ilium

Never mayst thou call any mortal blest or ever thou hast seen his dying day, seen how he passed therethrough and came on death.

No bride was the Helen with whom unto steep-built Ilium hasted Paris: nay, bringing a curse to his bowers of espousal he passed.

O Troy, for her sake by the thousand galleys of Hellas wasted, with fire and with sword destroyed by her fierce battle-spirit thou wast: thou and Hector, my lord, whom the scion of Thetis, the Sea-king's daughter, O my anguish! dragged round the ramparts of Ilium dead.

And myself from my bowers was haled to the strand of the exile water, casting the sore loathed veil of captivity over mine head.

Ah, but my tears were down-streaming in flood when the galley swift-racing bore me afar from my town, from my bowers, from my lord in the tomb.

Oh, had she dealt him, that mother which bore him, A death-blow cleaving his head in twain, When shrieked Cassandra her prophecy o'er him Ere his eyrie on Ida o'erlooked Troy's plain.

By the sacred bay shrieked, "Slay without pity The curse and the ruin of Priam's city!" Unto prince, unto elder she came to implore him To slay it, the infant foredoomed their bane.

Then had he never been made an occasion Of thraldom to Ilium's daughters, O queen! Now wert thou throned in a palace, thy nation No ten years' agony then had seen, With the war-cries of Hellas a-rolling their thunder Round Troy, with spear-lightning aye flashing thereunder.

His biographies are full of salacious details, the kind of stories that would have made him a tabloid editor in our time.

He states as fact that Nero, dressed in a stage performer's costume, sang the fall of Ilium while watching the fire from the Tower of Maecenas.

No rumor qualifier.

No source attribution.

In the first instance, he called himself Outis; but when he had got clear away and was out of reach of my arrow, he said that his name was Odysseus.

I know whom you speak of, him of Ithaca, and he was on his return voyage from Ilium.

But how did he do it? For he is by no means a man of too much courage.

Returning from my accustomed tending of my flocks, I caught a number of fellows in my cave, evidently having designs on my herds; for when I placed the stone block against the door—the rock is of huge size—and had lighted the fire by igniting the tree which I brought from the mountain, evidently they appeared to be trying to conceal themselves.