Men of the present day, degenerate sons of the heroes--

Now, when Pallas Athene discovered the Greeks would be beaten,
She slid down from the steep of Olympus upon a toboggan.
Sudden she came before crafty Ulysses in guise like a maiden;
Not that she thought to fool him, but since Olympian fashion
Made the form of a woman good form for a goddess' assumption.
She then spoke to him quickly, and said, "O son of Laertes,
Seize thou the ball; I will pass it to thee and trip up the Trojan."
Her replying, slowly re-worded the son of Laertes--
"That will I do, O goddess divine, for he can outrun me."
Then when the ball was in play, she cast thick darkness around it.
Also around Ulysses she poured invisible darkness.
Under this cover, taking the ball he passed down the middle,
Silent and swift, unseen, unnoticed, unblocked, and untackled.
Meanwhile she piled the Greeks and the Trojans in conglomeration,
Much like a tangle of pine-trees where lightning has frequently fallen,
Or like a basket of lobsters and crabs which the provident housewife
Dumps on the kitchen floor and vainly endeavors to count them,
So seemed the legs and the arms and the heads of the twenty-one
players.
Sudden a shout arose, for under the crossbar, Ulysses,
Visible, sat on the ball, quietly making a touch-down;
On the tip of his nose were his thumb and fingers extended,
Curved and vibrating slow in the sign of the blameless Egyptians.
Violent language came to the lips of the helmeted Hector,
Under his breath he murmured a few familiar quotations,
Scraps of Phrygian folk-lore about the kingdom of Hades;
Then he called loud as a trumpet, "I claim foul, Mr. Umpire!"
"Touch-down for Greece," said Hector; "'twixt you and me and the