Page 377 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

3M Bronze andiron [1230-1160 b.c.]
Minor, to collect the tribute from the viceroy of their Lydian
kingdom and to show their standards on the border of the Hittite
lands. And one splendid year Atreus left his two sons, with half
his force of warriors from Greece, to spend the winter in Sipylos
and to watch the frontiers of the Achaean lands. That summer
reports had come that some of the nations of Thrace had crossed
the Bosphorus in force with all their possessions, their horses and
cattle and womenfolk. They were clearly prepared to fight for
new areas to settle, and no one knew in which direction they
would strike out. Nothing came of the danger, though. The
new people, Moski they called themselves, settled down to the
northeast, and apart from a few refugees the frontier remained
quiet, quieter even than usual, for the Hittites moved their
main garrisons farther north to cover the new threat.
Another year Menelaus was instructed to remain behind in
Mycenae, much against his inclination. There were rumors that
his exiled uncle Thyestes was raising a force in the north, pre­
paring to try to recover his share of the Mycenaean kingdom
from which he had been expelled by Atreus a score of years back.
But that threat, too, came to nothing.
It was a standing disappointment to Menelaus that they
never, in these years, ventured a raid against the greatest prize
of them all, Egypt. When the news was brought by a Cypriote
trading vessel that Seti II, King Merenptah’s son, had been as­
sassinated, and that southern Egypt had refused to recognize the
usurper, Siptah, and had set up a rival pharaoh of their own in
Thebes, called Amenmeses, Prince Menelaus had urged in coun­
cil, with all the forthrightness of his twenty-one years, that they
should take the opportunity of plunder while it was offered. And
they even sailed south to Libya that year to confer with their
royal cousins there. But the Libyan kings could still recall
the disastrous campaign of fifteen years before, and were of the
opinion that another raid in force now would unite Egypt
against them. It was better to wait, they said, and let the
Egyptians fight among themselves without outside interference.
So Menelaus and his brother had to content themselves that
year with a slave raid on a village in Sicily which hardly paid the
expenses of their voyage, and a long stem chase after an un­