slain by Achilles. Not many days after this Achilles himself perished, for, having declared at a banquet of the chiefs that he would make his way by his valour into Troy, he strove to break through the Scæan gate. There did Paris wound him to the death with an arrow, but it was Apollo that guided the archer's hand.
When Achilles was dead, his mother gave his arms to be a prize to the bravest of the Greeks. Then stood up Ulysses and Ajax the Greater, and contended together; but the Greeks adjudged the prize to Ulysses; therefore Ajax slew himself.
Yet still Troy could not be taken. Then Helenus the seer, who was one of the sons of Priam, having been taken prisoner by Ulysses, said to the Greeks: "Ye cannot take the city unless ye bring hither Philoctetes, with the bow which Hercules gave him, and with him one who is one of the race of Achilles."
Now the Greeks, when they sailed to Troy, had left Philoctetes in Lemnos, because the stench of the wound where a serpent had bitten him could not be endured. So they
