The War at Troy by Lindsay Clarke

Author:Lindsay Clarke [Clarke, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Historical, Fairy Tales; Folk Tales; Legends & Mythology, Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780007152551
Google: eXZ39QkDG0UC
Amazon: 0312336578
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Published: 2004-09-01T22:00:00+00:00

The Years of the Snake

They had agreed to assemble the fleet at Aulis, a rock-sheltered harbour on the narrow strait between Boetia and the island of Euboea. The Boeotian levies were already there, and neither their northern neighbours, the Locrians, nor the warriors of Euboea had far to come. By the time Agamemnon’s own fleet of a hundred ships arrived in the port, Ajax and Teucer, the sons of Telamon, had also arrived from Salamis bringing the twelve vessels they had promised. Meanwhile, Menelaus had mustered sixty ships out of Laconia, and though there was no word from Crete as yet, the principal Argive allies rallied quickly to his cause. Diomedes brought eighty ships out of Tiryns while Nestor’s flagship led ninety more out of Pylos round the many capes of the Peloponnese, and Menestheus sailed fifty Athenian warships around Sounion Head. More impressively, Odysseus and his allies out of the Ionian islands managed to launch only eight vessels short of the sixty that Palamades had mockingly suggested.

Even the distant island of Rhodes contributed nine ships, but King Cinyras of Cyprus was less forthcoming. When Menelaus sailed on a recruiting mission there, half-hoping that he might waylay Helen and Paris somewhere at sea, Cinyras promised to send fifty ships to Aulis. In the event only one Cyprian vessel turned up -- though its captain did launch forty-nine model ships made out of earthenware in fulfilment of his monarch’s pledge before he sailed away.

Menelaus was furious to have been duped in this manner, but perhaps he should have expected no more from a king who was also high priest to Aphrodite on the island of her birth. Worse still, the insult confirmed a suspicion that had haunted his jealous mind while he was on the island - that Cinyras had made a pact with Paris to conceal the runaways on Cyprus while he himself was there.

Agamemnon had set up his headquarters in the ancient fort on the rocky bluff overlooking the harbour where a vast fleet of around a thousand ships jostled each other as they made ready to cast off for Troy. The town below the fort had been overcrowded for some time now, and at night the watch-fires lit by the bivouacked troops stretched far along the strand. Standing beside Agamemnon one evening, the head of the college of Boeotian bards -- a famous master of the art of memory -- assured the High King that no one before him, not even Heracles or Theseus, had ever mounted an expedition on this scale. The Lion of Mycenae could scarcely manage his pride.

But various minor conflicts had already demonstrated the difficulty of holding together a diverse force that spoke many different dialects and harboured a number of old feuds and grudges. Agamemnon was under no illusion that so many men had been drawn to Aulis merely out of loyalty to himself and his brother. Yet whether it was greed for the rich spoils of Troy, or lust for land and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.