Explore "How a Great Hero Met his Master" by James Baldwin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Now, after two years and more had passed in peace, there came one day to Ithaca an aged wanderer who had many things of great import to tell. For he had been in every land and in every clime, and had trod the streets of every city, even from Pylos to Iolcos by the sea; and he knew what deeds had been done by all the heroes, and what fortunes or misfortunes had befallen mankind in every part of Hellas. And Odysseus and the elders of Ithaca loved to sit around him in the banquet chamber of Laertes, and listen to his stories, of which there was no end. For in that wonderful Golden Age, these strollers -- blind bards and story-tellers -- were the people's newspapers, and oftentimes the only means by which those of one country could learn aught of what was passing in another.
"Alas! the world is no longer as it was in the days of my youth," said the old newsmonger, one morning, with a sigh. "The heroes are all passing away. Indeed, of the older race, I can now remember only three who are still living, -- Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons; Nestor, of lordly Pylos; and Laertes, in whose halls we are sitting."