Tales of Troy by Andrew Lang
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Tales of Troy
by Andrew Lang
TALES OF TROY: ULYSSES THE SACKER OF CITIES
Contents:
The Boyhood and Parents of Ulysses
How People Lived in the Time of Ulysses
The Wooing of Helen of the Fair Hands
The Stealing of Helen
Trojan Victories
Battle at the Ships
The Slaying and Avenging of Patroclus
The Cruelty of Achilles, and the Ransoming of Hector
How Ulysses Stole the Luck of Troy
The Battles with the Amazons and Memnon--the Death of Achilles
Ulysses Sails to seek the Son of Achilles.--The Valour of Eurypylus
The Slaying of Paris
How Ulysses Invented the Device of the Horse of Tree
The End of Troy and the Saving of Helen
THE BOYHOOD AND PARENTS OF ULYSSES
Long ago, in a little island called Ithaca, on the west coast of Greece, there lived a king named Laertes. His kingdom was small and mountainous. People used to say that Ithaca "lay like a shield upon the sea," which sounds as if it were a flat country. But in those times shields were very large, and rose at the middle into two peaks with a hollow between them, so that Ithaca, seen far off in the sea, with her two chief mountain peaks, and a cloven valley between them, looked exactly like a shield. The country was so rough that men kept no horses, for, at that time, people drove, standing up in little light chariots with two horses; they never rode, and there was no cavalry in battle: men fought from chariots. When Ulysses, the son of Laertes, King of Ithaca grew up, he never fought from a chariot, for he had none, but always on foot.
If there were no ho