Chapter 21

Chapter XXI
The Fall of Troy. Return of the Greeks. Orestes and Electra The story of the Iliad ends with the death of Hector, and it is
from the Odyssey and later poems that we learn the fate of the
other heroes. After the death of Hector, Troy did not
immediately fall, but receiving aid from new allies still
continued its resistance. One of these allies was Memnon, the
AETHIOPIAN prince, whose story we have already told. Another was
Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, who came with a band of female
warriors. All the authorities attest their valor and the fearful
effect of their war-cry. Penthesilea slew many of the bravest
warriors, but was at last slain by Achilles. But when the hero
bent over his fallen foe, and contemplated her beauty, youth and
valor, he bitterly regretted his victory. Thersites, an insolent
brawler and demagogue, ridiculed his grief, and was in
consequence slain by the hero. Achilles by chance had seen Polyxena, daughter of King Priam,
perhaps on occasion of the truce which was allowed the Trojans
for the burial of Hector. He was captivated with her charms, and
to win her in marriage agreed to use his influence with the
Greeks to grant peace to Troy. While in the temple of Apollo,
negotiating the marriage, Paris discharged at him a poisoned
arrow, which guided by Apollo, wounded Achilles in the heel, the
only vulnerable part about him. For Thetis, his mother, had
dipped him when an infant in the river Styx, which made every
part of him invulnerable except the heel by which she held him.
(The story of the invulnerability of Achilles is not found in
Homer, and is inconsistent with his account. For how could
Achilles require the aid of celestial armor if he were
invulnerable?) The body of Achilles, so treacherously slain, was rescued by Ajax
and Ulysses. Thetis directed the Greeks to bestow her son's
armor on the hero who, of all survivors, should be judged most
deserving of it. Ajax and Ulysses were the only claimants; a
select number of the other chiefs were appointed to award the
prize. It was awarded to Ulysses, thus placing wisdom before
valor; whereupon Ajax slew himself. On the spot where his blood
sank into the earth a flower sprang up, called the hyacinth,
bearing on its leaves the first two letters of the name of Ajax,
Ai, the Greek for "woe." Thus Ajax is a claimant with the boy
Hyacinthus for the honor of giving birth to this flower. There
is a species of Larkspur which represents the hyacinth of the
poets in preserving the memory of this event, the Delphinium
Ajacis Ajax's Larkspur. It was now discovered that Troy could not be taken but by the
arrows of Hercules. They were in possession of Philoctetes, the
friend who had been with Hercules at the last, and