'My lord,' the interpreter said unhappily, 'he says they have been wronged, he will now have to find a much larger dowry for her, he asks for compensation.'

'What?' Menelaus had flushed a dark red. In a voice choked with rage, he said, 'I, Menelaus, eagle king of the House of Atreus, leader of the Spartan host, am required to pay for sex with a peasant girl? That would be something for the Singer to get hold of. My image ruined for all time to come. How dare they? Fetch me a javelin. I'll show the clod compensation, I'll shove it up his backside.'

Several in the crowd, local men like the interpreter, closed round the couple and jostled them hastily away. By the time the guard came with a javelin they were some distance off and Menelaus was breathing heavily, in the way he had when his emotions were excited. He did not resort to the javelin but contented himself with shouting after them, in a voice broken by rage, 'That was royal sperm, you bitch!'

When some measure of calm had returned and his breathing was back to normal, he sent for the two guards who had brought him news of the visitors. They came in fear and prostrated themselves before him.

'What a grotesque error of judgement,' Menelaus said. 'You should have known better than to disturb my repose like that. My nerves have been in pieces since my hospitality was abused by that lecherous wog, Paris. Anyone with an ounce of savvy would have seen at once that those two characters were not worth bothering with. I mean, I knew it as soon as I set eyes on them. Such dolts too, refusing my offer of free publicity. I'm tempted to have the pair of you soundly flogged. You'd better watch out in future. Go and report to Big Ajax for two successive days of latrine duties.'

'Well, brother, that's the way the world goes,' one guard said to the other, as they trudged towards the Salamis lines. 'You try to act for the best and you end up shovelling shit.'

5.

Then there was the business of the Athenian, Leucon, who was found in possession of a gilded pendant in the shape of a beetle, the property of Achilles. After various denials and evasions he admitted taking this from Achilles' tent while the latter was with Patroclus, having a massage.

This theft was regarded by all the chiefs as a very serious matter. It was the thin end of the wedge. If not checked in time, it could lead to widespread pilfering, with consequent ill feeling and collapse of discipline. It had to be stamped on until they could get to Troy. A tribunal was hastily convened, open to any who cared to attend. Achilles was demanding the maximum penalty, which was death. Both he and the accused had the right to make a statement at any point in the proceedings but they could have no other part in the trial. Achilles entrusted the prosecution to one of his officers, a man named Pleuron. Leucon was defended by a fellow soldier, Calligonus, also from Athens, nimble of tongue and quick-witted, as the Athenians generally were. The final decision would rest with Agamemnon as Supreme Commander, helped in his deliberations by four chiefs who would act as judges – naturally none of them from either Attica or Phthia.

Pleuron began, speaking directly to Agamemnon, who sat immobile, hunched a little forward. This could by no means be regarded as an impulsive theft, he said. The accused man had waited, chosen his moment, a time when Achilles was away. He had taken advantage of some momentary inattention on the part of the guards. It was an open and shut case. There was no smallest doubt of Leucon's guilt. This was a deliberate, premeditated theft from a comrade-in-arms and deserved the maximum penalty.

This speech was greeted by cries of 'no' from the Athenian contingent, a small but noisy group, and by a sustained growl of agreement from the Phthians.

Leucon's counsel began with the issue of impulse, crucial for the obtaining of a more lenient sentence. Passing by a tent, seeing it unguarded, entering it on the spur of a moment, if that wasn't impulse he didn't know what was. There was no momentary inattention on the part of the guards: they were playing dice in the shade, as everyone knew, but they were too frightened of Achilles to admit it. And what was this comrade business? Since when had there been comradeship between Attica and the Thessaly borders? Since when had there been comradeship between a great man like Achilles, lord of vast estates, rich and famous, with a goddess for a mother, and a common foot-soldier like Leucon? It was a false and misleading term.

Pleuron was loyal and very steady in battle, but he was not nearly so clever an advocate as Calligonus, who was not particularly loyal or steady, but whose last remarks had been greeted with applause from all quarters. Feeling the case for the prosecution slipping away from him, with consequent loss of favour if he screwed up, he decided at this point to invite Achilles to make the personal statement to which he was entitled.

'Stand back, give me some air.' Achilles twisted his exquisitely moulded lips into an expression of repugnance at the nearness to him of unwashed humanity. His person was well sprinkled with balsam, but darker whiffs got through to him all the same. Though always scrupulous, he had taken extra care with his appearance this morning. He was bare-headed, his fair hair freshly curled, fitting thick and close round his neat ears. His friend Patroclus, who was an expert in make-up, had painted small red sunbursts on his cheeks. He was naked above the waist save for a gold armband and the leather pads he wore on the shoulders to emphasize their width. His bronzed, splendidly proportioned torso gleamed with oil. The linen skirt showed off to advantage his shapely, strongly muscled thighs. He stood with the ease, the power in repose of the supreme athlete, and his pale killer's eyes, very slightly astigmatic under their level brows, looked coldly and intently across at the man who had entered his tent and fingered his possessions, and whose death he was resolved on.

Possessed by this resolve, and inspired by the knowledge that as the person wronged he would have the killing of the man if the death sentence were brought in, he spoke with less affectation of languidness than usual, explaining how great a value he set upon this pendant, how it was among his most treasured possessions, how distressed he had been to discover its loss, how glad he was that punishment for the wrongdoer was at hand, that justice would be done. 'For what is justice, after all?' he demanded, coming to his peroration, turning his head gracefully from side to side so as to flex the marvellous tendons of his neck. 'Justice is order and measure, justice is respect for rank and private property, justice is the safeguard of society as we know it. Without justice we would be delivered over to the rule of the mob.'

The chiefs nodded solemnly at these sentiments, but they did not go down so well with the mob itself, and lost Achilles some considerable sympathy. Noting this and hoping to build on it, Calligonus called upon the accused to make his statement.

It had been a sudden impulse, Leucon said. He didn't know what had come over him. He had never done such a thing before. There was no one guarding the tent, the guards were a good fifty paces off, sitting in the shade playing dice. They were the ones who should be on trial: if they had been doing their job this would never have happened. Once inside, he had seen this pendant and taken a fancy to it. He didn't know why, he had just liked the look of it. He hadn't taken anything else.

Calligonus now had a good idea. 'May this object be held up to public view? Perhaps Lord Ajax, as the tallest man present, could... Thank you. Now here is the treasure we have heard so much about. A thin chain of bronze links, a pendant in the form of a scarab, also bronze, washed with gold. A pretty thing, finely made, but not of such great value in the materials. Leucon took only this. Would a real thief take only this? There were things much more precious and costly lying here and there in that tent. Are we going to put a man to death for giving way to a passing fancy?'