3.28
Putting to sea from Tenedos they made sail for Troy, and sent Ulysses and Menelaus to demand the restoration of Helen and the property. But the Trojans, having summoned an assembly, not only refused to restore Helen, but threatened to kill the envoys.
3.29
These were, however, saved by Antenor;As to the embassy of Ulysses and Menelaus to Troy to demand the surrender of Helen, see Hom. Il. 3.205ff.; Hom. Il. 11.138ff.; Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19; Bacch. 14(15), ed. Jebb; Hdt. 2.118; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 154ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.206. According to the author of the epic Cypria, as reported by Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19, the embassy was sent before the first battle, in which Protesilaus fell (see below); according to Tzetzes, it was sent before the Greek army assembled at Aulis; according to the Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.206, it was despatched from Tenedos. Herodotus says that the envoys were sent after the landing of the army in the Troad. Sophocles wrote a play on the subject of the embassy, called The Demand for the Surrender of Helen. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 171ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 121ff. Libanius has bequeathed to us two imaginary speeches, which are supposed to have been delivered by the Greek ambassadors, Menelaus and Ulysses, to the Trojan assembly before the opening of hostilities, while the Greek army was encamped within sight of the walls of Troy. See Libanius, Declam. iii. and iv. (vol. v. pp. 199ff., ed. R. Foerster). but the Greeks, exasperated at the insolence of the barbarians, stood to arms and made sail against them. Now Thetis charged Achilles not to be the first to land from the ships, because the first to land would be the first to die. Being apprized of the hostile approach of the fleet, the barbarians marched in arms to the sea, and endeavored by throwing stones to prevent the landing.
