Tales of Troy: Ulysses, the Sacker of CitiesLang, Andrew
General
Tales of Troy: Ulysses, the Sacker of Cities
Lang, Andrew
Mythology, Greek -- Juvenile literature; Trojan War -- Juvenile literature
Then Hector went to see his dear wife, Andromache, whose father had been
slain by Achilles early in the siege, and he found her and her nurse
carrying her little boy, Hector's son, and like a star upon her bosom lay
his beautiful and shining golden head. Now, while Helen urged Paris to
go into the fight, Andromache prayed Hector to stay with her in the town,
and fight no more lest he should be slain and leave her a widow, and the
boy an orphan, with none to protect him. The army she said, should come
back within the walls, where they had so long been safe, not fight in the
open plain. But Hector answered that he would never shrink from battle,
"yet I know this in my heart, the day shall come for holy Troy to be laid
low, and Priam and the people of Priam. But this and my own death do not
trouble me so much as the thought of you, when you shall be carried as a
slave to Greece, to spin at another woman's bidding, and bear water from
a Grecian well. May the heaped up earth of my tomb cover me ere I hear
thy cries and the tale of thy captivity."
Then Hector stretched out his hands to his little boy, but the child was
afraid when he saw the great glittering helmet of his father and the
nodding horsehair crest. So Hector laid his helmet on the ground and
dandled the child in his arms, and tried to comfort his wife, and said
good-bye for the last time, for he never came back to Troy alive. He
went on his way back to the battle, and Paris went with him, in glorious
armour, and soon they were slaying the princes of the Greeks.
The battle raged till nightfall, and in the night the Greeks and Trojans
burned their dead; and the Greeks made a trench and wall round their
camp, which they needed for safety now that the Trojans came from their
town and fought in the open plain.
Next day the Trojans were so successful that they did not retreat behind
their walls at night, but lit great fires on the plain: a thousand fires,
with fifty men taking supper round each of them, and drinking their wine
to the music of flutes. But the Greeks were much discouraged, and
Agamemnon called the whole army together, and proposed that they should
launch their ships in the night and sail away home. Then Diomede stood
up, and said: "You called me a coward lately. You are the coward! Sail
away if you are afraid to remain here, but all the rest of us will fight
till we take Troy town."
Then all shouted in praise of Diomede, and Nestor advised them to send
five hundred young men, under his own son, Thrasymedes, to watch the
Trojans, and guard the new wall and the ditch, in case the Trojans
attacked them in the darkness. Next Nestor counselled Agamemnon to send
Ulysses and Aias to Achilles, and promise to give back Briseis, and rich
presents of gold, and beg pardon for his insolence. If Achilles would be
friends again with Agamemnon, and fight as he used to fight, the Trojans
would soon be driven back into the town.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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