Читать книгу The War at Troy - Lindsay Clarke - Страница 7

The tale has already been told of how, in service of Aphrodite and of the impetuous passion of his heart, Prince Paris of Troy voyaged to Sparta more than half a century ago. No voyage before or since that time has ever proved more disastrous in its consequences, for it was there, in breach of all claims of friendship and the laws of hospitality, that Paris won the love of the lady Helen and persuaded her to abandon for his sake both her devoted husband, Menelaus, and her daughter, Hermione. It is my task now to relate what befell all the lands and peoples of both Argos and Troy in the turbulent wake of that fateful voyage.

The scroll on which I write was one of a number which my friend Telemachus brought back for me as a gift when he too made a voyage to Sparta, seeking news of his father Odysseus many years after the fall of Troy. Even as those scrolls lay untouched across the decades since then, I Phemius, bard of Ithaca, knew that one day they were destined to contain my chronicles of Odysseus. For that reason they have always been among my most treasured possessions. The scroll on which I now write will tell as truthfully as I can the tales of triumph and defeat, of glory, suffering and grief, which together make up the tragic history of the war that Lord Odysseus and his comrades fought at Troy.