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with heedlessness, and few warders watched the gates; for now the light of day was sinking and fateful night wrapped steep Ilios for destruction. And Aphrodite of many counsels, putting on the likeness of hoary age, came to Argive Helen with crafty intent and called her forth and spake to her with persuasive voice:

ãDear lady, thy valiant husband Menelaus calls thee. He is hidden in the wooden horse, and round him lie ambushed the leaders of the Achaeans, wooers of war in thy cause. But come and heed no longer ancient Priam nor the other Trojans nor Deiphobus himself. For now I give thee to much enduring Menelaus.ä

So spake the goddess and ran away again, But Helen, her heart beguiled by craft, left her fragrant chamber, and her husband Deiphobus followed her. And as she went, the Trojan women of trailing tunics gazed upon her. And when she came to the high-roofed temple of Athena, she stood and scanned the form of the well-manned horse. Three times she walked round it and provoked the Argives, naming all the fair-tressed wives of the Achaeans with her clear voice. And their hearts were torn within them with grief and they restrained their pent up tears in silence. Groaned Menelaus when he heard the daughter of Tyndareus: wept the son of Tydeus remembering Aegialeia: the name of Penelope stirred the heart of Odysseus: but only Anticlus, stung by the name of Laodameia,^a

NOTES

^a Lit. ãreceived the sting (goad) of Laodameia.ä The ordinary and natural interpretation is that the wife of Anticlus was called Laodameia. She is otherwise unknown, and as the famous Laodameia, wife of Protesilaus, is the type of the love of husband and wife (ãthe wife of Protesilaus loved him even after death and made a likeness of him . . . and the gods pitied her and Hermes brought him back from Hades. And when she beheld him and thought he had returned from Troy she rejoiced; but when he was carried back to Hades she killed herselfä Apollod. Epit. iii. 30), it seems possible that the meaning here is ãthe goad that pricked Laodameia,ä i.e. desire for the absent spouse.

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