Then came Nestor, king of Pylus, a wise counsellor whose true age no one knew, and after him Idomeneus, king of Crete, the successor of Minos, the lord of the labyrinth. Agamemnon was next, and then his brother Menelaus, exhausted by the night of blood, of death and delirium. It was said that Menelaus had possessed Helen, his wayward queen, that night in the bed of Deiphobus, her last husband, that he had taken her in a pool of blood, alongside the mangled corpse of the Trojan prince. But no truth may come of such a night of trickery and of deceit!

Ajax Oileus, Little Ajax, sat with his brow contracted and his hands tight between his thighs. The night before, he had raped princess Cassandra in the temple of Athena. The goddess herself was struck with such horror that she had closed her eyes so as not to witness the abomination. He had pinned Cassandra to the ground and ripped off her clothes, he had penetrated her like a ram, like a raging bull. For a moment, just a moment, he had met her eye and in that moment he understood that the princess had condemned him to death. To a horrible, certain death.

Agamemnon then took Cassandra for himself. Only she knew the secret hidden in the king’s heart. But he, the great Atreid, eyed Ajax with great suspicion, knowing that he had been alone with her first.

Last came Diomedes, son of Tydeus, king of Argos, he who had conquered Thebes of the Seven Gates. No one after the death of Achilles could rival his valour and courage. He had been inside the horse along with Ulysses and had fought the whole night through, searching for the only remaining Trojan adversary worthy of him, Aeneas. He found no trace of the Dardan prince. But he had slipped into the citadel as morning was breaking and had disappeared into one of its secret passages. Diomedes’s armour was now covered with dust and the crest of his helmet was full of cobwebs. And he watched Ulysses of the many deceptions warily, because they two alone, among all the Achaeans, had managed to steal into the city before the night of the wooden horse. They had got in one night long before the city’s fall, disguised as dirty, blood-stained Trojan prisoners. Only they had been familiar with the hidden conduits of the citadel.

The chiefs went on with their discussion at great length, but could not reach an agreement. Nestor, Diomedes, Ulysses and Menelaus decided to depart regardless with their fleets; Agamemnon and the others would stay behind to offer a sacrifice of expiation to appease the gods and win their safe return. Or so they claimed, but perhaps there was yet another reason behind their staying. Agamemnon had been seen roaming with Cassandra through the still smoking ruins of Ilium, searching for the only treasure that really interested him; the one for which the war had truly been fought.

The fleets of those who had set sail stopped for the night at the isle of Tenedos. But the very next day, Ulysses changed his mind about leaving. Agamemnon had been right, he said, a hecatomb must be offered to the gods. He turned back, although the others were all against it, and his comrades begged him not to take them back to those cursed shores where so many of them had fallen. Their pleas were useless. The Ithacaean ships turned sail with the wind against them, forcing their oars through high black waves that the northerly wind churned up and topped with livid froth. Ulysses, standing tall at the stern amidst a shower of sea-spray, had taken the helm of his ship himself. He was never seen again.

It was rumoured that he had returned, in the deep of the night, to the shore where the Achaeans had raised a cairn over the bones of Ajax. Driven by remorse, while the heavens were rent by lightning and the mountains shaken by thunder, he had laid the weapons of Achilles on the votive altar. Too late, even if this were true, because the actions of the living are of no help to the dead. They mourn endlessly their life lost, and wander in the dark chambers of Hades longing for the light of the sun which they will never see again.

What I think is that Ulysses realized that he had been deceived, and this realization was intolerable. No possible doubt could cloud the mind of the astutest man of the earth. And thus he defied the wind and the waves of the oncoming storm.

I know for certain that the other companions, those who had remained behind with the great Atreid on the shore of Ilium, never saw them arrive, neither Ulysses nor his Cephallenian warriors. When he landed Agamemnon had already set sail, and Ulysses never succeeded in reaching him later. Perhaps he waited too long to return out to sea and was forced to fight the hostile winds of winter. Perhaps a god envious of his glory pushed his ship towards the Ocean without wind and without waves, or was holding him prisoner somewhere.

The first of the Achaean leaders to pay for the excesses committed on that cursed night of the fall of Troy was Ajax Oileus. His ship was taken by a storm, run aground on the Ghire`an cliffs and rent in two. His comrades were immediately engulfed by the waves of the storming sea, but Ajax himself was a formidable swimmer. Clinging to a wooden crate, he fought off the billows and managed to save himself, hoisting himself on to a rock. Sitting on that crate, he berated the gods, claiming that he was invincible and that not even Poseidon could defeat him. The god of the sea heard his words and rose from the depths of the abyss, clutching his trident. With a single blow he shattered the hard rock: Ajax fell between the crumbling splinters and was crushed like wheat under a millstone. For a moment, his screams of pain could be heard over the din of the storm, before they were scattered by the wind.

The others had managed somehow to brave the storm. Having reached Lesbos, they held council to decide whether to sail north of Chios towards the isle of Psiri`a, on their left, or south of Chios, rounding the Mimantes promontory. In the end they decided to cut through the sea in the direction of Euboea, by the shortest route. But although the sea had calmed and the temperature was mild, Menelaus disappeared during the voyage, on a moonless night with all of his ships. I will tell you more about him, and what happened to him, later.

Nestor reached sandy Pylus with his men, his ships and his booty after having rounded Cape Malea. He reigned for many more years over his people, honoured by his sons and their wives.

Quite a different fortune befell Diomedes, son of Tydeus.

He berthed his ships on the beach of Temenium while the night was still dark. He had sent no herald to announce the fleet, and no one knew of his homecoming. He had Ulysses’s warning in mind: ‘Don’t trust anyone,’ his friend had told him, ‘upon your return. Too much time has passed, many things will have changed. Someone may have taken your place and be plotting against you. Above all, no matter how grievous this may seem, do not trust your queen.’

Diomedes set off with Sthenelus, his inseparable friend, and reached his palace in Tiryns under the cover of night. He hadn’t seen it for ten years. It seemed changed, although he couldn’t say how. He was deeply moved as he contemplated the walls of the citadel, walls which were said to have been built by the cyclops. The gates of his palace were posted with armed guards. He recognized them: mere children when he had left, they were now in the prime of their youth and strength.

He left Sthenelus out of sight with the horses to wait for him, and entered from a passage known only to him. He found the postern on the southern side of the walls, obstructed by the mud brought by the rains and by the roots of the trees which had invaded the passageway over the many years in which no one had used it. It joined the outer fortification to the palace walls and had been used, in times of war, for surprise attacks on the enemy. As Diomedes advanced he felt choked by emotion and by the sense of oppression created by the narrow conduit. He had envisioned his return much differently: his people in celebration, running to greet him along the road, the priestesses of Hera scattering flowers to welcome his chariot. And above all, Aigialeia, his bride, meeting him open-armed and taking him by the hand to their fragrant bed to make love with him after so many years of longing and of separation.