ce, and he stood silent and unmoving, and could not speak a word, till
his friends came round him and led him away to his hut, and there he sat
down and would not eat or drink, and the night fell.

Long he sat, musing in his mind, and then rose and put on all his
armour, and seized a sword that Hector had given him one day when they
two fought in a gentle passage of arms, and took courteous farewell of
each other, and Aias had given Hector a broad sword-belt, wrought with
gold. This sword, Hector's gift, Aias took, and went towards the hut of
Ulysses, meaning to carve him limb from limb, for madness had come upon
him in his great grief. Rushing through the night to slay Ulysses he
fell upon the flock of sheep that the Greeks kept for their meat. And up
and down among them he went, smiting blindly till the dawn came, and,
lo! his senses returned to him, and he saw that he had not smitten
Ulysses, but stood in a pool of blood among the sheep that he had
slain. He could not endure the disgrace of his madness, and he fixed the
sword, Hector's gift, with its hilt firmly in the ground, and went back
a little way, and ran and fell upon the sword, which pierced his heart,
and so died the great Aias, choosing death before a dishonoured life.

XI

ULYSSES SAILS TO SEEK THE SON OF ACHILLES.--THE VALOUR OF EURYPYLUS

When the Greeks found Aias lying dead, slain by his own hand, they made
great lament, and above all the brother of Aias, and his wife Tecmessa
bewailed him, and the shores of the sea rang with their sorrow. But of
all no man was more grieved than Ulysses, and he stood up and said:
'Would that the sons of the Trojans had never awarded to me the arms of
Achilles, for far rather would I have given them to Aias than that this
loss should have befallen the whole army of the Greeks. Let no man blame
me, or be angry with me, for I have not sought for wealth, to enrich
myself, but for honour only, and to win a name that will be remembered
among men in times to come.' Then they made a great fire of wood, and
burned the body of Aias, lamenting him as they had sorrowed for
Achilles.

Now it seemed that though the Greeks had won the Luck of Troy and had
defeated the Amazons and the army of Memnon, they were no nearer taking
Troy than ever. They had slain Hector, indeed, and many other Trojans,
but they had lost the great Achilles, and Aias, and Patroclus, and
Antilochus, with the princes whom Penthesilea and Memnon sle