f lightning and
thunder and rain fell upon them that they retreated again to their camp.
They believed that Zeus, the chief of the Gods, was angry with them, and
the days went by, and Troy still stood unconquered.

XII

THE SLAYING OF PARIS

When the Greeks were disheartened, as they often were, they consulted
Calchas the prophet. He usually found that they must do something, or
send for somebody, and in doing so they diverted their minds from their
many misfortunes. Now, as the Trojans were fighting more bravely than
before, under Deiphobus, a brother of Hector, the Greeks went to Calchas
for advice, and he told them that they must send Ulysses and Diomede to
bring Philoctetes the bowman from the isle of Lemnos. This was an
unhappy deserted island, in which the married women, some years before,
had murdered all their husbands, out of jealousy, in a single night. The
Greeks had landed in Lemnos, on their way to Troy, and there Philoctetes
had shot an arrow at a great water dragon which lived in a well within a
cave in the lonely hills. But when he entered the cave the dragon bit
him, and, though he killed it at last, its poisonous teeth wounded his
foot. The wound never healed, but dripped with venom, and Philoctetes,
in terrible pain, kept all the camp awake at night by his cries.

The Greeks were sorry for him, but he was not a pleasant companion,
shrieking as he did, and exuding poison wherever he came. So they left
him on the lonely island, and did not know whether he was alive or
dead. Calchas ought to have told the Greeks not to desert Philoctetes at
the time, if he was so important that Troy, as the prophet now said,
could not be taken without him. But now, as he must give some advice,
Calchas said that Philoctetes must be brought back, so Ulysses and
Diomede went to bring him. They sailed to Lemnos, a melancholy place
they found it, with no smoke rising from the ruinous houses along the
shore. As they were landing they learned that Philoctetes was not dead,
for his dismal old cries of pain, _ototototoi, ai, ai; pheu, pheu;
ototototoi_, came echoing from a cave on the beach. To this cave the
princes went, and found a terrible-looking man, with long, dirty, dry
hair and beard; he was worn to a skeleton, with hollow eyes, and lay
moaning in a mass of the feathers of sea birds. His great bow and his
arrows lay ready to his hand: with these he used to shoot the sea birds,
which were all that he had to eat