t city of Troy was taken, all the chiefs who had fought
against it set sail for their homes. But there was wrath in heaven
against them, for indeed they had borne themselves haughtily and cruelly
in the day of their victory. Therefore they did not all find a safe and
happy return. For one was shipwrecked and another was shamefully slain
by his false wife in his palace, and others found all things at home
troubled and changed and were driven to seek new dwellings elsewhere.
And some, whose wives and friends and people had been still true to them
through those ten long years of absence, were driven far and wide about
the world before they saw their native land again. And of all, the wise
Ulysses was he who wandered farthest and suffered most.

He was well-nigh the last to sail, for he had tarried many days to do
pleasure to Agamemnon, lord of all the Greeks. Twelve ships he had with
him--twelve he had brought to Troy--and in each there were some fifty
men, being scarce half of those that had sailed in them in the old days,
so many valiant heroes slept the last sleep by Simois and Scamander and
in the plain and on the seashore, slain in battle or by the shafts of
Apollo.

First they sailed northwest to the Thracian coast, where the Ciconians
dwelt, who had helped the men of Troy. Their city they took, and in it
much plunder, slaves and oxen, and jars of fragrant wine, and might have
escaped unhurt, but that they stayed to hold revel on the shore. For the
Ciconians gathered their neighbors, being men of the same blood, and did
battle with the invaders and drove them to their ship. And when Ulysses
numbered his men, he found that he had lost six out of each ship.

Scarce had he set out again when the wind began to blow fiercely; so,
seeing a smooth, sandy beach, they drove the ships ashore and dragged
them out of reach of the waves, and waited till the storm should abate.
And the third morning being fair, they sailed again and journeyed
prosperously till they came to the very end of the great Peloponnesian
land, where Cape Malea looks out upon the southern sea. But contrary
currents baffled them, so that they could not round it, and the north
wind blew so strongly that they must fain drive before it. And on the
tenth day they came to the land where the lotus grows--a wondrous fruit,
of which whosoever eats cares not to see country or wife or children
again. Now the Lotus eaters, for so they call the people of the land,
wer