Agamemnon then made a complete fool of himself. To test the will to victory of his men before sending them to attack, he assembled them and said: ‘Look, chaps. We’ve had nine years of this, and I reckon that’s about enough. How about throwing in the sponge and going home?’ To his consternation, they all cried: ‘Bully for you, Ag!’ then cheered him to the echo and ran hell for leather to launch their rotting ships.
That would have been the end of the war had Hera not happened to be looking on. She had never forgiven Paris for giving the golden apple to Aphrodite and was determined that Troy should fall. Summoning Athene, she sent her down to undo the result of Agamemnon’s idiotic blunder. With the help of Odysseus, the goddess changed the minds of the Greeks and soon afterwards they were all drawn up outside the city in battle array.
However, there was no battle that day because Paris came out and challenged any Greek to meet him in single combat. Menelaus fairly jumped at the chance, so a truce was called and it was agreed the war should be settled by this duel between Helen’s two husbands. When actually faced with Menelaus’s long-bottled-up fury, Paris got cold feet and backed away towards his pals, but they shouted nasty things like: ‘Don’t drop your lipstick’ and ‘You ought to be washing the baby’s nappies,’ and Hector gave him a kick in the pants; so he had to pluck up the courage to fight.
He bungled the first throw with his javelin, whereas Menelaus got home with his, splitting his enemy’s breastplate. He then set about him with his sword, but it snapped off short. Undismayed, Menelaus ran in, seized him by the crest of his helmet and started to drag him off to the Greek end of the pitch. But Paris was saved by the gong, the gong in this case being Aphrodite. After all, he had given her the apple, so she caused his chinstrap to snap. The helmet came away in Menelaus’s hand and he sat down with a bump on his backside. He was up again in a flash and chucked another javelin at Paris, but Aphrodite felt that it was not her champion’s day; so she descended in a cloud, picked him up and dumped him on his bed in the palace.
Helen, of course, had been watching all this from the walls, and Paris having put up such a poor show made her feel that perhaps her legal husband was the better man after all. Still, she went along and bound up Paris’s wounds, although one suspects that she may have put a drop more iodine on them than was strictly necessary.
The Greeks naturally went off to celebrate their victory and knocked off all the best bottles they had put by for such an occasion, while Menelaus told them again and again just what he would have done to Paris had not Aphrodite interfered. But while he was gradually becoming incoherent, a big pow-wow was taking place up on Olympus.
Zeus had called a Council of the Gods. He wanted to stop the war and said the time had now come when they should do it by making the Trojans hand over Helen to the Greeks. Most of the others agreed with him, but Hera dug in her toes. She was determined that Troy should fall; so she arranged that Pandarus, one of the Trojans’ crack snipers, should put an arrow into Menelaus. It only wounded him but, of course, it broke the truce; so the war was on again.
A terrific battle then took place, with many of the Immortals lending a hand to those they favoured. Hera, Poseidon, Athene, Hermes and Hephaestus were for the Greeks; Apollo, Aphrodite, Ares and Artemis for the Trojans; while Zeus watched the conflict most unhappily and would have brought it to an end had he not feared the trouble Hera would make for him if he robbed her of her vengeance on Paris.
Athene healed Diomede of a mortal wound, so that he could hurl a stone twice his own weight that would have done in Aeneas; but Aphrodite screened the Trojan with her veil. Diomede was so peeved by this that he told the lovely goddess to her face that she was a whore, and threw a dart at her. Wounded by it, Aphrodite took off for Olympus and sobbed on Zeus’s shoulder that she had never been so ill-treated in all her life. He patted her on the head and said: ‘Sweetie, you were never meant to go to war. Just you forget it and find some strong-limbed young fellow to hop into bed with.’
Hera was too shrewd to get hurt herself. She took the form of Stentor, the Greek who could shout louder than any other, and stood in the background yelling: ‘Go on, chaps! Give ‘em hell. No quarter. Hit ‘em for six and jump on their faces!’ The brutal, stupid Ares did not come out of it at all well. Athene, wearing her helmet of invisibility, acted as Diomede’s charioteer, and the Hero wounded the God of War so severely that he made off howling to Olympus.
On going back into the city to collect reinforcements, Hector felt pretty sick at finding Paris with his feet up nattering away to Helen. He gave his brother a piece of his mind and Helen backed him up; so Paris reluctantly put on his tin hat again and returned to the fray. Hector came out with him and challenged any of the Greeks to single combat. They drew lots and it fell to the giant Ajax to meet him. While everyone else looked on, they went for one another hammer and tongs, but darkness came down before either of them was seriously injured; so the duel was declared a draw.
Next day it became clear that the Trojans were on the up and up, so the Greek General Staff got to work on the C.-in-C. They told him that the only thing for it was for him to eat humble pie and persuade Achilles to lead the troops again. Finding himself right up against it, Agamemnon agreed, and one must give it to him that he did the generous thing. He sent three of his staff to offer Achilles not only Briséis back but also seven cuties to serve as side-lines, one of his own daughters in marriage when they got back to Greece and about his own weight in gold and ornaments. Achilles stood his visitors a jolly good blow-out but refused to budge.
When the news was received at G.H.Q. everyone was very down in the mouth, and next day the Greeks again got the worst of it in battle. They might have been scuppered for good had not the Immortals once more taken a hand. Hera pinched Aphrodite’s girdle, knowing that no male could resist anyone who wore it. Then she sidled up to her husband. Somewhat later, Zeus felt so tired that he fell asleep and, as Hera had intended, missed what was happening down below. Poseidon, meanwhile, had taken the form of Calchas and had put new heart into the Greeks. The terrible Hector was temporarily knocked out, the Trojans took to their heels, and Poseidon, yelling: ‘Up, Guards, and at ‘em,’ led the Greeks in pursuit. But Zeus woke up just in time, realised that Hera had made a monkey out of him, gave her a smack in the puss, ordered Poseidon back into the sea, then sent Apollo to revive Hector and restore the situation.
With Apollo’s aid, the Trojans drove the Greeks right back to their ships and began to set fire to them. Achilles and his pal Patroclus were looking on from a distance, and at last Patroclus could bear the sight no longer. Achilles still refused to lift a finger, but he reluctantly agreed that Patroclus should lead out the Myrmidons, if only to prevent the ships, without which the Greeks could not get home, being burnt to cinders. Being much attached to Patroclus, Achilles lent him his own custom-made suit of armour and his Mark IX chariot to do the job in. In consequence, when Patroclus came charging out with the Myrmidons behind him, everyone thought he was Achilles.
At the sight of him the Trojans panicked and the Greeks chivvied them right up to the walls of the city. They might even have got in if Apollo hadn’t given Patroclus a biff that half stunned him. Hector, being on hand, took advantage of this to slay the Greek and strip him of his armour. It was only after a desperate fight that the Greeks managed to rescue his body and carry it back to Achilles.
At the sight of his dead friend, Achilles nearly burst himself with grief and rage. He wept all night and even Briséis, whom Agamemnon had sent back to him, could not stop him crying. But his mama turned up and cheered him a trifle by telling him that she had got Hephaestus to make a new suit of absolutely super armour for him in which to avenge his buddy.
In the morning he put it on, went along to G.H.Q., buried the hatchet with Agamemnon and demanded instant battle. Led by him again the Greeks attacked and hour after hour made mincemeat of the Trojans. There were so many dead that the river Scamander was choked with their corpse
s and overflowed with blood. Achilles gave scores of them the works. Aeneas and Hector were only saved from his fury by Poseidon’s temporarily changing sides and sending a mist to hide them. Athene heaved a rock the size of a house that sent Ares sprawling over an acre of ground, then as Aphrodite tried to help him up Athene gave her a black eye. Hera pulled Artemis’s hair until she screamed. The Trojans knew they had had it and ran like rabbits for the shelter of their walls. Apollo held the gate for them and only Hector, still game to fight, remained outside.
But he wasn’t all that game. As Achilles leapt at him he took to his heels. Three times the Greek chased him right round the city. Tough as those boys were, one imagines that after that they must have been a bit breathless. Pulling up, Hector tried to make a last-minute pact that whichever of them survived should see the other decently buried; but Achilles swore he’d feed Hector’s carcase to the dogs, then he killed and stripped him. Not content with that he bored holes through his feet, tied them with leather thongs to the boot of his chariot and dragged the naked body bouncing up and down full-tilt round the walls of Troy, while Hector’s parents looked on, yelling: ‘Have a heart you cad!’ and lugged their hair out by the handful.
Even Hector’s death did not end the war. Old Priam sent out an SOS for help to everyone he knew. The Amazon Queen, Penthesilea, responded by bringing an army of her tough babies down from the north. Achilles jabbed his spear right through her; but afterwards, when he wrenched off her helmet and saw what a good-looker she was, he was sorry for what he had done. Priam’s nephew, Memnon, then arrived on the scene with a useful contingent from Egypt, but Achilles also cut short this young Pharaoh’s career.
At last it became Achilles’s turn. The Trojans had apparently got hold of a few of the arrows left by Hercules that had been dipped in the Hydra’s poisonous blood. Paris fitted one of them to his bow and, with Apollo guiding his aim, managed to land it in Achilles’s vulnerable heel, so he died ingloriously and had a very uncomfortable death. Unfortunately, too, by one of those silly wills, he had left his armour to ‘the bravest’ of his pals. Naturally half a dozen champs said at once: ‘Of course, poor old Achie meant it for me.’ To prevent bloodshed, Agamemnon called in the Trojan prisoners and asked their opinion. They voted Odysseus Champ No. 1, upon which Ajax became so jealous that in a fit of apoplectic rage he committed hara-kiri.
The loss of two of their best fire-eating types was such a bad set-back for the Greeks that most of them declared that they had reached the limit and meant to beat it for home, but Odysseus persuaded them to stick around for just a bit longer to try out a brainwave he had had. This was the famous hollow horse on wheels about which every schoolboy knows. It was made of wood and large enough to hold twelve men in its belly. When it was finished, Odysseus, Diomede, Pyrrhus and nine others shut themselves up inside and some of the troops dragged it up to within a stone’s throw of the city gates. Then the Greeks got their ships afloat and sailed away bag and baggage.
Naturally the Trojans were all terrifically cock-a-hoop. They came streaming out, the poorer types to scrounge round the site of the Greek camp for any tins of bully beef that might have been left behind and the better-off to crowd round the Wooden Horse, airing their views about it. If Odysseus and his buddies could hear the suggestions made they must have been jolly sorry that they had ever put on this Commando act. Some of the Trojans wanted to burn the Horse, and others to push it over a high cliff. They were just about to break it open when a cry went up that a Greek who’d missed his boat had been found hiding in the bushes.
This was a young fellow named Sinon. He said that, while Agamemnon had been packing for home, the seer, Calchas, had told him that, if he wanted a favourable voyage, just as Iphigenia had been sacrificed before the outward trip so someone else must be sacrificed before the homeward one, and they had picked on him, Sinon; but he had managed to do a bunk. Now, of course, he was equally in a dither that, having been caught by the Trojans, he would be done in by them.
But the Trojans were in such good heart that they said not to worry, gave him a snorter to steady him up a bit and asked him about the Wooden Horse. He said that was another of old Calchas’s ideas. The seer had had them make the Horse in honour of Athene, because she had told him that if it were left outside the walls of Troy she would fight on their side when they returned to have another crack at the city next year. He added that the reason it had been made too large to go through the gate was so that the Trojans could not take it inside to her temple, which would have caused her to give her favour to them.
Taking all this for gospel, the idiot Trojans started to knock part of their wall down so that they could draw the Horse into the city; but an old buffer named Laocoon, who was a priest of Apollo, ran out crying: ‘Hi! Stop that. Even the gifts of the Greeks are poison.’
They put out their tongues at him and told him he was talking through his hat; so he ran back, collected his two sons and got busy doing a bit of protective magic. I suppose in his excitement he recited the wrong spell, or something, because two great serpents emerged from the sea, came streaking across the plain and made a beeline through the city to his temple. In a trice they had coiled round him and his boys and crushed them to death.
After that, one can hardly blame the Trojans for saying that he hadn’t known what he was talking about and dragging the Wooden Horse through the breach they had made in their wall. It is understandable, too, that when night fell they should get down to celebrating the departure of the Greeks. By midnight most of them were as tight as ticks, each telling the others that for years he had made a habit of going out and killing a Greek every morning as soon as he had finished his cornflakes.
Young Sinon, meanwhile, was doing a job that Bulldog Drummond, the Saint and Lemmy Caution would have hesitated to tackle between them. He climbed the topmost tower and stood there waving a flaring torch. The Greek Fleet had gone only as far as the island of Tenedos and was lying in hiding behind it. At his signal that he had got the Trojans where he wanted them, it sailed back. By the time the Greeks were landing on the beach he had run down the stairs three at a time, got into the temple to which the Wooden Horse had been dragged and let Odysseus and Co. out of their stuffy prison. It was then, apparently, just a piece of cake to open the gates and give the ‘Big Hello!’ to Agamemnon and his boys as they came pouring in.
The Greeks didn’t have it all their own way. Aeneas and some of the Trojan bloods fought like tigers, but they hadn’t an earthly. For hours on end it was blue murder, with the Greeks butchering men, women and children, then looting and burning the houses. Pyrrhus broke into the palace, slaughtered Priam’s youngest son before the King’s eyes, then slew the old boy on his own altar. Helen was sitting in a corner of the same room feeling a bit off-colour at the thought of what they might do to her, and with some reason. Pyrrhus spotted her and aimed a swipe at her with his sword that should have cut her lovely head off, but just in time Aphrodite gave a flick of her nightdress and turned the blade aside.
By morning everyone was decidedly part-worn, so the Greeks let up with the killing and roped in the surviving Trojans to be shared out as slaves. One is glad to be able to record that brave Aeneas managed to get away and later married a lady named Lavinia, the daughter of an Italian King, with whose help he founded another Troy on the banks of the Tiber. Paris, too, escaped to Mount Ida, and there had the undeserved good luck to be taken back by his wife the Nymph Oenone.
Even after Helen had spent ten years in Troy she was probably still under thirty, so all the odds are that the sight of her would still have made plenty of chaps trip over their own feet in anxiety to make way for her on the pavement. Anyhow, Menelaus took one look at her and said: ‘How about forgetting all this nonsense and coming home with me?’
Paris hadn’t put up anything like such a good show during the siege as Menelaus had, and I think that sort of thing counts quite a lot with women. They like to be proud of their men. Helen, no doubt, just fluttered
those long curved eyelashes of hers and replied: ‘You know, Mene dear, I can’t think what came over me. I always loved you best.’ And that was that.
* * * * *
When Stephanie had finished reading she sat for a while wondering whether Robbie’s book would ever be published. His interpolations had given her a few laughs and, in a strange way, the characters of some of the Immortals and Heroes came through; but it was utterly unlike any other book, fiction or non-fiction, that she had ever read, and it was hopelessly amateurish.
Her own English was far from perfect but, even so, she felt that she might be able to improve the punctuation a little and, if he would let her, cut out a lot of the slang expressions with which he peppered his writing. Yet, if he agreed to that, what would be left? A dull and colourless repetition of stories that had been told a hundred times before.
It occurred to her then that she was wasting her time concerning herself about it—at all events, for the present. Unless she could persuade Robbie to abandon his investigation, all the odds were that he would run into serious trouble long before he could finish his book or she have the opportunity of typing more than the first few chapters.
Another hour went by before Robbie joined her. He was bent almost double and, as he collapsed into a chair, he declared that, after climbing and descending the eight hundred-odd steps to the Acropolis, the last twenty stairs from the hall of the hotel up to the lounge had almost finished him. But he insisted that the view from the stronghold had been out of this world, and well worth it.
Mayhem in Greece Page 31
