As soon as the beautiful Helen left the palace of Menelaus with the treacherous Paris, the gods sent the messenger of the gods, Iris, to Menelaus in Crete. Iris quickly rushed on her rainbow wings from Olympus, in the blink of an eye she appeared before Menelaus and informed him of the misfortune that had befallen him. Menelaus immediately set off on his way back. He quickly reached Sparta. He flew into terrible anger when he saw that Elena had deceived him and that his treasures had been stolen. Menelaus immediately went to his brother Agamemnon to consult with him on how to take revenge on Paris for his treachery. Agamemnon received his brother with full sympathy and advised him to immediately gather all those heroes who had once sworn an oath to help him in misfortune with all their might. With these heroes and their troops, Agamemnon advised going to war against Troy. Menelaus accepted Agamemnon's advice and together with him went first of all to the elderly king Nestor in Pylos.
One of the wisest Greeks was Elder Nestor. He saw many heroes during his long life, and he himself took part in many glorious exploits. Nestor's experience in military affairs was great. Nestor has already seen the third generation of heroes.
Nestor cordially received Menelaus and Agamemnon. Old Nestor was terribly indignant at Paris. He himself decided to participate in the campaign against Troy and decided to take his sons Thrazimedes and Antilochus with him. Nestor agreed to travel with the Atrids and the heroes of Greece to encourage them all to take part in the campaign.
Many heroes decided to take part in the campaign. Some of them took part because their oath obliged them to do so, others took part because their thirst for military exploits was great. They decided to go against Troy: the king of Argos Diomedes, the son of the great Tydeus, equal in strength to the god Ares; the wise son of the king of Euboea Palamedes; the mighty grandson of Minos, king of Crete Idomeneo; friend of Hercules Philoctetes; Hercules gave him his arrows before his death. Without these arrows, as the oracle predicted, it would have been impossible to take Troy. Two Ajaxes also took part in the campaign: the mighty son of Hercules’ friend Telamon, Ajax, the king of Salamis - there was no one among the heroes equal in strength to him - and the son of the hero Oileus Ajax from Locris. Many other heroes took part. It was necessary to force the king of Ithaca, the cunning Odysseus, son of Laertes, to go on a campaign. I didn’t want to leave Ithaca Odyssey. After all, he had only recently married the beautiful Penelope, and his first son, Telemachus, had just been born. Will he really have to leave his peaceful life and his beloved wife and son and sail far under the walls of Troy, perhaps even in order to never return to his homeland? Therefore, when Odysseus learned that Menelaus with Agamemnon, Nestor and Palamedes had arrived in Ithaca, he decided to deceive them. Pretending to be crazy, he began to plow his fields, harnessing an ox and a donkey to the plow, and he sowed the field with salt. Palamedes was the first to understand Odysseus's trick and decided to force Odysseus to confess to it. He took Telemachus, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid him on the furrow along which Odysseus was walking. Odysseus stopped. No matter how great his desire was to stay in Ithaca, he still could not destroy his only son for this. So Palamedes discovered Odysseus’s pretense, and Odysseus had to leave his native Ithaca, his wife and son and go for many years under the walls of Troy. From then on, Odysseus hated Palamedes and decided to take revenge on him for forcing him to take part in the campaign.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru