20 HISTORICAL TALES.

queen Dido died for love of him. Thence he sailed
to Italy, where he fought battles and won victories,
and finally founded the city of Rome. His story
is given by Virgil, in the poem of the “ Aneid.”
Much more might be told of the adventures of the
returning heroes, but the chief of them all is that
related of the much wandering Ulysses, as given by
Homer in his epic poem the “ Odyssey.”

The story of the “Odyssey” might serve us for a
tale in itself, but as it is in no sense historical we
give it here in epitome.

We are told that during the wanderings of Ulysses
his island kingdom of Ithaca had been invaded by
a throng of insolent suitors of his wife Penelope,
who occupied his castle and wasted his substance in
riotous living. His son Telemachus, indignant at
this, set sail in search of his father, whom he knew
to be somewhere upon the seas. Landing at Sparta,
he found Menelaus living with Helen in a macnifi-
cent castle, richly ornamented with gold, silver, and
bronze, and learned from him that his father was
then in the island of Ogygia, where he had been
long detained by the nymph Calypso.

The wanderer had experienced numerous adven-
tures. He had encountered the one-eyed giant Poly-
phemus, who feasted on the fattest of the Greeks,
while the others escaped by boring out his single
eye. He had passed the land of the Lotus-Eaters,
to whose magic some of the Grecks succumbed. In
the island of Circe some of his followers were turned
into swine. But the hero overcame this enchantress,
and while in her land visited the realm of the de-