmet, her shield, and the weapons of her anger. Much blood will flow; the struggle will last for many years, and only the wrath of a hero will delay the destruction of your city. But when the appointed time is come, the firebrands of the Argives will devour the homes of Troy.”
So the old god foretold, then he sank back into the sea. Paris had listened in horror. But when a fair wind blew again and the white hand of Helen lay in his, he soon forgot the warning words he had heard. The fleet cast anchor in the harbor of the island of Cranae, and now Helen, faithless and light of heart, consented to be his. In the joy of being together, each forgot home and country. For a long time they lived royally on the treasure they had brought with them, and years passed before they set out on the voyage to Troy.
THE ARGIVES
Paris, as an emissary to Sparta, had been guilty of a grave breach of the laws governing a guest and his host and the rights of peoples. His action bore instant fruit. A line of kings, powerful among the heroes of Greece, was roused to raging fury. Menelaus, king of Sparta, and his elder brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, were descended from Tantalus. They were grandsons of Pelops, sons of Atreus, men of a noble house, whose history was rich in conquest. Besides Argos and Sparta, most of the states of the Peloponnesus were subject to these two brothers, and the rulers of the rest of Greece were their allies. So when Menelaus heard the news of the rape of Helen, he left his old friend Nestor and hastened from Pylos to Mycenae, where his brother Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, Helen’s stepsister, were king and queen. Agamemnon shared his brother’s grief and anger, but spoke words of comfort to him and promised to remind Helen’s former suitors of their oath. Then the brothers travelled over all of Greece and asked its princes to join in the war against Troy. The first to accept was Tlepolemus, famed ruler of Rhodes, a son of Heracles, who offered to furnish ninety ships for an expedition against the treacherous city of Troy. Then came Diomedes, son of Tydeus, who promised eighty ships with a crew of the most valiant men in Greece. After these two princes had conferred with the Atridae in Sparta, the Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, sons of Zeus and brothers of Helen, were also invited to join. But they had already gone, for at the very first report that their sister had been carried off, they had sailed in pursuit of the robber and got as far as the island of Lesbos, close to the coast of Troy. There a storm struck their ship and it sank into the sea. The Dioscuri themselves disappeared. Legend, however, had it that they did not perish in the waves, but that Zeus, their father, set them in the heavens as a glorious constellation. And there, through the ages, they perform their office as protectors of ships that sail the seas and as patron gods of those aboard them.
And now almost all of Greece had risen to the call of the Atridae. Only two princes hung back. One was crafty Odysseus of Ithaca, Penelope’s husband, who did not wish to leave his young wife and his infant son Telemachus for the sake of the faithless queen of Sparta. And so when Palamedes, son of Prince Nauplius of Euboea, the staunch friend of Menelaus, came to him with the king of Sparta, he pretended madness, yoked an ox and an ass to his harrow, ploughed his field with this ill-matched team, and scattered salt instead of seed in the furrows. He arranged for the two heroes to see him engaged in this strange occupation and hoped in this way to exclude himself from a campaign he did not favor. But wise Palamedes saw through the wiliest of all mortals. While Odysseus was guiding the harrow, he secretly went to the palace, took the child Telemachus from his cradle, and laid him in a part of the field where Odysseus was just about to turn up the earth. At that, the father carefully lifted the harrow across the boy, and the heroes shouted to him that he had proved he was quite sane. Now he could no longer refuse to take part in the expedition, and though in his heart he swore bitter enmity to Palamedes, he promised to put at the disposal of King Menelaus twelve ships from Ithaca and the neighboring islands, each with its crew complete.
The other prince who had not yet given his word to join and whose whereabouts were not even known, was Achilles, the young and splendid son of Peleus and Thetis, goddess of the sea. When he was newborn, his immortal mother wanted to make him immortal too. So when night came, unbeknown to Peleus, she laid the child in celestial fire, which was to purge him of whatever mortal parts he had inherited from his father. By day she healed his seared flesh with ambrosia. Night after night she did this, but once Peleus spied on her and cried aloud when he saw his son quiver in the flames. This hindered Thetis from perfecting her work. Sadly she abandoned her infant son, whom she had not succeeded in making wholly divine, nor did she return to the palace, but sped to the cool sea kin
gdom of the Nereids. Peleus, who thought that the boy bore dangerous wounds, lifted him up and carried him to Chiron, who was versed in the art of medicine. This wise centaur, the rearer of many heroes, took the boy tenderly and nourished him on the marrow of bears and the liver of lions and boars.
When Achilles was nine years old, Calchas, a Greek soothsayer, declared that Troy, the far-off city in Asia which was destined to destruction through the Argives, could not be conquered without the son of Peleus. Thetis, his mother, heard this prophecy in the depths of the sea, and because she knew that this campaign would bring death to her son, she rose through the waves, secretly entered her husband’s palace, dressed the boy in girl’s clothes, and in this disguise took him to King Lycomedes on the island of Scyros, who brought him up as a girl and had him perform the dainty tasks of a princess. But when the boy arrived at an age when the first down appeared on his lip, he discovered himself to Deidamia, the king’s lovely daughter. A tender love sprang up between these two, and while the people on the island took Achilles for a kinswoman of their king, he was really Deidamia’s husband.
Now that he was indispensable for the conquest of Troy, Calchas, the soothsayer, who knew his abode as well as what was destined for him, told the Atridae where he was to be found, and they at once dispatched Odysseus and Diomedes to enlist him in the war. When these heroes came to the island of Scyros, they were presented to the king, his daughter, her kinswoman, and handmaids. But the face of Achilles was still so delicately lovely that even though the two Achaean princes had watchful eyes, they could not detect him among the group of girls. Then Odysseus had recourse to ruse. He had a spear and shield carried into the room where the girls gathered, but so that it seemed by chance, and then bade one of his men sound the trumpet as if foes were approaching. At those martial notes every woman fled from the chamber, but Achilles remained and boldly seized the spear and the shield. When he realized that his disguise no longer availed him, he offered to join the army of the Achaeans with a fleet of fifty ships and promised that he himself would come at the head of his Myrmidons or Thessalians, accompanied by Phoenix, who had educated him, and Patroclus, his friend, who had been reared with him in the house of Peleus.
The leaders of the various peoples chose Agamemnon as their commander-in-chief, since he was the most active in furthering the enterprise, and he selected the port of Aulis in Boeotia, near the straits of Euboea, as the meeting place for all the Argive princes with their men and their ships. Besides those already mentioned there were many others. The noblest among these were mighty Ajax, son of Telamon of Salamis, and his half brother Teucer, the unerring archer; Ajax the Less from the land of Locris; Menestheus of Athens; Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, sons of Ares, and with them their people, the Minyans from Orchomenus; from Boeotia, Peneleus, Arcesilaus, Clonius, and Prothoenor; from Phocis, Schedius and Epistrophus; from Euboea, Elephenor with the Abantes; Diomedes, Sthenelus, son of Capaneus, and Euryalus, son of Mecisteus, with part of the Argives and other Peloponnesians; from Pylos, Nestor, the old man who had seen three generations grow up; from Arcadia, Agapenor, son of Ancaeus; from Elis and other cities, Amphimachus, Thalpius, Diores, and Polyxenus; from Dulichium and the Echinades, Meges, son of Phyleus; with the Aetolians came Thoas, son of Andraemon; from Crete, Idomeneus and Meriones; from Rhodes, Tlepolemus, a descendant of Heracles; from Syme, Nireus, who in beauty exceeded all men in the Argive hosts; from the Calydnae, the Heraclidae Phidippus and Antiphus; from Phylace, Podarces, son of Iphicles; from Pherae in Thessaly, Eumelus, the son of Admetus and devout Alcestis; Methone, Thaumacia, and Meliboea sent Philoctetes; from Tricca, Ithome, and Oechalia came Podalirius and Machaon, both versed in the art of healing; from Ormenium, Eurypylus, the son of Euaemon; from Argissa, Polypoetes, the son of Pirithous, friend of Theseus; Guneus represented Cyphos, and Prothous, Magnesia.
Besides the Atridae, Odysseus, and Achilles, these were the princes and commanders of the Greeks who gathered in Aulis—and each came with a great fleet! In those days the Greeks were sometimes called Danai, a word derived from Danaus, an early king of Egypt, who had settled in Argos on the Peloponnesus, and sometimes Argives, after the most important region in Greece; Argolis or the land of the Argives. They also went by the name of Achaeans, because in olden times Greece had been called Achaea. It was not until later that they were called Greeks from Graicus, son of Thessalus, and Hellenes after Hellen, son of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
THE ARGIVES SEND PRIAM A MESSAGE
While the Achaeans were thus preparing for war against Troy, Agamemnon in an assembly of trusted friends and leaders of the people resolved first to try peaceful means: to send ambassadors to King Priam to protest the breach of laws and the rape of an Argive queen and demand the return of Helen and the treasures of Menelaus. The council elected Palamedes, Odysseus, and Menelaus to go on this mission, and though in his heart Odysseus was bitterly hostile to Palamedes, still, for the sake of the common good, he agreed to defer to the wisdom of this prince, famed throughout the hosts of Greece for his insight and experience, and did not dispute his right to speak for them all at the court of Priam.
The Trojans and their king were dumbfounded at the arrival of such messengers aboard ships so large and splendid. They were utterly ignorant of the cause of their coming, since Paris was still on the island of Cranae and had not been heard from in Troy. Priam and his people could not but believe that the Trojan warriors who had set out to support Paris in his demand for Hesione must have met with powerful resistance, that they had been destroyed, and that now the Argives, grown arrogant, had crossed the sea to attack the Trojans in their own country. And so the news that envoys from Greece were approaching the city made everyone taut with suspense. The gates, however, were flung wide, and the three princes were at once conducted to the palace of Priam and led before the king, who had summoned his numerous sons and the heads of the city to the council hall. Palamedes began to speak and in the name of all of Greece complained bitterly of the shameful breach of hospitality which Paris had committed by carrying off Helen. Then he pictured the dangers of war which this disgraceful action might bring on Priam and his people, enumerated the great princes of Greece who would come to Troy with countless warriors on more than a thousand ships, and demanded the return of their captured queen. “You do not know, O king,” he concluded, “the kind of men your son has offended by what he has done. They are Danai who would die rather than suffer an insult on the part of a stranger to go unavenged. But in coming to avenge this wrong, they do not intend to die but to carry off the victory, for their number is as the sands of the sea; all have the courage of true heroes and burn to blot out the disgrace inflicted on their country by destroying the cause of it. That is why our commander-in-chief, Agamemnon, king of mighty Argos and foremost prince of all Greece, and with him all the other princes of the Danai, bids me say to you: ‘Return the queen you have stolen from us, or all of you shall perish.’ ”
These words of defiance angered the king’s sons and the elders of Troy. They drew their swords from the scabbard and struck blade against shield, full of the lust for battle. But King Priam ordered them to be quiet, rose from his seat, and said: “Strangers, you who have come in the name of your people and heaped such reproaches on me, first let me recover from my astonishment. For we know nothing of what you accuse us of; rather do we think that we are entitled to complain of just such an evil deed as you claim we have committed. It was your countryman Heracles who attacked us in the midst of peace. From our city he carried off Hesione, my innocent sister, and gave her as a slave to Telamon. And it is only due to the good will of that prince that he made her his lawful wife instead of keeping her as a servant or a concubine. But this is not enough to make up for dishonesty and rape. We have sent envoys to you before. Now my son Paris left for your country to demand the return of my sister, so that I might rejoice in her in my old age. How Paris has carried out my royal command, what he has done, and where he is—these things I do not know. But I am w
holly certain that there is no Argive woman in my palace or in my city. And so, even if I wanted to, I could not give you the satisfaction you ask. Should my son Paris return to Troy safely, as his father ardently hopes, should he bring with him an Argive woman he has abducted, she shall be delivered up to you, unless she is a fugitive and, as such, implores our protection. But even then you shall have her only on one condition: that you bring back to me from Salamis my sister Hesione, so that I may clasp her in my arms.”
The council of Trojans applauded the words of their king, but Palamedes spoke again, and his words were both angry and arrogant. “The granting of our request, O king, can depend on no condition whatsoever. We believe your words which assure us that the wife of Menelaus has not yet arrived within these walls. But she will! Do not doubt it! It is, unfortunately, only too true that your unworthy son has carried her off. As for us—we are not responsible for what Heracles did in our fathers’ time. But we do demand satisfaction from you for a wrong perpetrated by one of your sons in our own day and age. Hesione went with Telamon of her own free will, and she herself is sending her son, Prince Ajax, to this war which is imminent unless you make amends. But Helen was carried off against her wish. Give thanks to the gods who have given you a respite through the tarrying abroad of that robber Paris, and come to a decision which will ward destruction from you and yours.”
Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece Page 33