Epitome

But afterwards Alexander carried off Helen, as some say, because such was the will of Zeus, in order that his daughter might be famous for having embroiled Europe and Asia; or, as others have said, that the race of the demigods might be exalted.

For

For nine days he was entertained by Menelaus; but on the tenth day, Menelaus having gone on a journey to Crete to perform the obsequies of his mother's father Catreus, Alexander persuaded Helen to go off[*](The Greek for “to go off” is ἀπαγαγεῖν, a rare use of ἀπάγειν, which, however, occurs in the common phrase, ἄπαγε,“Be off with you!”) with him. And she

But Hera sent them a heavy storm which forced them to put in at Sidon. And fearing lest he should be pursued, Alexander spent much time in Phoenicia and Cyprus.[*](The voyage of Paris and Helen to Sidon was known to Hom. Il. 6.289ff., with the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 6.291. It was also recorded in the epic Cypria, according to Proclus, who says that Paris captured the city (Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 18). Yet according to Hdt. 2.117, the author of the Cypria described how Paris and Helen sailed in three days from Sparta to Ilium with a fair wind and a smooth sea. It seems therefore that Herodotus and Proclus had different texts of the Cypria before them. Dictys Cretensis tells how, driven by the winds to Cyprus, Paris sailed with some ships to Sidon, where he was hospitably entertained by the king, but basely requited his hospitality by treacherously murdering his host and plundering the palace. In embarking with his booty on his ships, he was attacked by the Sidonians, but, after a bloody fight and the loss of two ships, he succeeded in beating off his assailants and putting to sea with the rest of his vessels. See Dictys Cretensis i.5.) But when he thought that all chance of pursuit was over, he came to Troy with Helen.

But some say that Hermes, in obedience to the will of Zeus, stole Helen and carried her to Egypt, and gave her to Proteus, king of the Egyptians, to guard, and that Alexander repaired to Troy with a phantom of Helen fashioned out of clouds.[*](Compare Eur. Hel. 31-51; Eur. Hel. 582ff.; Eur. Hel. 669ff.; Eur. El. 1280ff. In the Helen the dramatist says that Hera, angry with Paris for preferring Aphrodite to her, fashioned a phantom Helen which he wedded, while the real Helen was transported by Hermes to Egypt and committed to the care of Proteus. In the Electra the poet says that it was Zeus who sent a phantom Helen to Troy, in order to stir up strife and provoke bloodshed among men. A different account is given by Hdt. 2.112-120. According to him, Paris carried the real Helen to Egypt, but there king Proteus, indignant at the crime of which Paris had been guilty, banished him from Egypt and detained Helen in safekeeping until her true husband, Menelaus, came and fetched her away. Compare Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. iv.16; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 147ff. Later writers accepted this view, adding that instead of the real Helen, whom he kept, Proteus conjured up by magic art a phantom Helen, which he gave to Paris to carry away with him to Troy. See Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 113; Serv. Verg. A. 1.651 and ii.592. So far as we know, the poet Stesichorus in the sixth century before our era was the first to broach the theory that Helen at Troy, for whom the Greeks and Trojans fought and died, was a mere wraith, while her true self was far away, whether at home in Sparta or with Proteus in Egypt; for there is nothing to show whether Stesichorus shared the opinion that Paris had spirited her away to the East before he returned, with or without her, to Troy. This view the poet propounded by way of an apology to Helen for the evil he had spoken of her in a former poem; for having lost the sight of his eyes he ascribed the loss to the vengeance of the heroine, and sought to propitiate her by formally retracting all the scandals he had bruited about concerning her. See Plat. Phaedrus 243a-b; Plat. Rep. 9.586c; Isoc. 10.64; Paus. 3.19.13; Poetae Lyrici Graeci, ed. Th. Bergk, iii.980ff. )

When Menelaus was aware of the rape, he came to Agamemnon at Mycenae, and begged him to muster an army against Troy and to raise levies in Greece. And he, sending a herald to each of the kings, reminded them of the oaths which they had sworn,[*](As to these oaths, see above, Apollod. 3.10.9.) and warned them to look to the safety each of his own wife, saying that the affront had been offered equally to the whole of Greece. And while many were eager to join in the expedition, some repaired also to Ulysses in Ithaca.

But he, not wishing to go to the war, feigned madness. However, Palamedes, son of Nauplius, proved his madness to be fictitious; and when Ulysses pretended to rave, Palamedes followed him, and snatching Telemachus from Penelope's bosom, drew his sword as if he would kill him. And in his fear for the child Ulysses confessed that his madness was pretended, and he went to the war.[*](As to the madness which Ulysses feigned in order to escape going to the Trojan war, see Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 18; Lucian, De domo 30; Philostratus, Her. xi.2; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 818; Cicero, De officiis iii.26.97; Hyginus, Fab. 95; Serv. Verg. A. 2.81; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Achill. i.93; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 12, 140ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 35; Second Vatican Mythographer 200). The usual story seems to have been that to support his pretence of insanity Ulysses yoked an ox and a horse or an ass to the plough and sowed salt. While he was busy fertilizing the fields in this fashion, the Greek envoys arrived, and Palamedes, seeing through the deception, laid the infant son of Ulysses in front of the plough, whereupon the father at once checked the plough and betrayed his sanity. However, Lucian agrees with Apollodorus in saying that Palamedes threatened the child with his sword, though at the same time, by mentioning the unlike animals yoked together, he shows that he had the scene of the ploughing in his mind. His description purports to be based on a picture, probably a famous picture of the scene which was still exhibited at Ephesus in the time of Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxv.129. Sophocles wrote a play on the subject, called The Mad Ulysses. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 115ff. )

Having taken a Phrygian prisoner, Ulysses compelled him to write a letter of treasonable purport ostensibly sent by Priam to Palamedes; and having buried gold in the quarters of Palamedes, he dropped the letter in the camp. Agamemnon read the letter, found the gold, and delivered up Palamedes to the allies to be stoned as a traitor.[*](The Machiavellian device by which the crafty Ulysses revenged himself on Palamedes for forcing him to go to the war is related more fully by a Scholiast on Eur. Or. 432 and Hyginus, Fab. 105. According to the Scholiast, a servant of Palamedes was bribed to secrete the forged letter and the gold under his master's bed, where they were discovered and treated as damning evidence of treason. According to Hyginus, Ulysses had recourse to a still more elaborate stratagem in order to bury the gold in the earth under the tent of Palamedes. Compare Serv. Verg. A. 2.81; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Achill. i.93; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 12, 140ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 35; Second Vatican Mythographer 200). An entirely different account of the plot against Palamedes is told by Dictys Cretensis ii.15. He says that Ulysses and Diomede induced him to descend into a well, and then buried him under rocks which they hurled down on the top of him.)

Menelaus went with Ulysses and Talthybius to Cinyras in Cyprus and tried to persuade him to join the allies. He made a present of breastplates to the absent Agamemnon,[*](Compare Hom. Il. 11.19ff., who describes only one richly decorated breastplate.) and swore he would send fifty ships, but he sent only one, commanded by the son of Mygdalion, and the rest he moulded out of earth and launched them in the sea.[*](Compare Eustathius on Hom. Il. 11.20, p. 827, who says that, according to some people, Cinyras “swore to Menelaus at Paphos that he would send fifty ships, but he despatched only one, and the rest he fashioned of earth and sent them with earthen men in them; thus he cunningly evaded his oath by keeping it with an earthenware fleet.” Compare the Townley Scholiast on Hom. Il. 11.20, ed. E. Maass (Oxford, 1887), vol. i. p. 378. Wagner may be right in supposing that this ruse of the Cyprian king was recorded in the epic Cypria, though it is not mentioned in the brief summary of the poem compiled by Proclus. See R. Wagner, Epitoma Vaticana ex Apollodori Bibliotheca, pp. 181ff. A different account of the Greek embassy to Cinyras is given by Alcidamas, Od. 20ff., pp. 181ff., ed. Blass. He says that Cinyras bribed the Greek envoy Palamedes to relieve him from military service, and that, though he promised to send a hundred ships, he sent none at all.)

The daughters of Anius, the son of Apollo, to wit,

The armament mustered in Aulis. The men who went to the Trojan war were as follows[*](As to list of the Greek forces which mustered at Aulis, see Hom. Il. 2.494-759; Eur. IA 253ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 97; Dictys Cretensis i.17. The numbers of the ships and leaders recorded by Apollodorus do not always tally with those of Homer. For example, he gives the Boeotians forty ships, while Homer (Hom. Il. 5.509) gives them fifty; and he says that the Phocians had four leaders, whereas Homer (Hom. Il. 5.517) mentions only two. The question of the catalogue of the Greek forces, and its relation to Homer and history, are fully discussed by Dr. Walter Leaf in his Homer and History (London, 1915). He concludes that the catalogue forms no part of the original but was added to it at a later time by a patriotic Boeotian for the purpose of glorifying his people by claiming that they played a very important part in the Trojan war, although this claim is inconsistent with the statement of Thuc. 1.12 that the Boeotians did not migrate into the country henceforth known as Boeotia until sixty years after the capture of Troy. I agree with Dr. Leaf in the belief, which he energetically maintains in this book, that the Trojan war was not a myth, but a real war, “fought out in the place, and at least generally in the manner, described in Homer,” and that the principal heroes and heroines recorded by Homer were not “faded gods” but men and women of flesh and blood, of whose families and fortunes the memory survived in Greek tradition, though no doubt in course of time many mythical traits and incidents gathered round them, as they have gathered round the memories of the Hebrew patriarchs, of Alexander the Great, of Virgil, and of Charlemagne.):— Of the

Of the Argives, Diomedes, son of Tydeus, and his company: they brought eighty ships. Of the Mycenaeans, Agamemnon, son of Atreus and Aerope: a hundred ships. Of the Lacedaemonians, Menelaus, son of Atreus and Aerope: sixty ships. Of the Pylians, Nestor, son of Neleus and Chloris: forty ships. Of the Arcadians, Agapenor: seven ships. Of the Eleans, Amphimachus and his company: forty ships. Of the Dulichians, Meges, son of Phyleus: forty ships. Of the Cephallenians, Ulysses, son of Laertes and Anticlia: twelve ships. Of the Aetolians, Thoas, son of Andraemon and Gorge: he brought forty ships.

Of the Cretans, Idomeneus, son of Deucalion: forty ships. Of the Rhodians, Tlepolemus, son of Hercules and Astyoche: nine ships. Of the Symaeans,

Of the Myrmidons, Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis: fifty ships. From Phylace, Protesilaus, son of Iphiclus: forty ships. Of the Pheraeans, Eumelus, son of Admetus: eleven ships. Of the Olizonians, Philoctetes, son of Poeas: seven ships. Of the Aeanianians, Guneus, son of Ocytus: twenty-two ships. Of the Triccaeans, Podalirius:thirty ships. Of the Ormenians, Eurypylus: forty ships. Of the Gyrtonians, Polypoetes, son of Pirithous: thirty ships. Of the Magnesians, Prothous, son of Tenthredon: forty ships. The total of ships was one thousand and thirteen; of leaders, forty-three; of leaderships, thirty.

When the armament was in Aulis, after a sacrifice to Apollo, a serpent darted from the altar beside the neighboring plane-tree, in which there was a nest; and having consumed the eight sparrows in the nest, together with the mother bird, which made the ninth, it was turned to stone. Calchas said that this sign was given them by the will of Zeus, and he inferred from what had happened that Troy was destined to be taken in a period of ten years.[*](Compare Hom. Il. 2.299-330; Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 18; Cicero, De divinatione ii.30.63-65; Ov. Met. 12.11-23.) And they made ready to sail against Troy.

So Agamemnon in person was in command of the whole