One day Perseus was present at the games that were held each year at Argos. As he flung a quoit into the air a sudden gust of wind hurled it aside, so that it fell upon the foot of Acrisius, who was sitting near.
The king was an old man now, and the blow was more than he could bear. Before long he died from the wound, and thus the oracle of the gods was fulfilled.
Perseus was kind as he was brave, and it grieved him that he had caused the death of his grandfather, although it had been by no fault of his own.
Argos no longer seemed a happy place to the young king, so he left it, and going to a city called Mycenæ, he made it his capital. Here, after a long and prosperous reign, Perseus died. The gods whom he had served loyally, placed him in the skies, among the stars. And there he still shines, together with Andromeda and Cassiopeia.
CHAPTER XI
ACHILLES AND BRISEIS THE FAIRCHEEKED
The story of Perseus belongs to the Heroic Age of Greek history, to the time when heroes were half mortal, half divine. Many other wonderful tales belong to the Heroic Age, but among them all none are so famous as those that are told in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad tells of the war that raged around the walls of the city of Troy; the Odyssey of the adventures of the goodly Odysseus.
In the north-west corner of Asia, looking toward Greece, the ruins of an ancient city have been discovered. It was on this spot that Troy or Ilium was believed to have stood.
Strange legends gathered round the warriors of the Trojan War, so strange that some people say that there never were such heroes as those of whom the Iliad tells. However that may be, we know that in long after years, when the Greeks fought with the people of Asia, they remembered these old stories, and believed that they were carrying on the wars which their fathers had begun.
The Iliad and the Odyssey were written by a poet named Homer, so many wise folk tell. While others, it may be just as wise, say that these poems were not written by one man, but were gathered from the legends of the people, now by one poet, now by another, until they grew into the collection of stories which we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey.