And Helen, fairest among women, thus Answered: “Dear second father, whom at once I fear and honor, would that cruel death Had overtaken me before I left, To wander with thy son, my marriage-bed, And my dear daughter, and the company Of friends I loved. But that was not to be; And now I pine and weep. Yet will I tell What thou dost ask. The hero whom thou seest Is the wide-ruling Agamemnon, son Of Atreus, and is both a gracious king And a most dreaded warrior. He was once Brother-in-law to me, if I may speak— Lost as I am to shame—of such a tie.”
She said, the aged man admired, and then He spake again: “O son of Atreus, born Under a happy fate, and fortunate Among the sons of men! A mighty host Of Grecian youths obey thy rule. I went To Phrygia once—that land of vines—and there Saw many Phrygians, heroes on fleet steeds, The troops of Otreus, and of Mygdon, shaped Like one of the immortals. They encamped By the Sangarius. I was an ally; My troops were ranked with theirs upon the day When came the unsexed Amazons to war. Yet even there I saw not such a host As this of black-eyed Greeks who muster here.”
Then Priam saw Ulysses, and inquired:— “Dear daughter, tell me also who is that, Less tall than Agamemnon, yet more broad In chest and shoulders. On the teeming earth His armor lies, but he, from place to place, Walks round among the ranks of soldiery, As when the thick-fleeced father of the flocks Moves through the multitude of his white sheep.”
And Jove-descended Helen answered thus:— “That is Ulysses, man of many arts, Son of Laertes, reared in Ithaca, That rugged isle, and skilled in every form Of shrewd device and action wisely planned.”
Then spake the sage Antenor: “Thou hast said The truth, O lady. This Ulysses once Came on an embassy, concerning thee, To Troy with