avert the ruin of
his family.

In relation to the story of the death of Achilles, Dictys the Cretan
tells us, that Achilles having seen Polyxena, the daughter of Priam,
along with Cassandra, as she was sacrificing to Apollo, fell in love
with her, and demanded her in marriage and that Hector would not
consent to it, except on condition of his betraying the Greeks. This
demand, so injurious to his honour, provoked Achilles so much, that
he forthwith slew Hector, and dragged his body round the walls of
the city. He further says that when Priam went to demand the body of
Hector, he took Polyxena with him, in order to soften Achilles. His
design succeeded, and Priam then agreed to give her to him in
marriage. On the day appointed for the solemnity in the temple of
Apollo, Paris, concealing himself behind the altar, while Deiphobus
pretended to embrace Achilles, wounded him in the heel, and killed
him on the spot, either because the arrow was poisoned, or because
he was wounded on the great tendon, which has since been called
'tendon Achillis,' a spot where a wound might very easily be mortal.

This story of the death of Achilles does not seem to have been known
to Homer; for he appears, in the twenty-fourth book of the Odyssey,
to insinuate that that hero died in battle, fighting for the Grecian
cause.

After his death Achilles was honoured as a Demigod, and Strabo says
that he had a temple near the promontory of Sigaeum. Pausanias and
Pliny the Elder make mention of an island in the Euxine Sea, where
the memory of Achilles was expressly honoured, from which
circumstances it had the name of Achillea.

BOOK THE THIRTEENTH.

FABLE I. [XIII.1-438]

After the death of Achilles, Ajax and Ulysses contend for his
armour; the Greek chiefs having adjudged it to the last, Ajax kills
himself in despair, and his blood is changed into a flower. When
Ulysses has brought Philoctetes, who is possessed of the arrows of
Hercules, to the siege, and the destinies of Troy are thereby
accomplished, the city is taken and sacked, and Hecuba becomes the
slave of Ulysses.

The chiefs were seated; and a ring of the common people standing
{around}, Ajax, the lord of the seven-fold shield, arose before them.
And as he was impatient in his wrath, with stern features he looked back
upon the Sigaean shores, and the fleet upon the shore, and, stretching
out his hands, he sa