ecree of fate; and it is this year which forms the subject
of the Iliad. Achilles, offended by Agamemnon, abstains from the war;
and in his absence the Greeks are no match for Hector. The Trojans
drive them back into their camp, and are already setting fire to their
ships, when Achilles gives his armour to his friend Patroclus, and
allows him to charge at the head of the Myrmidons. Patroclus repulses
the Trojans from the ships, but the god Apollo is against him, and he
falls under the spear of Hector. Desire to avenge the death of his
friend proves more powerful in the breast of Achilles than anger
against Agamemnon. He appears again in the field in new and gorgeous
armour, forged for him by the god Hephrastus (Vulcan) at the prayer of
Thetis. The Trojans fly before him, and, although Achilles is aware
that his own death must speedily follow that of the Trojan hero, he
slays Hector in single combat.

The Iliad closes with the burial of Hector. The death of Achilles and
the capture of Troy were related in later poems. The hero of so many
achievements perishes by an arrow shot by the unwarlike Paris, but
directed by the hand of Apollo. The noblest combatants had now fallen
on either side, and force of arms had proved unable to accomplish what
stratagem at length effects. It is Ulysses who now steps into the
foreground and becomes the real conqueror of Troy. By his advice a
wooden horse is built, in whose inside he and other heroes conceal
themselves. The infatuated Trojans admit the horse within their walls.
In the dead of night the Greeks rush out and open the gates to their
comrades. Troy is delivered over to the sword, and its glory sinks in
ashes. The fall of Troy is placed in the year 1184 B.C.

The return of the Grecian leaders from Troy forms another series of
poetical legends. Several meet with tragical ends. Agamemnon is
murdered on his arrival at Mycenae, by his wife Clytaemnestra and her
paramour AEgisthus. But of these wanderings the most celebrated and
interesting are those of Ulysses, which form the subject of the
Odyssey. After twenty years' absence he arrives at length in Ithaca,
where he slays the numerous suitors who devoured his substance and
contended for the hand of his wife Penelope.

The Homeric poems must not be regarded as a record of historical
persons and events, but, at the same time, they present a valuable
picture of the institutions and manners of the earliest known state