In tracing the career of Achilles in connection with the Trojan war, that inimitable classic story-teller, Carl Friedrich Becker, follows the lines of Homer’s Iliad. He gives the reader a graphic picture of the stirring events in the ten years’ siege maintained by the Greeks, under the leadership of Agamemnon, king of MycenÆ, in their finally successful effort to redress the injury done to Menelaus, king of Sparta, whose wife, Helen, was carried off by Paris. The striking points in this thrilling narrative are the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles; the exploits of Hector, noblest character of them all; the human impersonations of the gods, who take part in the strife—some on one side, some on the other; the death of Patroclus; the final reconciliation of Achilles and Agamemnon and the former’s tremendous exploits; the death of Hector, and the touching interview with the aged Priam, who seeks to recover his body.