10 HISTORICAL TALES.

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 chief-
tains of Greece led their followers from all parts of
the land to Aulis, in Beotia, 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 with the people.
Embarking again, they were driven by a storm back
to Greece. Adverse winds now kept them at Aulis
until Agamemnon appeased the hostile gods by sac-
rificing to them his daughter Iphigenia,—one of the
ways which those old heathens had of obtaining
fair weather. Then the winds changed, and the
fleet made its way to the island of Tenedos, in the