plumes. The inhabitants are keenly interested in these apparitions, and
well they may be, as so much depends upon them. If the heroes are
covered with dust, a drought is impending; if with sweat, they
foreshadow rain. Blood upon their arms means a plague; but if they show
themselves without any distinguishing mark, all will be well.

Though the heroes are dead, they cannot be insulted with impunity. Ajax
was popularly believed, owing to the form taken by his madness, to be
especially responsible for any misfortune that might befall flocks and
herds. On one occasion some shepherds, who had had bad luck with their
cattle, surrounded his tomb and abused him, bringing up all the weak
points in his earthly career recorded by Homer. At last they went too
far for his patience, and a terrible voice was heard in the tomb and the
clash of armour. The offenders fled in terror, but came to no harm.

On another occasion some strangers were playing at draughts near his
shrine, when Ajax appeared and begged them to stop, as the game reminded
him of Palamedes.

Hector was a far more dangerous person. Maximus of Tyre[39] says that
the people of Ilium often see him bounding over the plain at dead of
night in flashing armour--a truly Homeric picture. Maximus cannot,
indeed, boast of having seen Hector, though he also has had his visions
vouchsafed him. He had seen Castor and Pollux, like twin stars, above
his ship, steering it through a storm. Æsculapius also he has
seen--not in a dream, by Hercules, but with his waking eyes. But to
return to Hector. Philostratus says that one day an unfortunate boy
insulted him in the same way in which the shepherds had treated Ajax.
Homer, however, did not satisfy this boy, and as a parting shaft he
declared that the statue in Ilium did not really represent Hector, but