the King. Thus we took Priam's City and all its treasures, and thus I
won back my own wife, the lovely Helen.'

'But after we had taken and sacked King Priam's City, great troubles
came upon us. Some of us sailed away, and some of us remained on the
shore at the bidding of King Agamemnon, to make sacrifice to the gods.
We separated, and the doom of death came to many of us. Nestor I saw at
Lesbos, but none other of our friends have I ever since seen. Agamemnon,
my own brother, came to his own land. But ah, it would have been happier
for him if he had died on the plain of Troy, and if we had left a great
barrow heaped above him! For he was slain in his own house and by one
who had married the wife he had left behind. When the Ancient One of the
Sea told me of my brother's doom I sat down upon the sand and wept, and
I was minded to live no more nor to see the light of the sun.'

'And of thy father, Telemachus, I have told thee what I myself know and
what was told me of him by the Ancient One of the Sea--how he stays on
an Island where the nymph Calypso holds him against his will: but where
that Island lies I do not know. Odysseus is there, and he cannot win
back to his own country, seeing that he has no ship and no companions to
help him to make his way across the sea. But Odysseus was ever master of
devices. And also he is favoured greatly by the goddess, Pallas Athene.
For these reasons, Telemachus, be hopeful that your father will yet
reach his own home and country.'




XXIII