Greek and Roman Mythology

Then Palamedes, whenever he appears in tragedy, proves Agamemnon ridiculously unfit to be a general. Did you never remark how he declares that he had invented number, and had numbered the ships and set in array the ranks of the army at Troy; which implies that they had never been numbered before, and Agamemnon must be supposed literally to have been incapable of counting his own feet--how could he if he was ignorant of number? And if that is true, what sort of general must he have been? Plato, Republic

Behind figures of heroic legend often stand real men.... As for Palamedes, the Greeks especially knew one thing about him: he was so clever that he devised a way to write down Greek speech.... In Palamedes we may have found the adapter's very name.... We cannot separated the recording of early hexametric poetry from Homer... Homer sang his song and the adapter took him down. From this momentous event came classical Greek civilization and its achievements. B. B. Powell, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)

Alexander and Perdiccas. When Alexander started for Asia he divided his possessions among his friends. Perdiccas asked what he had left for himself. "Hope," said Alexander. "If hope is enough for Alexander," replied the friend, "it is enough for Perdiccas also;" and declined to accept anything. Cobham Brewer

Silvana Mangano as Penelope in the film Ulysses (1955)