d it shall surely be--that if I
again catch you talking such nonsense, I will either forfeit my own
head and be no more called father of Telemachus, or I will take you,
strip you stark naked, and whip you out of the assembly till you go
blubbering back to the ships."

On this he beat him with his staff about the back and shoulders till he
dropped and fell a-weeping. The golden sceptre raised a bloody weal on
his back, so he sat down frightened and in pain, looking foolish as he
wiped the tears from his eyes. The people were sorry for him, yet they
laughed heartily, and one would turn to his neighbour saying, "Ulysses
has done many a good thing ere now in fight and council, but he never
did the Argives a better turn than when he stopped this fellow's mouth
from prating further. He will give the kings no more of his insolence."

Thus said the people. Then Ulysses rose, sceptre in hand, and Minerva
in the likeness of a herald bade the people be still, that those who
were far off might hear him and consider his council. He therefore with
all sincerity and goodwill addressed them thus:--

"King Agamemnon, the Achaeans are for making you a by-word among all
mankind. They forget the promise they made you when they set out from
Argos, that you should not return till you had sacked the town of Troy,
and, like children or widowed women, they murmur and would set off
homeward. True it is that they have had toil enough to be disheartened.
A man chafes at having to stay away from his wife even for a single
month, when he is on shipboard, at the mercy of wind and sea, but it is
now nine long years that we have been kept here; I cannot, therefore,
blame the Achaeans if they turn restive; still we shall be shamed if we
go home empty after so long a stay--therefore, my friends, be patient
yet a little longer that we may learn whether the prophesyings of
Calchas were false or true.

"All who have not since perished must remember as though it were
yesterday or the day before, how the ships of the Achaeans were
detained in Aulis when we were on our way hither to make war on Priam
and the Trojans. We were ranged round about a fountain offering
hecatombs to the gods upon their holy altars, and there was a fine
plane-tree from beneath which there welled a stream of pure water. Then
we saw a prodigy; for Jove sent a fearful serpent out of the ground,
with blood-red stains upon its back, and it darted from under the altar
on to the plane-tr