bow of Ulysses, and offered
her hand to any one of the suitors who could bend it. It was tried by
them all, but tried in vain. Then the seeming beggar took in his hand
the stout, ashen bow, bent it with ease, and with wonderful skill sent
an arrow hurtling through the rings of twelve axes set up in line. This
done, he turned the terrible bow upon the suitors, sending its
death-dealing arrows whizzing through their midst. Telemachus and
Eumaeus, his swine-keeper, aided him in this work of death, and a
frightful scene of carnage ensued, from which not one of the suitors
escaped with his life.

In the end the hero, freed from his ragged attire, made himself known to
his faithful wife, defeated the friends of the suitors, and recovered
his kingdom from his foes. And thus ends the final episode of the famous
tale of Troy.

_THE VOYAGE OF THE ARGONAUTS._

We are forced to approach the historical period of Greece through a
cloud-land of legend, in which atones of the gods are mingled with those
of men, and the most marvellous of incidents are introduced as if they
were everyday occurrences. The Argonautic expedition belongs to this age
of myth, the vague vestibule of history. It embraces, as does the tale
of the wanderings of Ulysses, very ancient ideas of geography, and many
able men have treated it as the record of an actual voyage, one of the
earliest ventures of the Greeks upon the unknown seas. However this be,
this much is certain, the story is full of romantic and supernatural
elements, and it was largely through these that it became so celebrated
in ancient times.

The story of the voyage of the ship Argo is a tragedy. Pelias, king of
Ioleus, had consulted an oracle concerning the safety of his dominions,
and was warned to beware of the man with one sandal. Soon afterwards
Jason (a descendant of AEolus, the wind god) appeared before him with one
foot unsandalled. He had lost his sandal while crossing a swollen
stream. Pelias, anxious to rid himself of this visitor, against whom the
oracle had warned him, gave to Jason the desperate task of bringing
back to Locus the Golden Fleece (the fleece of a speaking ram which had
borne Phryxus and Helle through the air from Greece, and had reached
Colchis in Asia Minor, where it was dedicated to Mars, the god of war).

Jason, young and daring, accepted without hesitation the perilous task,
and induced a number of the noblest youth of Greece to accompany him in
the e