h the people. Embarking
again, they were driven by a storm back to Greece. Adverse winds now
kept them at Aulis until Agamemnon appeased the hostile gods by
sacrificing to them his daughter Iphigenia,--one of the ways which those
old heathens had of obtaining fair weather. Then the winds changed, and
the fleet made its way to the island of Tenedos, in the vicinity of
Troy. From here Ulysses and Menelaus were sent to that city as envoys to
demand a return of Helen and the stolen property.

Meanwhile the Trojans, well aware of what was in store for them, had
made abundant preparations, and gathered an army of allies from various
parts of Thrace and Asia Minor. They received the two Greek envoys
hospitably, paid them every attention, but sustained the villany of
Paris, and refused to deliver Helen and the treasure. When this word was
brought back to the fleet the chiefs decided on immediate war, and sail
was made for the neighboring shores of the Trojan realm.

Of the long-drawn-out war that followed we know little more than what
Homer has told us, though something may be learned from other ancient
poems. The first Greek to land fell by the hand of Hector, the Trojan
hero,--as the gods had foretold. But in vain the Trojans sought to
prevent the landing; they were quickly put to rout, and Cycnus, one of
their greatest warriors and son of the god Neptune, was slain by
Achilles. He was invulnerable to iron, but was choked to death by the
hero and changed into a swan. The Trojans were driven within their city
walls, and the invulnerable Achilles, with what seems a safe valor,
stormed and sacked numerous towns in the neighborhood, killed one of
King Priam's sons, captured and sold as slaves several others, drove off
the oxen of the celebrated warrior AEneas, and came near to killing that
hero himself. He also captured and kept as his own prize a beautiful
maiden named Briseis, and was even granted, through the favor of the
gods, an interview with the divine Helen herself.

This is about all we know of the doings of the first nine years of the
war. What the Greeks were at during that long time neither history nor
legend tells. The only other event of importance was the death of
Palamedes, one of the ablest Grecian chiefs. It was he who had detected
the feigned madness of Ulysses, and tradition relates that he owed his
death to the revengeful anger of that cunning schemer, who had not
forgiven him for being made to take part in