A History of Monsters. 205

the Greeks, furious over the abduction of King Menelaus’s wife, declared war on the Trojans and dispatched a thousand-ship fleet. A storm drove this armada to the Boeotian city of Aulis where, while the Greeks were performing sacrifices to Jove, they witnessed a serpent in a plane tree near the altar. It first devoured eight chicks in a nest and then consumed their circling mother. Calchas the seer interpreted this as a sign that Troy would be captured in the tenth year of the war. Shortly afterward, as a lasting monument to the event, that serpent was turned to stone.

At the same time, as Agamemnon prepared to go to war against the Trojans, he unwittingly killed a deer sacred to Diana. Enraged, the goddess churned the sea with winds, preventing the Greeks from departing; a plague even broke out among them. Calchas warned that they must appease the divine wrath with Agamemnon’s own blood. Thus, his daughter Iphigenia was led to the altar for sacrifice, but Diana snatched her away and substituted a deer in her place.

Once the news of the Greeks' arrival to besiege Ilium had spread across the globe and they had finally descended into battle, Protesilaus, son of Iphiclus, became the first of all to be slain by Hector. Meanwhile, Achilles killed Cygnus, a son of Neptune. Because Cygnus’s skin was so hard it could not be pierced, and he could not be slain by the sword, Achilles crushed his throat and strangled him; his father then transformed him into the bird that bears his name, the swan.

While dining, all the Greeks recounted the toughness of the defeated Cygnus. Nestor pointed out that a certain Caeneus had been similar, explaining that Caeneus was originally a most beautiful girl named Caenis. After being ravished by Neptune, she obtained from him the favor of being changed into a man, and further, that he should never be pierced by any weapon. However, when he attended the wedding feast of Pirithous, son of Ixion, to Hippodamia along with the other Centaurs and Lapiths, a great brawl erupted. Since no one could wound Caeneus with weapons, he was eventually suffocated under a mass of trees piled upon him. Neptune then transformed him into the bird Caeneus.

As Nestor told these tales, mention was made of his brother Periclymenus, who had received from Neptune the power to change into various forms. Because he dared to fight Hercules, eluding him in the shape of an eagle, he was eventually wounded by one of Hercules' arrows. Neptune, grieving bitterly that his son Cygnus had been killed by Achilles, convinced Apollo to guide Paris’s arrow to pierce Achilles’ heel. After Achilles was slain, a dispute arose between Ajax and Ulysses over his armor, and Agamemnon was appointed as the judge of the matter.

In the thirteenth book, we learn from the poet that Agamemnon, wishing not to offend either party, refused to deliver a verdict himself and instead handed the judgment over to the other princes of Greece. Swayed by Ulysses' persuasive eloquence, they ruled in his favor and granted him Achilles' armor. On the other side, Ajax, overcome with immense grief, ended his suffering with his sword. From the blood flowing onto the earth, a flower sprouted, similar to a hyacinth.

Following his victory, Ulysses was sent to Lemnos to bring back Philoctetes, who possessed the arrows of Hercules. After his return and the destruction of Troy, as the Greek fleet crossed into Thrace, he sacrificed Polyxena, the daughter of Priam and Hecuba, with his own hands. While Hecuba was at the shore to wash Polyxena’s body, she discovered the corpse of her son Polydorus, who had been murdered by Polymestor, the King of Thrace. Priam had sent Polydorus, his youngest son, to Polymestor due to the uncertain outcome of the Trojan War; however, the king, after receiving the boy with honors, killed him and threw him into the sea. Unable to endure such a crime, Hecuba, along with other women, blinded Polymestor. It is said that as she fled from the Thracians who were pelting her with stones, she was transformed into a dog.