this endless and useless
war.

Thus nine years of warfare passed, and Troy remained untaken and
seemingly unshaken. How the two hosts managed to live in the mean time
the tellers of the story do not say. Thucydides, the historian, thinks
it likely that the Greeks had to farm the neighboring lands for food.
How the Trojans and their allies contrived to survive so long within
their walls we are left to surmise, unless they farmed their streets.
And thus we reach the opening of the tenth year and of Homer's "Iliad."

Homer's story is too long for us to tell in detail, and too full of war
and bloodshed for modern taste. We can only give it in epitome.

Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, robs Achilles of his beautiful
captive Briseis, and the invulnerable hero, furious at the insult,
retires in sullen rage to his ships, forbids his troops to take part in
the war, and sulks in anger while battle after battle is fought.
Deprived of his mighty aid, the Greeks find the Trojans quite their
match, and the fortunes of the warring hosts vary day by day.

On a watch-tower in Troy sits Helen the beautiful, gazing out on the
field of conflict, and naming for old Priam, who sits beside her, the
Grecian leaders as they appear at the head of their hosts on the plain
below. On this plain meet in fierce combat Paris the abductor and
Menelaus the indignant husband. Vengeance lends double weight to the
spear of the latter, and Paris is so fiercely assailed that Venus has to
come to his aid to save him from death. Meanwhile a Trojan archer wounds
Menelaus with an arrow, and a general battle ensues.

The conflict is a fierce one, and many warriors on both sides are slain.
Diomedes, a bold Grecian chieftain, is the hero of the day. Trojans fall
by scores before his mighty spear, he rages in fury from side to side of
the field, and at length meets the great AEneas, whose thigh he breaks
with a huge stone. But AEneas is the son of the goddess Venus, who flies
to his aid and bears him from the field. The furious Greek daringly
pursues the flying divinity, and even succeeds in wounding the goddess
of love with his impious spear. At this sad outcome Venus, to whom
physical pain is a new sensation, flies in dismay to Olympus, the home
of the deities, and hides her weeping face in the lap of Father Jove,
while her lady enemies taunt her with biting sarcasms. The whole scene
is an amusing example of the childish folly of mythology.

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