ervitude, being rid of his disease he mustered an army of noble volunteers and
sailed for Ilium with eighteen ships of fifty
oars each.As to the siege and capture of Troy by Herakles, sTroy by Herakles, see Hom. Il.
5.640-643, Hom. Il. 5.648-651; Pind. I. 6.26(38)ff.; Diod. 4.32; Tzetzes,
Chiliades ii.443ff.; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 34; Ov. Met. 11.213-217, xiii.22ff.; Hyginusably drew on the same source.
Homer, with whom Tzetzes agrees, says that Herakles went to Troy with only six ships. Diodorus notices the Homeric
statement, but mentions that according to some the fleet of Herakles numbered
“eighteen long ships.” And having come to port at Ilium, he left the guard of the ships to OiclesAs to Oicles at Troy,
compare Diod. 4.32.3; PaTroy,
compare Diod. 4.32.3; Paus. 8.36.6, who says
that his tomb was shown near Megalopolis in Arcadia. Sophocles
seems to have written a play called Oicles, though there is some doubt as
to the spelling
of November, which coincided with the sailing season in
antiquity. This derivation of the name was recognized by some of the ancients
（Serv. Verg. G. 1.138）. With regard
to the number of the Pleiades, it was generally agreed that there were seven of them,
but that one was invisible, or nearly so, to the human eye. Of this invisibility two
explanations were given. Some thought that Electra, as the mother of Dardanus, was so
grieved at the fall of Troy that she hid her
face in her hands; the other was that Merope, who had married a mere man, Sisyphus, was
so ashamed of her humble, though honest, lot by comparison with the guilty splendour of
her sisters, who were all of them paramours of gods, that she dared not show herself.
These alternative and equally probable theories are stated, for example, by Ovid and
Hyginus. The cause of the promotion of the maidens to the sky is said to have been that
