armour; and by the spear in her hand, the Gorgon's head upon her shield, and, above all, by the clear-cut face and by the "azure eyes," they recognise their own virgin goddess, Pallas Athene, or, as we may call her, Minerva.
Then, in that musical and sonorous Greek of which we shall never know the true sound or accent, she addresses the warrior on the stage. Why (she asks)—why does Ulysses scan these freshly-imprinted footsteps, as though, "like a keen-scented Spartan hound," he were tracking his foe to his lair? Ulysses recognises the voice, "clear as a Tyrrhenian trumpet," and makes answer. He is on the track of his foe, the hero of the seven-fold shield. In the night just past, the herds and herdsmen have been butchered by some unknown hand, and rumour points to Ajax, who was seen
"The fields o'erleaping with a blood-stained sword."
Ulysses has come to spy out the truth, and is now ready to learn it from one whose wisdom he has proved of old.
Then Minerva tells him all,—how Ajax, burning with wrath at the loss of these much-coveted arms, had gone forth sword in hand at the dead of night, and was on the point of bursting into the tent of the Atreidæ, thirsting for their blood, when (says the goddess)
"I held him back from that accursed joy,
Casting strange glamour o'er his wandering eyes,
And turned him on the flocks, and where with them
