The War That Killed Achilles (5 page)

In the tenth year of the war against Troy, the two armies, Achaean and Trojan, are locked in what has become a long stalemate. In lieu of sacking Troy itself, the Achaeans have taken to raiding cities and settlements throughout the region, both on foot and from the sea, in the old Mycenaean manner.

Now the victim of a recent raid comes forward to supplicate the plunderers. Chryses is a priest of the god Apollo, and among the war booty the Achaeans carried away was his daughter, Chryseis. With great courage, the old priest has traveled to the Achaean camp, displaying the gold staff of his priesthood and “carrying gifts beyond count” to supplicate the Achaeans and in particular “Atreus' two sons, the marshals of the people,” Menelaos and Agamemnon.

In his brief appearance, Chryses makes a sympathetic figure, as evidenced by the reaction of the Achaean army, which shouts its assent to his plea. Compliance with the priest's humble and respectful request, then, will earn countless gifts of ransom, the support of the Achaeans, and undoubtedly the goodwill of Apollo, the god whom Chryses serves. There is, as it turns out, only one individual within the broad Troad for whom this straightforward act of both compassion and self-interest is unacceptable, and that is the commander in chief of the Achaean army, who also happens to be the person to whom, when the spoils were divided, the priest's daughter was given:

Thus does Agamemnon, son of Atreus and king of Mycenae, the wealthiest of all the coalition states, make his appearance in the
Iliad,
in a manner that has been found offensive down the ages. The ancient commentator Aristarchus, writing in the second century B.C., wished to delete his words on the grounds that it was “unfitting that Agamemnon should say such things,” while a modern commentator characterizes them as being “typical of Agamemnon at his nastiest.”
¹
The immediate consequence of Agamemnon's arrogant dismissal of the priest is that he angers Phoibos Apollo—the god of healing, the archer who shoots from afar, and also, as it turns out, the bringer of plagues: Smintheus, “mouse-slayer,” is the epithet by which the priest Chryses addresses Apollo, from
smínthos—
“mouse”—the bringer of plagues, in Mysian, one of the languages of the Troad.
²

High on Mount Olympos, Apollo hears the prayer of his aggrieved priest and, enraged, strides down from the mountain pinnacles, his arrows clattering in his quiver. Taking aim first at the army's animals, the mules and dogs, he then lets fly his arrows against the men:

From this, his first action, Achilles declares himself the hero of the Achaean army and the hero of the epic. The son of the Thessalian king Peleus and an immortal goddess, Achilles is not Agamemnon's equal in rank. Nonetheless, he takes charge of the crisis with authoritative confidence, displaying the leadership that his commander in chief lacks. Before the assembled men, he calls for “ ‘some holy man, some prophet, / even an interpreter of dreams . . . who can tell why Phoibos Apollo is so angry.' ” In response, Kalchas, “the best of the bird interpreters,” such as every good army carries, steps forth with trepidation. Kalchas knows that his words will incite Agamemnon's anger, and only after Achilles personally offers assurances for his safety does the old man speak.

Apollo's anger, and the plague, Kalchas declares, will continue to rage until Chryseis is returned to her father, “ ‘without price, without ransom. ' ” Agamemnon's reaction to this pronouncement, which is tantamount to a public rebuke, is immediate and unseemly. Insulting Kalchas, he nonetheless sourly agrees to surrender his prize—but only if he receives another prize as compensation. Once more it is Achilles who takes the initiative, stepping in to reason with his commander:

“ ‘What do you want?' ” is Agamemnon's outraged and panicked response. “ ‘To keep your own prize and have me sit here / lacking one? Are you ordering me to give this girl back?' ” Lashing out, he issues the threat to Achilles that will haunt him and the entire Achaean army for the rest of the epic: “ ‘Either the great-hearted Achaeans shall give me a new prize . . . or else . . . I myself shall take her, / your own prize, or that of Aias, or that of Odysseus.' ” And in this way Agamemnon unleashes the wrath of Achilles.

 

 

“Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilles.” The anger of Achilles is the engine that drives the epic. How that wrath is aroused, however, the fact that Achilles' protagonist is Agamemnon as opposed to any of his other companions, is of singular importance.

The summaries of the lost Trojan Cycle poems indicate that quarrels between allied heroes was a favorite theme of ancient epic.
³
In the lost epic
Cypria,
for example, “Achilles quarrels with Agamemnon because he received a late invitation” to a feast. In the
Aethiopis,
“Achilles kills Thersites after being abused by him and insulted over his alleged love” of the Amazon queen. Also in the
Aethiopis,
“a quarrel arises between Odysseus and Ajax over the arms of Achilles,” which were to be awarded after his death to the best of the Achaeans .
⁴
Finally, the
Odyssey
relates at some length a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus. This last example is particularly noteworthy, as the story is sung by a Homer-like singer of tales:

Given that he appears as a protagonist in most of the heroic quarrels cited, Achilles was evidently a character who attracted
éris,
or strife: “ ‘For- ever quarrelling is dear to your heart,' ” Agamemnon says to Achilles in the heat of their confrontation, a knowing nod toward his wider reputation. Audiences of Homer's time, therefore, would not necessarily have found the
Iliad
's opening lines to be fully explanatory, since the “anger” or “wrath” of Peleus' son could have referred to any of several possible epic stories.

Epic tradition, then, appears to have offered numerous possibilities for igniting Achilles' dramatically necessary anger. The fact that the
Iliad
rejected traditions about a quarrel between Achilles and a comrade-in-arms and chose instead to pit him against his commander in chief immediately establishes a more dangerous and interesting arena of contention. The
éris
is now more than a “quarrel,” and not only because Achilles is guilty of insubordination. What interests Homer are issues of authority and leadership on the one hand and duty and individual destiny on the other, issues brought swiftly to the fore by Achilles himself:

It is a great gauntlet-throwing speech, particularly remarkable for occurring at the very outset of the epic. What Achilles is challenging is the bedrock assumption of military service—that the individual warrior submit his freedom, his destiny, his very life to a cause in which he may have no personal stake. In modern times, the speech finds its counterpart in Muhammad Ali's famous refusal to fight in Vietnam:

Like Ali's, Achilles' words are particularly dangerous in that one can assume he is speaking aloud words that other, less charismatic men had long thought.

The critical exchange, with the full tide of Achilles' eloquence is as follows:

“ ‘Run away by all means' ” is Agamemnon's retort, and recklessly he repeats, and now confirms, his earlier threat to strip Achilles of his prize, a captive woman named Briseis:

Achilles' instinct is to draw his sword and kill the king; he is checked, hand on hilt, by the sudden intervention of the goddess Athene, visible to Achilles alone, who offers sympathetic words but counsels him to stay his hand. Whether Athene's appearance is taken literally or metaphorically—the sober second thought sent by the goddess known for wisdom—Achilles is receptive and sheathes his sword.

The full import of Achilles' rebellion is difficult to gauge given the
Iliad
's vagueness on the nature and basis of Agamemnon's power. In other legend, related in detail by Hesiod, an epic poet following Homer, the coalition of Achaean forces was the result of a vow made years earlier by each of Helen's many suitors to her father: each man pledged that, regardless of whom she married, he would unite with her other suitors to come to her aid, if the need should ever arise. All the major Greek heroes at Troy appear to have made this pledge—save Achilles, who was too young to have been a suitor (but, according to Hesiod, “neither warlike Menelaus, nor any other human on the earth would have defeated him in wooing Helen, if swift Achilles had found her still a virgin”).
⁵
The
Iliad
makes no mention of this legendary pact, but some kind of agreement like it nonetheless informs the epic. Consequently, Agamemnon appears to be commander in chief not only because he is king of the wealthiest kingdom of the coalition but because he is brother to Menelaos, husband of Helen, whose cause the coalition fights. Minor kings such as Achilles, Diomedes, and Odysseus, then, have come to Troy with their own troops voluntarily, not as vassals beholden to the Great King.

The weight of Agamemnon's authority is spelled out most unambiguously by Nestor, king of Pylos, the Achaean army's aged counselor-at-large, who was famously long-lived: “In his time two generations of mortal men had perished, . . . and he was king in the third age.” Characteristically, his pronouncements betray him as being stuck in his own past; Nestor's many war memories date from the First World War, so to speak, and we are in Vietnam. Now, seeking to mollify Achilles and the king of Mycenae, Nestor intervenes in the quarrel, reminding both men that in his time he has “ ‘dealt with better men than / you are, and never once did they disregard me.' ” After a long and rambling narration of his former exploits fighting and destroying “ ‘the beast men,' ” or centaurs, who lived in the mountains, Nestor offers his counsel: to Agamemnon—“ ‘great man that you are' ”—his advice is to give up the girl. To Achilles he offers a rebuke:

Nestor is the spokesman for the status quo, for the tradition-hallowed belief that institutional power equates with unquestioned authority. Both Nestor and Agamemnon can smell the danger that Achilles himself does not yet know he threatens. Already Achilles has taken charge, instinctively, of the assembly; he has confidently extended unqualified protection to Kalchas; by making the commonsensical assertion that Chryseis should be returned, he is in essence distributing war prizes, the prerogative of kings; and in his manifestation of concern for the men under Agamemnon's charge he has assumed, again instinctively, the responsibility of a genuine leader. Were Agamemnon to submit to Achilles' injunction and return his prize, he would surrender the last vestige of ceremonial authority he possesses.