the Trojans who had fled, nor did they strip the armour from Penthesilea
and her twelve maidens, but laid the bodies on biers, and sent them back
in peace to Priam. Then the Trojans burned Penthesilea in the midst of
her dead maidens, on a great pile of dry wood, and placed their ashes in
a golden casket, and buried them all in the great hill-grave of Laomedon,
an ancient King of Troy, while the Greeks with lamentation buried them
whom the Amazon had slain.

The old men of Troy and the chiefs now held a council, and Priam said
that they must not yet despair, for, if they had lost many of their
bravest warriors, many of the Greeks had also fallen. Their best plan
was to fight only with arrows from the walls and towers, till King Memnon
came to their rescue with a great army of Aethiopes. Now Memnon was the
son of the bright Dawn, a beautiful Goddess who had loved and married a
mortal man, Tithonus. She had asked Zeus, the chief of the Gods, to make
her lover immortal, and her prayer was granted. Tithonus could not die,
but he began to grow grey, and then white haired, with a long white
beard, and very weak, till nothing of him seemed to be left but his
voice, always feebly chattering like the grasshoppers on a summer day.

Memnon was the most beautiful of men, except Paris and Achilles, and his
home was in a country that borders on the land of sunrising. There he
was reared by the lily maidens called Hesperides, till he came to his
full strength, and commanded the whole army of the Aethiopes. For their
arrival Priam wished to wait, but Polydamas advised that the Trojans
should give back Helen to the Greeks, with jewels twice as valuable as
those which she had brought from the house of Menelaus. Then Paris was
very angry, and said that Polydamas was a coward, for it was little to
Paris that Troy should be taken and burned in a month if for a month he
could keep Helen of the fair hands.