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144 But there was one chief among the Greeks who would surely, he thought, have prevented this wrong. Ajax was honest surely, if none else—

True—the questioner had again forgotten the changes of ten years. Is it then possible (he grasps eagerly at the hope) that his bitter enemy Ulysses—"the bastard of Sisyphus," as he calls him—and Diomed, who had been his abettor in the treachery, are they too dead? for at least they were unfit to live. Neoptolemus replies—

And Nestor—the noble old warrior, his personal friend, whose prudent counsel was wont to curb the rashness of the younger captains—he is probably dead also? No; the old man lives, but lives to mourn the loss of Antilochus, the son of his old age, whom death, in its bitter irony, has taken before the father. And Patroclus, the trusty friend of Achilles?—

He must mean Ulysses, says Neoptolemus,—following his chief's instructions to abuse him, apparently with considerable zest. But it is Thersites, the mob-orator of Homer, the man who boldly speaks evil of