showed his cunning in
stratagems of war, and in many strange escapes from giants and
man-eaters.

Soon after Ulysses was born, his grandfather came to see his mother and
father in Ithaca. He was sitting at supper when the nurse of Ulysses,
whose name was Eurycleia, brought in the baby, and set him on the knees
of Autolycus, saying, 'Find a name for your grandson, for he is a child
of many prayers.'

'I am very angry with many men and women in the world,' said Autolycus,
'so let the child's name be _A Man of Wrath_,' which, in Greek, was
Odysseus. So the child was called Odysseus by his own people, but the
name was changed into Ulysses, and we shall call him Ulysses.

We do not know much about Ulysses when he was a little boy, except that
he used to run about the garden with his father, asking questions, and
begging that he might have fruit trees 'for his very own.' He was a
great pet, for his parents had no other son, so his father gave him
thirteen pear trees, and forty fig trees, and promised him fifty rows of
vines, all covered with grapes, which he could eat when he liked,
without asking leave of the gardener. So he was not tempted to steal
fruit, like his grandfather.

When Autolycus gave Ulysses his name, he said that he must come to stay
with him, when he was a big boy, and he would get splendid presents.
Ulysses was told about this, so, when he was a tall lad, he crossed the
sea and drove in his chariot to the old man's house on Mount Parnassus.
Everybody welcomed him, and next day his uncles and cousins and he went
out to hunt a fierce wild boar, early in the morning. Probably Ulysses
took his own dog, named Argos, the best of hounds, of which we shall
hear again, long afterwards, for the dog lived to be very old. Soon the
hounds came on the scent of a wild boar, and after them the men went,
with spears in their hands, and Ulysses ran foremost, for he was already
the swiftest runner in Greece.

He came on a great boar lying in a tangled thicket of boughs and
bracken, a dark place where the sun never shone, nor could the rain
pierce through. Then the noise of the men's shouts and the barking of
the dogs awakened the boar, and up he sprang, bristling all over his
back, and with fire shining from his eyes. In rushed Ulysses first of
all, with his spear raised to strike, but the boar was too quick for
him, and ran in, and drove his sharp tusk sideways, ripping up the thigh
of Ulysses. But the boar's tusk miss