Indeed, he was so unwilling to leave them that he feigned madness in
order to escape service, appeared to forget his own kindred, and went
ploughing the seashore and sowing salt in the furrows. But a messenger,
Palamedes, who came with the summons to war, suspected that this sudden
madness might be a stratagem, for the king was far famed as a man of
many devices. He therefore stood by, one day (while Odysseus,
pretending to take no heed of him, went ploughing the sand), and he
laid the baby Telemachus directly in the way of the ploughshare. For
once the wise man's craft deserted him. Odysseus turned the plough
sharply, caught up the little prince, and there his fatherly wits were
manifest! After this he could no longer play madman. He had to take
leave of his beloved wife Penelope and set out to join the heroes,
little dreaming that he was not to return for twenty years. Once
embarked, however, he set himself to work in the common cause of the
heroes, and was soon as ingenious as Palamedes in rousing laggard
warriors.
There remained one who was destined to be the greatest warrior of all.
This was Achilles, the son of Thetis,--foretold in the day of
Prometheus as a man who should far outstrip his own father in glory and
greatness. Years had passed since the marriage of Thetis to King
Peleus, and their son Achilles was now grown to manhood, a wonder of
strength indeed, and, moreover, invulnerable.
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