HOW TROY WAS TAKEN. 9

that was before them they might have hesitated,
since it took ten long years to equip the expedition,
for ten years more the war continued, and some of
the leaders spent ten years in their return. But in
those old days time does not seem to have counted
for much, and besides, many of the chieftains had
been suitors for the hand of Helen, and were doubt-
less 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 ¢wo 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 in-
fant 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 ex-
pedition, 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 ho feigned madness, and when