was quite content with his kingdom and his little son
Telemachus. Indeed, he was so unwilling to leave them that he feigned
madness in order to escape service, appeared to forget his own kindred,
and went ploughing the seashore and sowing salt in the furrows. But a
messenger, Palamedes, who came with the summons to war, suspected that
this sudden madness might be a stratagem, for the king was far famed as a
man of many devices. He therefore stood by, one day (while Ulysses,
pretending to take no heed of him, went ploughing the sand) and he laid
the baby Telemachus directly in the way of the ploughshare. For once the
wise man's craft deserted him. Ulysses turned the plough sharply, caught
up the little prince, and there his fatherly wits were manifest! After
this he could no longer play madman. He had to take leave of his beloved
wife Penelope and set out to join the heroes, little dreaming that he was
not to return for twenty years. Once embarked, however, he set himself to
work in the common cause of the heroes, and was soon as ingenious as
Palamedes in rousing laggard warriors.

There remained one who was destined to be the greatest warrior of all.
This was Achilles, the son of Thetis,--foretold in the day of Prometheus
as a man who should far outstrip his own father in glory and greatness.
Years had passed since the marriage of Thetis to King Peleus, and their
son Achilles was now grown to manhood, a wonder of strength indeed, and,
moreover, invulnerable. For his mother, forewarned of his death in the
Trojan War, had dipped him in the sacred river Styx when he was a baby, so
that he could take no hurt from any weapon. From head to foot she had
plunged him in, only forgetting the little heel that she held him by, and
this alone could be wounded by any chance. But even with such precautions
Thetis was not content. Fearful at the rumors of war to be, she had her
son brought up, in woman's dress, among the daughters of King Lycomedes of
Scyros, that he might escape the notice of men and cheat his destiny.

To this very palace, however, came Ulysses in the guise of a merchant, and
he spread his wares before the royal household,--jewels and ivory, fine
fabrics, and curiously wrought weapons. The king's daughters chose girdles
and veils and such things as women delight in; but Achilles, heedless of
the like, sought out the weapons, and handled them with such manly
pleasure that his nature stood revealed. So he, too, yielded