It seemed as though the oracle that long ago had made Acrisius act so cruelly would now never be fulfilled. But sooner or later the words of the gods come true. One day Perseus was present at the games that were held each year at Argos. As he flung a quoit into the air a sudden gust of wind hurled it aside, so that it fell upon the foot of Acrisius, who was sitting near. The king was an old man now, and the blow was more than he could bear. Before long he died from the wound, and thus the oracle of the gods was fulfilled. Perseus was kind as he was brave, and it grieved him that he had caused the death of his grandfather, although it had been by no fault of his own. Argos no longer seemed a happy place to the young king, so he left it, and going to a city called Mycenæ, he made it his capital. Here, after a long and prosperous reign, Perseus died. The gods whom he had served loyally, placed him in the skies, among the stars. And there he still shines, together with Andromeda and Cassiopeia. CHAPTER XI ACHILLES AND BRISEIS THE FAIRCHEEKED The story of Perseus belongs to the Heroic Age of Greek history, to the time when heroes were half mortal, half divine. Many other wonderful tales belong to the Heroic Age, but among them all none are so famous as those that are told in the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The _Iliad_ tells of the war that raged around the walls of the city of Troy; the _Odyssey_ of the adventures of the goodly Odysseus. In the north-west corner of Asia, looking toward Greece, the ruins of an ancient city have been discovered. It was on this spot that Troy or Ilium was believed to have stood. Strange legends gathered round the warriors of the Trojan War, so strange that some people say that there never were such heroes as those of whom the _Iliad_ tells. However that may be, we know that in long after years, when the Greeks fought with the people of Asia, they remembered these old stories, and believed that they were carrying on the wars which their fathers had begun. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ were written by a poet named Homer, so many wise folk tell. While others, it may be just as wise, say that these poems were not written by one man, but were gathered from the legends of the people, now by one poet, now by another, until they grew into the collection of stories which we know as the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. At first these old stories were not written in a book; they were sung or told in verse by the poets to the people of Hellas. And because what is ‘simple and serious lives longer than what is merely clever,’ these grave old stories of two thousand years ago are still alive, and people are still eager to read them. Some day you will read the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. In this story I can only tell you about a few of the mighty warriors who fought at Troy, about a few of their strange adventures.