That Paris was guilty of robbery, as well as of the abduction of Helen, is several times mentioned in the Iliad (iii. 144; vii. 350-363), also in the argument of the Cyprian Verses (see Æschyl. Agam. 534).
[692] The ancient epic (Schol. ad Il. ii. 286-339) does not recognize the story of the numerous suitors of Helen, and the oath by which Tyndareus bound them all before he made the selection among them, that each should swear not only to acquiesce, but even to aid in maintaining undisturbed possession to the husband whom she should choose. This story seems to have been first told by Stesichorus (see Fragm. 20. ed. Kleine; Apollod. iii. 10, 8). Yet it was evidently one of the prominent features of the current legend in the time of Thucydidês (i. 9; Euripid. Iphig. Aul. 51-80; Soph. Ajax, 1100).
The exact spot in which Tyndareus exacted this oath from the suitors, near Sparta, was pointed out even in the time of Pausanias (iii. 20, 9).
[693] Iliad, iv. 27-55; xxiv. 765. Argument. Carm. Cypri. The point is emphatically touched upon by Dio Chrysostom (Orat. xi. p. 335-336) in his assault upon the old legend. Two years’ preparation—in Dictys Cret. i. 16.
[694] The Spartan king Agesilaus, when about to start from Greece on his expedition into Asia Minor (396 B. C.) went to Aulis personally, in order that he too might sacrifice on the spot where Agamemnôn had sacrificed when he sailed for Troy (Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 4, 4).
Skylax (c. 60) notices the ἱερὸν at Aulis, and nothing else: it seems to have been like the adjoining Delium, a temple with a small village grown up around it.
Aulis is recognized as the port from which the expedition started, in the Hesiodic Works and Days (v. 650).
[695] Iliad, ii. 128. Uschold (Geschichte des Trojanischen Kriegs, p. 9, Stutgart 1836) makes the total 135,000 men.
[696] The Hesiodic Catalogue notices Oileus, or Ileus, with a singular etymology of his name (Fragm. 136, ed. Marktscheffel).
[697] Γουνεὺς is the Heros Eponymus of the town of Gonnus in Thessaly; the duplication of the consonant and shortening of the vowel belong to the Æolic dialect (Ahrens, De Dialect. Æolic. 50, 4. p. 220).