The Tale of Troy

by Roger Green

  Everyone praised the wisdom of Nestor's suggestion, and the spies were sent accordingly. Presently one returned, and said:

  ‘My lords, as we listened beneath the walls we heard the women of Troy speaking above us. One said: “Ajax is the bravest of the Greeks! Why, he carried the body of Achilles out of the battle, which even Odysseus did not dare to do!” But another answered her: “What nonsense you do talk! Even a woman could have carried him away, if somebody put him on her back: but she could not fight as Odysseus did – she would faint with fear if it came to fighting!”’

  Even this was not quite conclusive, but a secret vote among the Greek kings showed that most of them considered Odysseus to be the victor.

  Hearing this, Ajax turned without a word and strode blindly to his tent so dazed with grief and fury that presently his mind gave way and a bout of madness descended upon him. In his frenzy he imagined that Agamemnon and Menelaus had cheated him and given the armour to Odysseus just to insult him; and he rose up in the darkness and set out with drawn sword to slay all three of them in their sleep.

  Athena, however, was watchful that night, and knowing what Ajax was minded to do, she led him astray in the darkness so that he stumbled among the flocks of sheep and began slaughtering them, thinking they were his enemies. He even took two rams to his tent, tied them to the pole, and scourged them with a great whip, under the impression that he was beating Agamemnon and Menelaus to death.

  In the morning he recovered his senses, and was filled with such shame, both at his childish anger and his murderous madness, that he went away to a lonely part of the sea-shore and there flung himself upon his sword.

  When the Greeks found what had happened they mourned him sadly, and none was so filled with grief as Odysseus, who vowed immediately to give up the armour to Neoptolemus the son of Achilles as soon as he was old enough to wear it.

  Ajax was buried in a stone coffin, amidst the lamentations of the Greeks: as he had not fallen in battle he could not be burnt on a pyre like the other heroes.

  When the funeral was over a fresh council was called and Agamemnon spoke angrily to Calchas:

  ‘The ten years are up!’ he cried. ‘You said it would be ten years before Troy fell – and Troy still stands. Now we have lost Achilles and Ajax: how can we conquer Troy?’

  ‘You have neglected one of my earliest prophecies,’ answered Calchas, who never failed of a ready reply: ‘Troy cannot be conquered unless you have the arrows of Heracles to use: for by one of them Paris is fated to die. And the son of Achilles must go up against Troy, which cannot fall until he comes against it.’

  Then the Greeks cheered, eager to see these prophecies fulfilled and the war ended at last; and they chose Odysseus and Diomedes, who ten years before had been to Scyros for Achilles, and bade them draw out a swift ship and bring back his son Neoptolemus.

  Over the waves went the two heroes and came safely to Scyros. They drew the ship to shore and went striding up to the palace of old King Lycomedes. There in the morning light they saw Neoptolemus, still only a boy, yet tall and strong and wondrous like his father, driving his chariot and practising with spear and dart.

  The boy welcomed them eagerly, and his eyes flashed with excitement when they told him the reason for their coming:

  ‘Come to Troy!’ urged Odysseus. ‘We cannot take the city without you, now that your noble father Achilles is dead. All of us will welcome you with many gifts: for a start you shall have your father's golden armour as a gift from me – armour that the Warlord Ares would be proud to wear, since Immortal hands fashioned it. And when the war is won and we return to Greece, Menelaus will give you his lovely daughter Hermione to be your bride.’

  Neoptolemus needed no bribes to make him eager to set out for Troy; and set out he did, in spite of the tears and prayers of his mother Deidamia, who feared greatly that she would lose her son as she had lost her husband. But sea-nymph Thetis rejoiced, knowing that her grandson went to win glory, not death at Troy; and she made no attempt to stop him as she had tried to stop Achilles.

  Once more the swift ship sped over the blue Aegean: but it did not make straight for Troy. Instead, Odysseus guided it to rugged Lemnos where Philoctetes had been marooned on account of his terrible snake-bite, hid it in a deep bay, and went ashore with only Neoptolemus and a few sailors. On the way Odysseus told his young companion about Philoctetes and how he had been left there ten years before, with only the bow and arrows of Heracles.

  ‘We can only catch him by guile,’ ended Odysseus, ‘and that is where you come in. If he sees me, he'll shoot: and there is no cure for the Hydra poison. So you must pretend to have quarrelled with the Greek kings, and with me in particular: say I refused to give you your father's armour. Anyhow, pretend that you left the war in a fury and, on your way home to Greece, have come to rescue him and take him with you. Once he is on the ship we can easily get the bow and arrows from him.’

  Neoptolemus did not much like this kind of trickery, but he consented to do as Odysseus said, and went off by himself towards the rocky hillside where it seemed probable that Philoctetes would have found a cave in which to live. There he found the wretched man, with tangled hair and beard, dwelling in a cave with two entrances to guard against surprise, and living precariously on such game as he could shoot with his bow – which never left his hand, waking or asleep.

  It was easy to make friends with the poor castaway, and very soon he was treating Neoptolemus like a son; and Neoptolemus was feeling more and more ashamed of the part which he was playing.

  Presently one of the sailors arrived, pretending to be a merchant newly come from Troy, and warned Philoctetes that he was in danger:

  ‘Odysseus and Diomedes are coming,’ he cried. ‘They have sworn to carry you off by force!’

  Then Philoctetes hesitated no longer: ‘I will company you, son of Achilles!’ he exclaimed. ‘Take me away quickly before Odysseus comes!’

  On the way to the shore Philoctetes was seized with a terrible spasm of the pain from his snake-bite. ‘Hold the bow and arrows!’ he gasped to Neoptolemus, ‘and be ready to shoot if Odysseus arrives before my fit has passed… You see how I trust you: no one else has ever held the bow of Heracles except my father Poeas and myself.’

  Then Philoctetes rolled on the ground in his agony and at length fainted with the pain.

  When he recovered, Odysseus stood above him, and Philoctetes knew that he had been tricked. Sadly and bitterly he limped away to his cave to gather his few possessions, while Odysseus set out for the ship to send back men to bring him.

  But when he returned it was to find that Neoptolemus had been overcome by his natural sense of honour and decency.

  ‘Philoctetes,’ he said, ‘I cannot cheat you like this. Here are the bow and arrows: I beg you not to use them against us, even against Odysseus. What he has done is only for the good of our armies at Troy…’

  Odysseus, returning at that moment, frankly confessed the whole scheme and begged Philoctetes to come with them of his own accord to be received with all honour.

  ‘I did wrong,’ he said. ‘First, when I marooned you here at the command of Agamemnon, and now when I sought to take you by guile.’

  Philoctetes was so far moved that he made no attempt to shoot Odysseus, as he could easily have done: but he still refused to accompany him to Troy. Neoptolemus was ready to abide by his promise and take him back to Greece; and Odysseus said sadly:

  ‘Then I must return to our friends having failed in my task. Troy cannot fall unless you two are with us!’

  On a sudden, even as he spoke, Heracles, now an Immortal dwelling in the golden halls of Olympus, came down to Lemnos.

  ‘Philoctetes!’ he cried in his great voice. ‘Listen, it is I, Heracles, come down from my high seat to tell you the will of Zeus. You must not return yet to Greece, but hasten to Troy with the son of Achilles. There you will be cured of your sickness and win glory as great as that of any hero. For you are now the chosen cha
mpion of that great army: seek out Paris, cause of all this evil, and strike him down with these arrows that once were mine. With them I destroyed Troy: and now for a second time Troy must fall before them.’

  ‘It is the voice I have so often longed to hear,’ whispered Philoctetes, ‘the face even as I once knew it, but now divine. Indeed I shall not disobey.’

  ‘Nor I,’ echoed Neoptolemus.

  ‘Then make haste!’ cried Heracles. ‘The wind is fair, and Troy is ripe to fall!’

  Then Heracles went back to Olympus where the Immortals dwell. But Philoctetes, Neoptolemus and Odysseus clasped hands in token of friendship, and set sail for Troy where Machaon, son of the Immortal Physician, Asclepius, waited to cure the ten-year-old snake-bite so that Philoctetes could once more take his place among the warrior kings of Greece.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE THEFT OF THE LUCK OF TROY

  *

  Strong Tydeus' son should with Odysseus scale

  The great wall… and should bear away

  Pallas the Gracious, with her free consent,

  Whose image was the sure defence of Troy:

  Yea, for not even a god, how wrath so e'er

  Had power to lay the city of Priam waste

  While that immortal shape stood warder there.

  QUINTUS SMYRNAEUS

  Fall of Troy (Translated by A. S. Way)

  9

  Paris was immensely proud of himself for shooting Achilles; and now that Hector was dead he would, of course, be the next King of Troy when Priam died.

  Helen smiled wearily and sadly as she sat in her room, longing for her home in far-away Sparta; and the blood dripped from the Star-stone, dripped and vanished, dripped and vanished and left no mark.

  One day a handsome youth, little more than a boy, came to see her. Through the quiet palace he was led, and reached the shaded room where Helen sat weaving at her loom.

  ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘my name is Corythus, and I have a message for you alone, and for your lord, Prince Paris.’

  Then Helen sent her maidens from the room, and with a smile took the scroll of bark which Corythus handed to her. Breaking the golden thread with which it was fastened, she opened and read – and her eyes went wide and the colour forsook her face.

  ‘Your mother is called Oenone,’ she said in a strangled voice, ‘and she is the wife of Paris - and you are their son?’

  Corythus nodded: ‘My mother sent me,’ he answered simply. ‘It was time, she said, that I came to Troy and claimed my rightful place as eldest and only son of the heir apparent.’

  Then in a flood all that she had lost came to Helen: Menelaus, her home, Hermione, the name of true and faithful wife. And all for what? For Paris, doubly a cheat and traitor, who had deceived both her and Oenone.

  She uttered a little choking cry and slipped to the floor in a faint, while Corythus bent over her anxiously, pitying her grief, marvelling at her beauty.

  At this moment Paris strode into the room. He gave one glance, and his mad jealousy flared up. Without a moment's pause he snatched the sword from his side and struck Corythus dead with a single blow.

  Then, so fierce was his rage and jealousy, he would have slain Helen also, but he saw the scroll and, reading what Oenone had written, he realized what he had done. Then he flung himself upon the ground and wept.

  Corythus was burnt on a great pyre as became his rank, and Paris mourned sincerely for him. Helen wept too; but she spoke no more to Paris, and sat alone day after day gazing out towards the Grecian tents, or weaving on her loom all the tales of sorrow that had befallen on account of her, since Paris had come and carried her away from her happy home in Sparta.

  Paris suffered too, and grew more reckless, though he had seldom been much of a fighter since he brought Helen to Troy. And soon after this the day came when Philoctetes was healed of his evil wound and came out to battle among the Greeks, bearing the great bow of Heracles in his hand.

  Then for the last time the Trojans sallied out on to the plain and fought the Greeks hand to hand, with Paris cheering them on. Seeing him, Philoctetes fought his way fiercely through the thick of his foes until he drew near to Paris who, on his side, kept a sharp look-out. When he thought that Philoctetes was in reasonable range, Paris set an arrow to his bow and loosed at him. But Philoctetes dodged to one side so that another Greek took his death by it.

  ‘Dog! Your day has come!’ cried Philoctetes. ‘Make haste to the land of shadows, and let there be an end to the destruction which you have caused!’

  Then he drew the plaited cord to his breast, the great bow arched, the terrible point peeped out over the hand which held the curving wood. Loud sang the string as the death-hissing shaft sped on its way – and it missed not, though death was not yet, and the point did but graze the white wrist of Paris. Once again the avenger drew the bow and a barbed shaft screamed on its way, and this time buried itself in Paris's side.

  Then Paris turned and fled into Troy, and night came down to cover the city and the plain. All through the hours of darkness the most skilful of the Trojan surgeons strove in vain to stop the terrible torment of the Hydra's burning blood, while Paris groaned and writhed sleeplessly. And before dawn he bade men carry him swiftly and silently out of Troy, up into the forests on Mount Ida; for he knew that in all the world only his deserted wife the nymph Oenone could cure him.

  They came at last to her cave, where she sat weeping, ever weeping for her lost love and her slaughtered son.

  Then Paris begged Oenone to save him. ‘My lady,’ he ended, ‘I have sinned in my folly – but spare me! Save me from death!’

  But Oenone answered in cold, dead tones: ‘Go back to Helen and bid her to cure you! You slew our son, and you have killed my heart. Go quickly, you who are the cause of many a thousand deaths – not my son alone, but the sons of the women of Troy and of Greece cry out for vengeance.’

  Then she turned away and sat silent, gazing into the distance.

  They bore Paris away, down the steep slope towards Troy but he was dead long before they reached the edge of the forest. So there they built a huge pyre and laid him upon it, and kindled it with fire.

  But meanwhile Oenone repented of her anger, remembering only the love which had been between them, and the happy years when they dwelt together upon Ida, before the fatal coming of the three Immortals. So she gathered together her drugs and herbs, and hastened down the mountainside towards Troy. But presently she saw a glow ahead of her, and came suddenly to the pyre on which dead Paris lay.

  Oenone gazed for a moment, and then with a bitter cry she sprang suddenly forward, and flung herself beside Paris, clasping him in her arms. Then the flames roared up, and the pyre fell in, and the ashes of Paris and Oenone were mingled in death.

  Helen was free now; but the Trojans did not even think of sending her back to Menelaus. Indeed two brothers of Paris quarrelled as to which of them should now marry her; and when Priam gave her to Deiphobus, Helenus fled from Troy and was captured by the Greeks or gave himself up to them.

  Odysseus brought him before the assembled kings, for Helenus was a prophet, and Calchas was at his wits' end to know why Troy had not yet fallen.

  ‘I own no allegiance now to Troy,’ said Helenus, ‘and I will tell you of the one thing lacking. You must steal the Luck of Troy: the city can never be taken while that remains within its walls!’

  ‘The Luck of Troy?’ asked Agamemnon, puzzled.

  ‘The Palladium,’ answered Helenus, ‘the stone which fell from Heaven in the days of King Ilus. It is said that Athena made it in memory of her companion Pallas, and that Zeus cast it down at the prayer of King Ilus to show where Troy should be built. But certainly no city can fall in which the Palladium rests. Of old we kept it secretly in a temple on Mount Ida – and Troy fell when Heracles came against it with Peleus and Telamon. But when Paris brought Helen to Troy, my father King Priam, by my advice, brought the Palladium to the Temple of Athena in Troy town.’

&nbs
p; Helenus would say no more, and at length it was decided that some spy must make his way into Troy and discover how the Palladium could be stolen.

  Odysseus, most cunning of the Greeks, volunteered for this service. He dressed himself in rags, got some of the Greeks to beat him until the blood ran down his face and back and covered himself in filth: there was no beggar in all the Greek camp so foul as he. In this disguise he won admission into Troy, pretending that he had been beaten and driven away by the cruel Greeks.

  The Trojans welcomed him, hoping to obtain news of the Greek plans, and Odysseus played his part so well that no one suspected him, and whatever he told them was believed.

  Beggar though he was, the Trojans decided that this valuable ally must be treated as well as possible. So he was taken to the house of Helen and Deiphobus to be bathed and clothed in decent clothes, and entertained.

  Helen herself tended him, anxious for any news of the Greeks – and in spite of all his cunning she at length recognized him as Odysseus. For a long time he denied it with clever words, but at length Helen swore by the most solemn oaths not to betray him, and he confessed that she was right.

  Then Helen wept, and told him how wretched she was. ‘When Paris died,’ she ended, ‘the last touch of the strange magic of Aphrodite faded from me. I scarcely could remember that I had not hated him – and oh, how I hate Deiphobus who has me now!’

  ‘Could you not escape to us?’ asked Odysseus.

  ‘Escape? I have tried again and again,’ sighed Helen. ‘Only the guards along the Trojan walls could tell you how often I have tried – how many times they or Deiphobus have caught me with the rope already round my waist – once I was actually hanging down outside the wall… But how would I be received in the Greek camp I who, alas, am the cause of so much misery? And my husband, Menelaus, surely he hates me – though it was not of my own free will that I went with Paris in that night of evil magic so many weary years ago.’