, and welcome him, and carry
him to his own palace. Then he gave a great feast, and when men had
drunk much wine, the armed men, who had been hiding behind curtains,
rushed out, with sword and spear, and fell on Agamemnon and his company.
Though taken by surprise they drew their swords, and fought so well for
their lives that none were left alive, not one, neither of the company
of Agamemnon nor of the company of Aegisthus; they were all slain in the
hall except Aegisthus, who had hidden himself when the fray began. The
bodies lay round the great mixing bowl of wine, and about the tables,
and the floor ran with blood. Before Agamemnon died he saw Clytaemnestra
herself stab Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, whom he had brought from
Troy.

In the town of Agamemnon, Mycenae, deep down in the earth, have been
found five graves, with bones of men and women, and these bones were all
covered with beautiful ornaments of gold, hundreds of them, and swords
and daggers inlaid with gold, and golden cups, and a sceptre of gold and
crystal, and two gold breastplates. There were also golden masks that
had been made to cover the faces of the dead kings, and who knows but
that one of these masks may show us the features of the famous
Agamemnon?

Ulysses, of course, knew nothing about these murders at the time, for he
was being borne by the winds into undiscovered seas. But later he heard
all the story from the ghost of a dead prophet, in the Land of the Dead,
and he determined to be very cautious if ever he reached his own island,
for who knew what the young men might do, that had grown up since he
sailed to Troy?

Of the other Greeks Nestor soon and safely arrived at his town of Pylos,
but Menelaus and Helen were borne by the winds to Egypt and other
strange countries, and the ship of the brother of Aias was wrecked on a
rock, and there he was drowned, and Calchas the prophet died on land, on
his way across Greece.

When Ulysses left Troy the wind carried him to the coast of Thrace,
where the people were allies of the Trojans. It was a king of the
Thracians that Diomede killed when he and Ulysses stole into the camp of
the Trojans in the night, and drove away the white horses of the king,
as swift as the winds. Ismarus was the name of the Thracian town where
Ulysses landed, and his men took it and plundered it, yet Ulysses
allowed no one to harm the priest of Apollo, Maron, but protected him
and his wife and child, in their house