We are first introduced to a Greek camp in Troy land. During ten long years the hosts of the Achaeans have been gathered before the walls of Ilium. What is the cause of this long struggle? A woman! Paris, son of King Priam, had carried off to his native city Queen Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta. Aided by the wiles of Aphrodite, to whom he had awarded the golden apple as the fairest in the contest of the three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, Paris succeeded in winning the heart of this fairest of Greek women and in persuading her to desert husband and daughter to follow the fortunes of a handsome stranger. On the isle of Cranae their nuptial rites were celebrated, and after much voyaging they reached their new home in Troy, where King Priam, fascinated with the beauty and grace of this new daughter, in spite of his dread of the consequences, graciously received the errant pair. The Greek chieftains bound themselves by an inviolable oath to assist the forsaken husband to recover his spouse, and, marshalling their forces, they entered upon the long and tedious war. Thus, a woman was the cause of the first great struggle between Orient and Occident, of the assembling of the mighty hosts of the Achaeans under King Agamemnon, of ten years of siege and struggle and innumerable wars, of the hurling of many valiant souls to Hades, of the fall of Troy, and of the varied wanderings and dire fortunes of the surviving heroes and heroines of the epic story. The Iliad does not tell the whole story of the Trojan War; Homer invites the muse to sing of but one episode thereof--the dire wrath of Achilles. The cause of that violent outburst is also a woman. The Greek chieftains are gathered in the place of assembly, along the banks of the Scamander. In their midst is an aged priest of the town of Chryse, bearing in his hand the fillets of Apollo, the Far-darter, upon a golden staff. He beseeches the Greeks to restore to him his dear child, the maiden Chryseis, their captive, and to accept in return the proffered ransom, reverencing the god. There is a sympathetic murmur among the chieftains, who urge the granting of the petition; but the thing pleases not the heart of Agamemnon, king of men, who had received the beautiful captive as his own share of the booty, and for love of her will not give her up. So he roughly sends the old man away, and lays stern charge upon him not to be seen again near the ships of the Achaeans. Outraged in his dignity as a priest and in his tenderness as a father, the aged sire prays to Apollo, who at once sends dire pestilence upon the Greeks; and the pyres of the dead burn continually in multitude. Nine days speed the god's shafts throughout the host, and on the tenth the valiant warrior Achilles summons the folk to assembly, and bids Calchas, "most excellent of augurs," declare the cause of the pestilence. Calchas, after much hesitation, responds that the Far-darter has brought war upon the Greeks