peaks with a hollow between
them, so that Ithaca, seen far off in the sea, with her two chief
mountain peaks, and a cloven valley between them, looked exactly like a
shield. The country was so rough that men kept no horses, for, at that
time, people drove, standing up in little light chariots with two
horses; they never rode, and there was no cavalry in battle: men fought
from chariots. When Ulysses, the son of Laertes, King of Ithaca grew up,
he never fought from a chariot, for he had none, but always on foot.

If there were no horses in Ithaca, there was plenty of cattle. The
father of Ulysses had flocks of sheep, and herds of swine, and wild
goats, deer, and hares lived in the hills and in the plains. The sea was
full of fish of many sorts, which men caught with nets, and with rod and
line and hook.

Thus Ithaca was a good island to live in. The summer was long, and there
was hardly any winter; only a few cold weeks, and then the swallows came
back, and the plains were like a garden, all covered with wild
flowers--violets, lilies, narcissus, and roses. With the blue sky and
the blue sea, the island was beautiful. White temples stood on the
shores; and the Nymphs, a sort of fairies, had their little shrines
built of stone, with wild rose-bushes hanging over them.

Other islands lay within sight, crowned with mountains, stretching away,
one behind the other, into the sunset. Ulysses in the course of his life
saw many rich countries, and great cities of men, but, wherever he was,
his heart was always in the little isle of Ithaca, where he had learned
how to row, and how to sail a boat, and how to shoot with bow and arrow,
and to hunt boars and stags, and manage his hounds.

The mother of Ulysses was called Anticleia: she was the daughter of King
Autolycus, who lived near Parnassus, a mountain on the mainland. This
King Autolycus was the most cunning of men. He was a Master Thief, and
could steal a man's pillow from under his head, but he does not seem to
have been thought worse of for this. The Greeks had a God of Thieves,
named Hermes, whom Autolycus worshipped, and people thought more good of
his cunning tricks than harm of his dishonesty. Perhaps these tricks of
his were only practised for amusement; however that may be, Ulysses
became as artful as his grandfather; he was both the bravest and the
most cunning of men, but Ulysses never stole things, except once, as we
shall hear, from the enemy in time of war. He