He also obtained the arrows of Hercules, from Philoctētes, and carried off that hero from the scene of his retreat. He brought away also the ashes of Laomĕdon, which were preserved in Troy on the Scœan gate. By him the Palladium was stolen from the same city; Rhesus, king of Thrace, killed, and his horses taken before they had drank of the Xanthus. These exploits involved in them the destiny of Troy; for had the Trojans preserved them, their city could never have been conquered.
Ulysses contended afterwards with Telamonian Ajax, the stoutest of all the Grecians, except Achilles, for the arms of that hero, which were awarded to him by the judges, who were won by the charms of his eloquence. His other enterprises before Troy were numerous and brilliant, and are particularly related in the Iliad. When Ulysses departed for Greece, he sailed backwards and forwards for twenty years, contrary winds and severe weather opposing his return to Ithăca.
During this period, he extinguished, with a firebrand, the eye of Polyphēmus; then sailing to Æolia, he obtained from Æŏlus all the winds which were contrary to him, and put them into leathern bags; his companions, however, believing these bags to be full of money, entered into a plot to rob him, and accordingly, when they came on the coast of Ithăca, untied the bags, upon which the wind rushing out, he was again blown back to Æolia.
When Circe had turned his companions into swine and other brutes, he first fortified himself against her charms with the herb Moly, an antidote Mercury had given him; and then rushing into her cave with his drawn sword, compelled her to restore his associates to their original shape.
He is said to have gone down into hell, to know his future fortune, from the prophet Tiresias. When he sailed to the islands of the Sirens, he stopped the ears of his companions, and bound himself with strong ropes to the ship's mast, that he might secure himself against the snares into which, by their charming voices, passengers were habitually allured. Lastly, after his ship was wrecked, he escaped by swimming, and came naked and alone, to the port of Phæacia, in the island of Corcyra, where Nausicăa, daughter of king Alcinŏus, found him in a profound sleep, into which he was thrown by the indulgence of Minerva.
When his companions were found, and his ship refitted, he bent his course toward Ithăca, where arriving, and having put on the habit of a beggar, he went to his neatherds, with whom he found his son Telemachus, and with them went home in disguise. After having received several affronts from the suitors of Penelŏpe, with the assistance of his son Telemachus and the neatherds, to whom he had discovered himself, he killed Antinŏus, and the other princes who were competitors for her favor. After reigning some time, he resigned the government of his kingdom to Telemachus.
CASTOR and POLLUX were the twin sons of Jupiter and Leda. These brothers entered into an inviolable friendship, and when they grew up, cleared the Archipelago of pirates, on which account they were esteemed deities of the sea, and accordingly were invoked by mariners in tempests. They went with the other noble youths of Greece in the expedition to Colchis, in search of the golden fleece, and on all occasions signalized themselves by their courage.
In this expedition Pollux slew Amycus, son of Neptune, and king of Bebrycia, who had challenged all the Argonauts to box with him. This victory, and that which he gained afterwards at the Olympic games which Hercules celebrated in Elis, caused him to be considered the hero and patron of wrestlers, while his brother Castor distinguished himself in the race, and in the management of horses.
Cicero relates a wonderful judgment which happened to one Scopas, who had spoken disrespectfully of these divinities: he was crushed to death by the fall of a chamber, whilst Simonĭdes, who was in the same room, was rescued from the danger, being called out a little before, by two persons unknown, supposed to be Castor and Pollux.
The Greek and Roman histories are full of the miraculous appearance of these brethren; particularly we are told they were seen fighting upon two white horses, at the head of the Roman army, in the battle between the Romans and Latins, near the lake Regillus, and brought the news of the decisive victory of Paulus Æmilius to Rome, the very day it was obtained.