Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/342

 310 HISTORY OF GREECE. and stratagem, he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resumn his family position, and to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic poem by Hagias, which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argu- ment still remains : there were in antiquity various other poems of similar title and analogous matter. 1 As usual with the ancient epic, the multiplied sufferings of this back- voyage are traced to divine wrath, justly provoked by the sins of the Greeks ; who, in the fierce exultation of a victory pur- chased by so many hardships, had neither respected nor even 2 spared the altars of the gods in Troy ; and Athene, who had been their most zealous ally during the siege, was so incensed by their final recklessness, more especially by the outrage of Ajax, son of Oileus, that she actively harassed and embittered their return, in spite of every effort to appease her. The chiefs began to quarrel among themselves ; their formal assembly became a scene of drunkenness ; even Agamemnon and Menelaus lost their fraternal harmony, and each man acted on his own separate resolution. 3 Nevertheless, according to the Odyssey, Nestor, Diomedes, Neoptolemus, Idomeneus and Philoktetes reached home speedily and safely : Agamemnon also arrived in Pelopon- nesus, to perish by the hand of a treacherous wife ; but Mene- laus was condemned to long wanderings and to the severest pri- vations in Egypt, Cyprus and elsewhere, before he could set foot in his native land. The Lokrian Ajax perished on the Gyrasan rock. 4 Though exposed to a terrible storm, he had already reached this place of safety, when he indulged in the rash boast of having escaped in defiance of the gods : no sooner did Po- seidon hear this language, than he struck with his trident tho 1 Suidas, v. N6<rrof. Wiillner, De Cyclo Epico, p. 93. Also a poem 'Arpeid&v nudodof (Athenae. vii. p. 281). memn. 338 ; Odyss. iii. 130; Eurip. Troad. 69-95). 3 Odyss. iii. 130-161 ; ^Eschyl. Agamemn. 650-662. month of the Nile, was believed to have taken its name from the pilot of Menelaus, who had died and was buried there (Strabo, xvii. p. 801 ; Tacit Ann. ii. 60). MeveAaiof vo/tof, so called after Menelaus (Dio Ch'/yscst. xi p. 361).
 * Upon this the turn of fortune in Grecian affairs depends (^Eschyl. Aga-
 * Odyss, iii. 188-196; ir. 5-87. The Egyptian city cf Kanopus, at tht