counted for much, and
besides, many of the chieftains had been suitors for the hand of Helen,
and were doubtless moved by their old love in pledging themselves to her
recovery.

Some of them, however, were anything but eager to take part. Achilles
and Ulysses, the two most important in the subsequent war, endeavored to
escape this necessity. Achilles was the son of the sea-nymph Thetis, who
had dipped him when an infant in the river Styx, the waters of which
magic stream rendered him invulnerable to any weapon except in one
spot,--the heel by which his mother had held him. But her love for her
son made her anxious to guard him against every danger, and when the
chieftains came to seek his aid in the expedition, she concealed him,
dressed as a girl, among the maidens of the court. But the crafty
Ulysses, who accompanied them, soon exposed this trick. Disguised as a
pedler, he spread his goods, a shield and a spear among them, before the
maidens. Then an alarm of danger being sounded, the girls fled in
affright, but the disguised youth, with impulsive valor, seized the
weapons and prepared to defend himself. His identity was thus revealed.

Ulysses himself, one of the wisest and shrewdest of men, had also sought
to escape the dangerous expedition. To do so he feigned madness, and
when the messenger chiefs came to seek him they found him attempting to
plough with an ox and a horse yoked together, while he sowed the field
with salt. One of them, however, took Telemachus, the young son of
Ulysses, and laid him in the furrow before the plough. Ulysses turned
the plough aside, and thus showed that there was more method than
madness in his mind.

And thus, in time, a great force of men and a great fleet of ships were
gathered, there being in all eleven hundred and eighty-six ships and
more than one hundred thousand men. The kings and chieftains of Greece
led their followers from all parts of the land to Aulis, in Boeotia,
whence they were to set sail for the opposite coast of Asia Minor, on
which stood the city of Troy. Agamemnon, who brought one hundred ships,
was chosen leader of the army, which included all the heroes of the age,
among them the distinguished warriors Ajax and Diomedes, the wise old
Nestor, and many others of valor and fame.

The fleet at length set sail; but Troy was not easily reached. The
leaders of the army did not even know where Troy was, and landed in the
wrong locality, where they had a battle wit