a victory purchased by so many
hardships, had neither respected nor even spared the altars of the gods
in Troy. Athene, who had been their most zealous ally during the siege,
was so incensed by their final recklessness, more especially by the
outrage of Ajax, son of Oileus, that she actively harassed and
embittered their return, in spite of every effort to appease her. The
chiefs began to quarrel among themselves; their formal assembly became a
scene of drunkenness; even Agamemnon and Menelaus lost their fraternal
harmony, and each man acted on his own separate resolution.
Nevertheless, according to the _Odyssey_, Nestor, Diomedes, Neoptolemus,
Idomeneus, and Philoctetes reached home speedily and safely; Agamemnon
also arrived in Peloponnesus, to perish by the hand of a treacherous
wife; but Menelaus was condemned to long wanderings and to the severest
privations in Egypt, Cyprus, and elsewhere before he could set foot in
his native land. The Locrian Ajax perished on the Gyraean rock. Though
exposed to a terrible storm, he had already reached this place of
safety, when he indulged in the rash boast of having escaped in defiance
of the gods. No sooner did Poseidon hear this language than he struck
with his trident the rock which Ajax was grasping and precipitated both
into the sea. Calchas, the soothsayer, together with Leonteus and
Polypoetes, proceeded by land from Troy to Colophon.

In respect, however, to these and other Grecian heroes, tales were told
different from those in the _Odyssey_, assigning to them a long
expatriation and a distant home. Nestor went to Italy, where he founded
Metapontum, Pisa, and Heracleia: Philoctetes also went to Italy, founded
Petilia and Crimisa, and sent settlers to Egesta in Sicily. Neoptolemus,
under the advice of Thetis, marched by land across Thrace, met with
Odysseus, who had come by sea, at Maroneia, and then pursued his journey
to Epirus, where he became king of the Molossians. Idomeneus came to
Italy, and founded Uria in the Salentine peninsula. Diomedes, after
wandering far and wide, went along the Italian coast into the innermost
Adriatic gulf, and finally settled in Daunia, founding the cities of
Argyrippa, Beneventum, Atria, and Diomedeia: by the favor of Athene he
became immortal, and was worshipped as a god in many different places.
The Locrian followers of Ajax founded the Epizephyrian Locri on the
southernmost corner of Italy, besides another settlement in Libya.

The