Chapter 20 - Page 2

and knowing that her son was fated to perish before Troy if he
went on the expedition, she endeavored to prevent his going. She
sent him away to the court of king Lycomedes, and induced him to
conceal himself in the disguise of a maiden among the daughters
of the king. Ulysses, hearing he was there, went disguised as a
merchant to the palace and offered for sale female ornaments,
among which he had placed some arms. While the king's daughters
were engrossed with the other contents of the merchant's pack,
Achilles handled the weapons and thereby betrayed himself to the
keen eye of Ulysses, who found no great difficulty in persuading
him to disregard his mother's prudent counsels and join his
countrymen in the war. Priam was king of Troy, and Paris, the shepherd and seducer of
Helen, was his son. Paris had been brought up in obscurity,
because there were certain ominous forebodings connected with him
from his infancy that he would be the ruin of the state. These
forebodings seemed at length likely to be realized, for the
Grecian armament now in preparation was the greatest that had
ever been fitted out. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and brother of
the injured Menelaus, was chosen commander-in-chief. Achilles
was their most illustrious warrior. After him ranked Ajax,
gigantic in size and of great courage, but dull of intellect,
Diomedes, second only to Achilles in all the qualities of a hero,
Ulysses, famous for his sagacity, and Nestor, the oldest of the
Grecian chiefs, and one to whom they all looked up for counsel.
But Troy was no feeble enemy. Priam, the king, was now old, but
he had been a wise prince and had strengthened his state by good
government at home and numerous alliances with his neighbors.
But the principal stay and support of his throne was his son
Hector, one of the noblest characters painted by heathen
antiquity. Hector felt, from the first, a presentiment of the
fall of his country, but still persevered in his heroic
resistance, yet by no means justified the wrong which brought
this danger upon her. He was united in marriage with Andromache,
and as a husband and father his character was not less admirable
than as a warrior. The principal leaders on the side of the
Trojans, besides Hector, were Aeneas and Deiphobus, Glaucus and
Sarpedon. After two years of preparation the Greek fleet and army assembled
in the port of Aulis in Boeotia. Here Agamemnon in hunting
killed a stag which was sacred to Diana, and the goddess in
return visited the army with pestilence, and produced a calm
which prevented the ships from leaving the port. Calchas the
soothsayer thereupon announced that the wrath of the virgin
goddess could only be appeased by the sacrifice of a virgin on
her altar, and