Greek and Roman Ghost Stories | Page 9

who fought round Troy,
can be seen on the plain at night, clad like warriors, with nodding
plumes. The inhabitants are keenly interested in these apparitions, and
well they may be, as so much depends upon them. If the heroes are
covered with dust, a drought is impending; if with sweat, they
foreshadow rain. Blood upon their arms means a plague; but if they
show themselves without any distinguishing mark, all will be well.

Though the heroes are dead, they cannot be insulted with impunity.
Ajax was popularly believed, owing to the form taken by his madness,
to be especially responsible for any misfortune that might befall flocks
and herds. On one occasion some shepherds, who had had bad luck
with their cattle, surrounded his tomb and abused him, bringing up all
the weak points in his earthly career recorded by Homer. At last they
went too far for his patience, and a terrible voice was heard in the tomb
and the clash of armour. The offenders fled in terror, but came to no
harm.
On another occasion some strangers were playing at draughts near his
shrine, when Ajax appeared and begged them to stop, as the game
reminded him of Palamedes.
Hector was a far more dangerous person. Maximus of Tyre[39] says
that the people of Ilium often see him bounding over the plain at dead
of night in flashing armour--a truly Homeric picture. Maximus cannot,
indeed, boast of having seen Hector, though he also has had his visions
vouchsafed him. He had seen Castor and Pollux, like twin stars, above
his ship, steering it through a storm. Æsculapius also he has seen--not
in a dream, by Hercules, but with his waking eyes. But to return to
Hector. Philostratus says that one day an unfortunate boy insulted him
in the same way in which the shepherds had treated Ajax. Homer,
however, did not satisfy this boy, and as a parting shaft he declared that
the statue in Ilium did not really represent Hector, but Achilles.
Nothing happened immediately, but not long afterwards, while the boy
was driving a team of ponies, Hector appeared in the form of a warrior
in a brook which was, as a rule, so small as not even to have a name.
He was heard shouting in a foreign tongue as he pursued the boy in the
stream, finally overtaking and drowning him with his ponies. The
bodies were never afterwards recovered.
Philostratus gives us a quantity of details about the Homeric heroes,
which the vine-dresser has picked up in his talks with Protesilaus. Most
of the heroes can be easily recognized. Achilles, for instance, enters
into conversation with various people, and goes out hunting. He can be
recognized by his height and his beauty and his bright armour; and as

he rushes past he is usually accompanied by a whirlwind--[Greek:
podarkês, dios], even after death.
Then we hear the story of the White Isle. Helen and Achilles fell in
love with one another, though they had never met--the one hidden in
Egypt, the other fighting before Troy. There was no place near Troy
suited for their eternal life together, so Thetis appealed to Poseidon to
give them an island home of their own. Poseidon consented, and the
White Isle rose up in the Black Sea, near the mouth of the Danube.
There Achilles and Helen, the manliest of men and the most feminine
of women, first met and first embraced; and Poseidon himself, and
Amphitrite, and all the Nereids, and as many river gods and spirits as
dwell near the Euxine and Mæotis, came to the wedding. The island is
thickly covered with white trees and with elms, which grow in regular
order round the shrine; and on it there dwell certain white birds,
fragrant of the salt sea, which Achilles is said to have tamed to his will,
so that they keep the glades cool, fanning them with their wings and
scattering spray as they fly along the ground, scarce rising above it. To
men sailing over the broad bosom of the sea the island is holy when
they disembark, for it lies like a hospitable home to their ships. But
neither those who sail thither, nor the Greeks and barbarians living
round the Black Sea, may build a house upon it; and all who anchor
and sacrifice there must go on board at sunset. No man may pass the
night upon the isle, and no woman may even land there. If the wind is
favourable, ships must sail away; if not, they must put out and anchor
in the bay and sleep on board. For at night men say that Achilles and
Helen drink together, and sing of each other's love, and of the war, and
of Homer. Now that his battles are over,