Part 18 (2/2)
Flushed with their first success, Coroebus, one of the forlorn hope, cried: ”Hark ye, comrades, I have bethought me of a glorious stratagem; let us exchange arms and scutcheons with our dead foemen.
All is fair in war.” No sooner said than done; and great was the havoc they wrought at the first by this disguise, but in the end it cost them dear.
As they pa.s.sed by the temple of Minerva they were arrested by a piteous spectacle. Ca.s.sandra, the prophetic maid, was being dragged from the altar by the rude soldiery, her hair disheveled, her arms pinioned, and her eyes upturned to heaven. Coroebus' high spirit could not brook the sight, and he hurled himself on the ruffians, the rest following his lead. Though outnumbered they held, and more than held, their own, till from the pinnacles of the temple a whole battery of rocks and missiles rained down on their devoted heads. Their disguise had too well deceived the defenders of the temple, and soon the a.s.sailants were reinforced by the main body of the Greeks, with Ajax and the two Atridae at their head, who soon penetrated their disguise.
Coroebus was the first to fall; then Ripeus, the justest ruler in all Troy; nor did his gray hairs and the fillet of Apollo that he wore save Panthus from the common fate.
aeneas, with two wounded comrades, all that was left of that devoted band, made his way to the palace of Priam, where it looked as if the whole Greek force had gathered. Part were working battering-rams against the solid masonry, others planting scaling ladders against the walls, up which the boldest, with s.h.i.+elds held high above their heads, were already swarming, while the garrison hurled down on them stones, tiles, whatever came to hand; even the gilded beams of the royal chambers.
At the rear of the palace was a postern gate leading to a covered pa.s.sage that connected the house of Hector and Andromache with the palace. By this aeneas entered and climbed to a watch-tower that commanded the whole city, the plain with the Greek encampments, and beyond, the sea, now studded with s.h.i.+ps. At his bidding the guards set to work, and soon, with axes and crow-bars, they had loosened the foundations of the turret. It tottered, it toppled, and fell with a mighty crash, burying hundreds of the besiegers beneath its ruins. But what were they among so many?
At the main entrance of the palace stood Neoptolemus in his glittering armor, like a snake who has lost its winter weeds, and s.n.a.t.c.hing a double-headed ax from a common soldier, he battered in the panels and wrenched the ma.s.sive door from its bra.s.s hinges. Through the long corridors and gilded ante-chambers, like a river that has burst its dam, the flood of armed Greeks swept on, and from the inner chambers there came a long-drawn wail of women's voices that s.h.i.+vered to the golden stars. On came Neoptolemus, sweeping before him the feeble palace guards. The cedarn doors gave way like match-wood, and there, huddled on the floor or clinging to the pillars of the tapestried chamber, he beheld, like sheep led to the slaughter, the queen and the princesses, the fifty daughters and fifty daughters-in-law of King Priam. But where was Priam the while?
In the center of the palace was a court open to the sky, and in the center of the court was a great altar over-shadowed by an immemorial bay-tree. Hither Hecuba and her kinswomen had fled for refuge when the rabble of soldiers burst in on them, and in the court she espied her aged husband girt in armor that ill-fitted his shrunken limbs, and she called to him, ”What madness hath seized thee thus to rush to certain death? Hector himself could not save us now; what can thy feeble arms avail? Take sanctuary with us. Either this altar shall protect us or here we shall all perish together!”
The feeble old king yielded to his wife's entreaties, but hardly had he reached the altar when he beheld Polites, the child of his old age, whom he loved most now Hector was dead, limping towards them like a wounded hare, and close behind him in hot pursuit Neoptolemus with outstretched lance; and a moment after the son fell transfixed at his father's feet. ”Wretch,” he cried, beside himself with righteous wrath, ”more fell than dire Achilles! _He_ gave me back my son's corpse, but thou hast stained my gray hairs and G.o.d's altar with a son's blood.” He spake, and hurled at Neoptolemus with nerveless arm a spear that scarce had force to pierce the outmost fold of the targe.
With a scornful laugh Neoptolemus turned on him, and dragged him by his long white beard from the altar. ”Die, old dotard,” he cried, ”and in the shades be sure thou tell my sire Achilles what a degenerate son is his.” So saying, he drove his sword to the old king's heart.
”Such was the end of Priam, such his fate, To see in death his house all desolate, And Troy, whom erst a hundred states obeyed, A heap of blackened stones in ruin laid.
A headless corpse washed by the salt sea tide, Not e'en a stone to show where Priam died.”
THE DEATH OF AJAX
BY F. STORR
Of all the Greek knights who fought against Troy the boldest and most chivalrous was Ajax, son of Telamon. But his fiery temper oft proved his bane, and in the end it led him to ruin and death.
When Achilles died he left his arms to be awarded by the captains of the host to him whom they should p.r.o.nounce the bravest of the Greeks, and the prize fell to Ulysses.
Ajax took this award in high dudgeon, and, knowing himself the better man, affirmed that this judgment could have been procured only by fraud and corruption, and swore that he would be avenged of his crafty rival. He challenged his enemy to single combat, but Ulysses was too wary to risk his life against such a swordsman, and the chiefs who heard of the quarrel interfered, saying that Greek must not take the blood of Greek. Thus balked, Ajax raged more furiously, and swore that if Ulysses would not fight he would slay him in his tent.
So Ulysses went about in fear of his life, and he appealed to his patron G.o.ddess to defend him. Minerva heard his prayer, and promised her favorite warrior that he should suffer no harm. She kept her word by sending on Ajax a strong delusion, whereby in his frenzy he mistook beasts for men.
The Greeks found the herds and flocks that had been taken in raids, and were kept in pound as a common stock to feed the army, hacked and hewn in the night, as though a mountain lion had been ravaging them; and they suspected Ajax, whose strange behavior none could fail to notice, as the offender, but they had no certain proof, and Ulysses, the man of many wiles, was by common consent deputed to search into the matter.
So the next night he stole forth from the camp alone, and in the early light of dawn he espied a solitary figure hurrying over the plain, and he followed the trail like a bloodhound till it led him to the tent of Ajax.
He paused uncertain, for he dared not venture farther, and was about to return and report to the commanders what he had seen, when he heard a voice saying, ”Ulysses, what dost thou here?” and he knew it could be none other than the voice of his own G.o.ddess Minerva.
He told her the case and craved her aid in his perplexity, and the G.o.ddess gently upbraided him. ”Thou wert no coward soul, Ulysses, when I chose thee as my favored knight, and now dost thou fear a single unarmed man, and one by me bereft of his wits?” And Ulysses answered, ”G.o.ddess, I am no coward, but the bravest may quail before a raving madman.” But Minerva replied, ”Be of good heart, and trust as ever to me. Lo, I will show thee a sight whereon thou mayst glut thine eyes.”
Thereupon she opened the flap of the tent, and within stood Ajax, wild and haggard, his hands dripping with gore, and all around him were sheep and oxen, some beheaded, some ripped up, and some horribly mutilated--a very shambles. At the moment Ajax was belaboring a huge ram that he had strapped up to a pillar of the tent, and, as each blow of the double thong descended he shouted, ”Take that, Ulysses; that's for thy knavery, that for thy villainy, that for thy lies, thou white-livered rogue.” Ulysses could not but smile as he saw himself scourged and cursed in effigy, but he was touched by a thought of human infirmity and the ruin of a n.o.ble soul, and he prayed the G.o.ddess to avert from him such a calamity.
In the women's tent hard by sat Tecmessa, the captive wife of Ajax, weeping and wringing her hands. His tender love had made her forget her desolate home and slaughtered brethren, and she had borne him a son, the pride and joy of both parents. But ever since he had lost the prize for bravery she had noted a growing estrangement. He avoided her, meeting her advances with cold looks, and the night before, when she asked him why he was girding on his armor at that hour, he had answered her, ”Silence, woman; women should be seen, not heard.” And then he had gone forth and returned with these beeves and sheep that he was now hacking to pieces like a madman. Their boy she had sent away with his nurse to be out of harm's way, and she sat cowering in her tent.
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