were far away, to Odysseus, and to Achilles, who was the son of Peleus
and Thetis, bidding them also enter the war.

In two years the ships of all the Kings and Princes were gathered into
Aulis and the Greeks, with their leaders, Agamemnon, Aias, Diomedes,
Nestor, Idomeneus, Achilles and Odysseus, sailed for the coast of Troy.
One hero after another subdued the cities and nations that were the
allies of the Trojans, but Troy they did not take. And the minstrel sang
to Telemachus and his fellow-voyagers how year after year went by, and
how the host of Greeks still remained between their ships and the walls
of the City, and how in the ninth year there came a plague that smote
with death more men than the Trojans killed.

So the ship went on through the dark water, very swiftly, with the
goddess Athene, in the likeness of old Mentor, guiding it, and with the
youths listening to the song that Phemius the minstrel sang.




VII


The sun rose and Telemachus and his fellow-voyagers drew near to the
shore of Pylos and to the steep citadel built by Neleus, the father of
Nestor, the famous King. They saw on the shore men in companies making
sacrifice to Poseidon, the dark-haired god of the sea. There were nine
companies there and each company had nine black oxen for the sacrifice,
and the number of men in each company was five hundred. They slew the
oxen and they laid parts to burn on the altars of the god, and the men