joy and surprise, for his ship had not
yet returned from Delos, and they could not guess how Ulysses had come
back alone across the sea. So two of the sentinels guarded Ulysses to
the hut of Agamemnon, where he and Achilles and all the chiefs were
sitting at a feast. They all leaped up, but when Ulysses took the Luck
of Troy from within his mantle, they cried that this was the bravest deed
that had been done in the war, and they sacrificed ten oxen to Zeus.

"So you were the old beggar," said young Thrasymedes.

"Yes," said Ulysses, "and when next you beat a beggar, Thrasymedes, do
not strike so hard and so long."

That night all the Greeks were full of hope, for now they had the Luck of
Troy, but the Trojans were in despair, and guessed that the beggar was
the thief, and that Ulysses had been the beggar. The priestess, Theano,
could tell them nothing; they found her, with the extinguished torch
drooping in her hand, asleep, as she sat on the step of the altar, and
she never woke again.

THE BATTLES WITH THE AMAZONS AND MEMNON--THE DEATH OF ACHILLES

Ulysses thought much and often of Helen, without whose kindness he could
not have saved the Greeks by stealing the Luck of Troy. He saw that,
though she remained as beautiful as when the princes all sought her hand,
she was most unhappy, knowing herself to be the cause of so much misery,
and fearing what the future might bring. Ulysses told nobody about the
secret which she had let fall, the coming of the Amazons.

The Amazons were a race of warlike maids, who lived far away on the banks
of the river Thermodon. They had fought against Troy in former times,
and one of the great hill-graves on the plain of Troy covered the ashes
of an Amazon, swift-footed Myrine. People believed that they were the
daughters of the God of War, and they were reckoned equal in battle to
the bravest men. Their young Queen, Penthesilea, had two reasons for
coming to fight at Troy: one was her ambition to win renown, and the
other her sleepless sorrow for having accidentally killed her sister,
Hippolyte, when hunting. The spear which she threw at a stag struck
Hippolyte and slew her, and Penthesilea cared no longer for her own life,
and desired to fall gloriously in battle. So Penthesilea and her
bodyguard of twelve Amazons set forth from the wide streams of Thermodon,
and rode into Troy. The story says that they did not drive in chariots,
like all the Greek and Trojan chie