"But when Ulysses rose, in thought profound,
His modest eyes he fixed upon the ground;
As one unskilled or dumb, he seem'd to stand,
Nor raised his head, nor stretch'd his sceptred hand;
But, when he speaks, what elocution flows!
Soft as the fleeces of descending snows,
The copious accents fall, with easy art;
Melting they fall, and sink into the heart!"
Pope, Iliad, Book III.
But the eloquence of Ulysses was of no avail. King Priam, blinded by his love for his son, saw not the threatened danger, and he refused the demand of the ambassadors. Menelaus was not even permitted to see his wife. Ulysses and his companions then returned to Greece, and at once preparations for war with Troy were commenced.
These preparations occupied a very long time. Ten years were spent in getting together the vast force, which in more than a thousand ships was carried across the Ægean Sea to the Trojan shores, from the port of Auʹlis on the east coast-of Greece. Some of the Hel-lenʹic (Greek) princes were very unwilling to join the expedition, as they knew that the struggle would be a tedious and perilous one. Even Ulysses, who, as we have seen, had first proposed the suitors' oath at Sparta, was at the last moment unwilling to go. He had now become king of Ithaca, his father, La-erʹtes, having retired from the cares of government, and he would gladly have remained in his happy island home with his young wife, Penelope, and his infant son, Te-lemʹa-chus, both of whom he tenderly loved.
But the man of many arts could not be spared from the Trojan War. He paid no heed, however, to the messages sent to him asking him to join the army at Aulis. Agamemnon resolved, therefore, to go himself to Ithaca to persuade Ulysses to take part in the expedition. He was accompanied by his brother Menelaus, and by a chief named Pal-a-meʹdes, a very wise and learned man as well as a brave warrior. As soon as Ulysses heard of their arrival in Ithaca, he pretended to be insane, and he tried by a very amusing stratagem to make them believe that he was really mad. Dressing himself in his best clothes, and going down to the seashore, he began to plow the beach with a horse and an ox yoked together, and to scatter salt upon the sand instead of seed.
Ulysses feigning Madness.
Heywood Hardy.
Palamedes, however, was more than a match in artifice for the Ithacan king. Taking Telemachus from the arms of his nurse, he placed the infant on the sand in front of the plowing team. Ulysses quickly turned the animals aside to avoid injuring his child, thus proving that he was not mad but in full possession of his senses. The king of Ithaca was therefore obliged to join the expedition to Troy. With twelve ships well manned he sailed from his rugged island, which he did not again see for twenty years. Ten years he spent at the siege, and ten on his homeward voyage, during which he met with the wonderful adventures that Homer describes in the Odyssey.
Ulysses had his revenge upon Palamedes in a manner very unworthy of a brave man. In the camp before Troy, during the siege, he bribed one of the servants of Palamedes to conceal a sum of money in his master's tent. He then forged a letter, which he read before a council of the Greek generals, saying that Palamedes had taken it from a Trojan prisoner. This letter was written as if by King Priam to Palamedes, thanking him for the information he had given regarding the plans of the Greeks, and mentioning money as having been sent him in reward for his services. The Greek generals at once ordered a search to be made in the tent of Palamedes, and the money being found where it had been hidden by direction of Ulysses, the unfortunate Palamedes was immediately put to death as a traitor.
Palamedes, not unknown to fame,
Who suffered from the malice of the times,
Accused and sentenced for pretended crimes.