Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History — John Shaqi
Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek HistoryYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Greece -- History -- Juvenile literature; Mythology, Greek -- Juvenile literature
Here ends the _Iliad_. It is from other poems that the rest of the
history is taken, and we know that Achilles performed many more great
exploits, until Paris was aided by Apollo to shoot an arrow into the heel
which alone could be wounded, and thus the hero died. There was another
great fight over his body, but Ajax and Ulysses rescued it at last; Ajax
bore it to the ships, and Ulysses kept back the Trojans. Thetis and all
the Nereids and all the Muses came to mourn over him; and when he was
burnt in the funeral pile she bore away his spirit to the white island,
while the Greeks raised a huge mound in his honour. She promised his
armour to the Greek who had done most to rescue his corpse. The question
lay between Ajax and Ulysses, and Trojan captives being appointed as
judges, gave sentence in favour of Ulysses. Ajax was so grieved that he
had a fit of frenzy, fancied the cattle were the Greeks who slighted him,
killed whole flocks in his rage, and, when he saw what he had done, fell
on his own sword and died.
[Picture: Sepulchral mound, known as the Tomb of Ajax]
Having lost these great champions, the Greeks resolved to fetch Achilles’
young son Pyrrhus to the camp, and also to get again those arrows of
Hercules which Philoctetes had with him. Ulysses and Pyrrhus were
accordingly sent to fetch him from his lonely island. They found him
howling with pain, but he would not hear of coming away with them. So
Ulysses stole his quiver while he was asleep, but when he awoke and
missed it his lamentations so moved young Pyrrhus that he gave them back;
and this so touched the heart of Philoctetes that he consented to return
to the camp. There Machaon, the physician of the Greeks, healed his
foot, and he soon after shot Paris with one of the arrows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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