In the _Cypria_, Menelaus is now informed, in Crete, about the flight of Helen: he returns to the isle of Pelops and consults Agamemnon about collecting an army. Nestor, called to council, abounds in anecdotic digressions (whether the author borrows this trait from the _Iliad_ or the _Iliad_ from him, it is not hard to guess!). Among Nestor's themes--for he simply poured out stories--are Epopeus and his seduction of the daughter of Lycus; Oedipous; the madness of Heracles; and the tale of Theseus (whom Homer steadily avoids), and Ariadne. Theseus, as an Athenian, is dear to the Ionian poet: Homer ignores him. The Atridae go through Greece collecting the heroes. Odysseus feigns madness with a view to shirking the war; he ploughs the sand, and Palamedes detects his sanity by placing the child Telemachus in the way of the plough. Here we have a hero, Palamedes, unknown to Homer, and an equally unknown Odysseus who is a coward, but is baffled by the superior wisdom of Palamedes. It is obvious that the poet of the _Cypria_ is here introducing an un-Homeric character to serve his private ends: his methods are unveiled in Chapter XVII., "The Story of Palamedes." The _Cypria_ now relates _the First gathering of the Greek forces at Aulis_, with the story from the _Iliad_ of the serpent and the sparrows, and the prophecy of Calchas. The ships, says the _Iliad_, "had been gathering but a day or two at Aulis," and the host was at a sacrifice, when a wonderful serpent came forth from the altar and killed eight nestlings of a sparrow, with their mother. Zeus then turned the serpent into a stone. Calchas prophesied, "we shall fight nine years _there_ (_αῢθι_, at Troy), but take the city in the tenth year."[20] Such was Homer's opinion, the Greeks were warring in Troyland against Ilios for nine years and more. But the author of the _Cypria_ desired to fill up the nine years before the _Iliad_ opens in some way, and this is how he did it. (Italics mark possible hints from Homer.) _Learning from the Odyssey_ (xi. 519-521) _that Eurypylus, a Mysian chief, son of Telephus, came to the aid of Troy after the death of Achilles_, he makes the Achaeans land in Teuthrania, and supposing the town to be Troy, they attack it. But Telephus comes to the rescue, and is wounded by Achilles. A storm falls on the fleet, and the ships are scattered. _Achilles arrives in Scyros and weds Deidameia_. The storm that sends Achilles to marry and beget a son in Scyros was an easy explanation of _Achilles' own statement_,[21] that he had a son at Scyros.[22]