s driven by the Erinyes
(Furies) of his mother into madness and exile.

[22] This their king so wise.]--Agamemnon made the war for the sake of
his brother Menelaus, and slew his daughter, Iphigenia, as a sacrifice
at Aulis, to enable the ships to sail for Troy.

[23] Hector and Paris.]--The point about Hector is clear, but as to
Paris, the feeling that, after all, it was a glory that he and the
half-divine Helen loved each other, is scarcely to be found anywhere
else in Greek literature. (Cf., however, Isocrates' "Praise of Helen.")
Paris and Helen were never idealised like Launcelot and Guinevere, or
Tristram and Iseult.

[24] A wise queen.]--Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus.

[25] O Heralds, yea, Voices of Death.]--There is a play on the word for
"heralds" in the Greek here, which I have evaded by a paraphrase.
([Greek: Kaer-ukes] as though from [Greek: Kaer] the death-spirit, "the
one thing abhorred of all mortal men.")

[26] That in this place she dies.]--The death of Hecuba is connected
with a certain heap of stones on the shore of the Hellespont, called
_Kunossema_, or "Dog's Tomb." According to one tradition (Eur. _Hec_.
1259 ff.) she threw herself off the ship into the sea; according to
another she was stoned by the Greeks for her curses upon the fleet; but
in both she is changed after death into a sort of Hell-hound. M. Victor
Berard suggests that the dog first comes into the story owing to the
accidental resemblance of the (hypothetical) Semitic word _S'qoulah_,
"Stone" or "Stoning," and the Greek _Skulax_, dog. The Homeric Scylla
(_Skulla_) was also both a Stone and a Dog (_Pheneciens et Odyssee_, i.
213). Of course in the present passage there is no direct reference to
these wild sailor-stories.

[27] The wind comes quick.]--_i.e._. The storm of the Prologue. Three
Powers: the three Erinyes.

[28] ff., Chorus.]--The Wooden Horse is always difficult to understand,
and seems to have an obscuring effect on the language of poets who treat
of it. I cannot help suspecting that the story arises from a real
historical incident misunderstood. Troy, we are told, was still holding
out after ten years and could not be taken, until at last by the divine
suggestions of Athena, a certain Epeios devised a "Wooden Horse."

What was the "device"? According to the _Odyssey_ and most Greek poets,
it was a gigantic wooden figure of a horse. A party of heroes, led by
Odysseus, got inside it and waited. The Greeks