Transcribed from the 1912 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by DavidPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
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
Long ago, in a little island called Ithaca, on the west coast ofGreece, there lived a king named Laertes. His kingdom was smalland mountainous. People used to say that Ithaca “lay likea 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 intotwo peaks with a hollow between them, so that Ithaca, seen far off inthe sea, with her two chief mountain peaks, and a cloven valley betweenthem, looked exactly like a shield. The country was so rough thatmen kept no horses, for, at that time, people drove, standing up inlittle light chariots with two horses; they never rode, and there wasno 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 horses in Ithaca, there was plenty of cattle. The father of Ulysses had flocks of sheep, and herds of swine, and wildgoats, deer, and hares lived in the hills and in the plains. Thesea was full of fish of many sorts, which men caught with nets, andwith rod and line and hook.
Thus Ithaca was a good island to live in. The summer was long,and there was hardly any winter; only a few cold weeks, and then theswallows came back, and the plains were like a garden, all covered withwild flowers—violets, lilies, narcissus, and roses. Withthe blue sky and the blue sea, the island was beautiful. Whitetemples stood on the shores; and the Nymphs, a sort of fairies, hadtheir little shrines built of stone, with wild rose-bushes hanging overthem.
Other islands lay within sight, crowned with mountains, stretchingaway, one behind the other, into the sunset. Ulysses in the courseof his life saw many rich countries, and great cities of men, but, whereverhe was, his heart was always in the little isle of Ithaca, where hehad learned how to row, and how to sail a boat, and how to shoot withbow and arrow, and to hunt boars and stags, and manage his hounds.
The mother of Ulysses was called Anticleia: she was the daughterof King Autolycus, who lived near Parnassus, a mountain on the mainland. This King Autolycus was the most cunning of men. He was a MasterThief, and could steal a man’s pillow from under his head, buthe does not seem to have been thought worse of for this. The Greekshad a God of Thieves, named Hermes, whom Autolycus worshipped, and peoplethought more good of his cunning tricks than harm of his dishonesty. Perhaps these tricks of his were only practised for amusement; howeverthat may be, Ulysses became as artful as his grandfather; he was boththe bravest and the most cunning of men, but Ulysses never stole things,except once, as we shall hear, from the enemy in time of war. He showed his cunning in stratagems of war, and in many strange escapesfrom giants and man-eaters.
Soon after Ulysses was born, his grandfather came to see his motherand father in Ithaca. He was sitting at s