Book 1: Achilles Gets Mad Because Agamemnon is a Child
The Rage of Achilles
The poem opens with Homer asking the muses, daughters of Zeus, for their aid in telling the story of the Iliad. The first line tells us that the story we are about to read will be guided by the rage of Achilles — something that causes the Greeks a momentary defeat, but ultimately will bring about their victory in the war (more on this in later books).
Homer tells his reader that Achilles’ rage starts with an argument he has with Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, over the king’s choice of war prize. Agamemnon had taken a woman named Chryseis as his war prize, and the god Apollo was pretty mad about this considering Chryseis was a priestess of his. This anger from the god was only intensified given that Chryses (Chryseis’ father and a priest of Apollo himself — they’re not very original with names in Ancient Greece) begged Agamemnon to return his daughter. However Agamemnon had refused, meaning that he not only offended a priest of Apollo, but also the god himself. As a result, Apollo sent a plague raining down on the Greek army.
The plague was “rained down” quite literally, with Apollo firing arrows all over the Greek camp. He began by killing the animals (mules & dogs) and then moved to targeting the men so they start to dying, too. This had gone on for NINE WHOLE DAYS until we come to the present action in the book. On the tenth day, Achilles has had enough and so (with the help of the goddess Hera actually putting this idea into his head) calls a meeting of the Greek army.
Achilles Calls A Meeting
In front of the entire Greek army, Achilles directly addresses Agamemnon. He states that the men are dying not only on the battlefield from war wounds but now also from plague in the camps, and therefore, there is no safety for the men anywhere. Achilles suggests that the army should cut their losses and just go home.
The Greeks know that Apollo must be mad considering he is the god of plague and the men are dying from such, and so Achilles ends by saying that they should ask a seer what the hell is going on in order to figure out what to do next.
Kalchas, the Greek’s resident seer, now stands up. Kalchas knows that the news he is about to shed light on will make Agamemnon angry, and so he makes Achilles promise to protect him in case things go tits up (this, by the way, is proof that Agamemnon is a notorious hot head). Luckily for Kalchas, Achilles publicly promises that no matter what happens, he will come to the seer’s aid.
In front of the army, Kalchas tells the Greeks that Apollo is punishing them all because Agamemnon disrespected Chryses. Therefore, if the Greeks wish to survive the wrath of the god, they must return Chryseis back to her father AND sacrifice a hecatomb to show how truly sorry they are (a hecatomb being a sacrifice of 100 cattle). Once Kalchas delivers this news, he sheepishly sits back down.
Agamemnon does not take this well, and so gets up and calls Kalchas the “seer of evil”. In amongst his furious ramblings, the king of Mycenae randomly insults his wife Clytemnestra for no reason, saying that he would rather Chryseis was his wife than Clytemnestra (literally not a soul asked). Agamemnon does state that he’s more than open to giving Chryseis back, so long as he can get another prize to replace her IMMEDIATELY.
Obviously, Achilles retorts by saying that Agamemnon’s demand is simply not possible. This is because there is no other war prize (translation: women) readily available for this situation given they do not just have reserves laying around. However, Achilles does say that the Greeks will award Agamemnon with a far greater prize in order to make it up to him, which will be three or four times better than anything the other men have. Unfortunately, Achilles can only promise Agamemnon such a reward after the army has sacked Troy.
Agamemnon is, unsurprisingly, having absolutely none of this. In fact, he goes so far as to assume that Achilles is actually just trying to cheat him out of having a war prize altogether. Thus, Agamemnon refuses the offer, but he does understand that he must give Chryseis back in order to save his army. He says that either the men must come up with a new prize for him OR he’ll take either Achilles, Odysseus or Ajax’s war prize off of them to replace Chryseis.
At the end of this speech, Agamemnon orders the men to gather the hecatomb onto a boat. Along with the cattle, he suggests that either Odysseus, Achilles, Ajax or Idomeneus should go and escort Chryseis safely home, and also perform the sacrifice once they arrive. Odysseus is chosen to go.
If you thought the argument was over with that, you’d be sorely mistaken. Achilles pipes up again to make his position on the war clear: he says that he is not fighting for the Greeks because he hates the Trojans, nor does he think that the Trojans have done anything wrong towards him at all. Achilles reminds Agamemnon that he — unlike the other Greek heroes — is not bound by oath to fight for the sons of Atreus. Given Achilles is a part of Agamemnon’s army by choice, it is therefore unbelievably rude of him to threaten to take Achilles’ prize, Briseis. Achilles mentions that the army awarded him Briseis because he’s the one who is always on the front line of fighting and sacrificing himself on behalf of the army — not Agamemnon, their leader — and further stresses that the prize Agamemnon will have after the sacking of Troy will be much better than Briseis if only he can be patient. To round off this speech, Achilles threatens to go home as he does not understand why he should stay at Troy and be disrespected, just so that Agamemnon can leave with loads of wealth, glory, and honour.
As expected, Agamemnon basically says FINE RUN AWAY BACK HOME! He essentially tells Achilles that he will not force Achilles to stay and that there are loads of other great fighters who actually want to be there. Agamemnon piles on the insults after this, claiming that since Achilles is half divine, he didn’t technically earn his strength as the other men have. He concludes by encouraging Achilles to go home and stresses that it’s because of Achilles’ embarrassingly emotional display that he will definitely be going to take Briseis from his camp to replace Chryseis.
Hearing this, Achilles gets even more mad (if that’s possible) and genuinely considers killing Agamemnon for a moment. Just before he actually attacks the Mycenaean king, the goddess of wisdom and warcraft, Athena, is sent down by Hera to calm Achilles’ bubbling rage. Athena appears only to Achilles, which obviously startles him. He questions why she’s there and asks if she’s been listening to how absurd Agamemnon sounds, to which Athena replies by telling him to relax. She comforts Achilles by saying that one day he will receive more gifts than Agamemnon, and so he needs to not kill the king right now. The son of Peleus reluctantly obeys her and chills, allowing Athena to disappear back to Olympus with confidence no one is getting slaughtered in the camp.
Achilles turns back to the sons of Atreus and calls Agamemnon a “sack of wine” and a “dog-face/dog-eyes” (whichever way one prefers to translate that). He says that due to this insult he will now be stepping out of battle, but assures them that they will come crawling back to him when Hector starts killing all the Greek soldiers. Achilles then throws his “sceptre” on the ground and sits down like a child.
Old man Nestor then stands up to speak. He takes this chance to put the Greek heroes in their place, claiming that he’s dealt with better men than both Achilles and Agamemnon in his past (which is a randomly rude yet hilarious line). He then proceeds to demonstrate this claim by listing off a bunch of heroes he’s previously travelled with, stating that his generation was the best generation of men because they were all godly and fought literal beasts. He rounds this off by saying that Agamemnon shouldn’t take Achilles’ woman since she was a gift, and then stresses that Achilles should not try and fight Agamemnon because even though he’s born from a goddess and technically the better fighter, Agamemnon is still his superior. Nestor then sits down.
Agamemnon stands up and praises Nestor for his speech, but then (basically) says “Achilles thinks he’s hot s*** when he’s not! He needs to remember that even though the gods gave him great power in battle, they didn’t give him the right to be so rude!!”
This reignites Achilles, who stands up and tells Agamemnon not to order him around anymore because he’s not going to listen. He tells the king that he has permission to take Briseis without any retaliation, but if Agamemnon touches anything else of his … well, the king of Mycenae will be no more.
The assembly then breaks up. Achilles goes back to see Patroclus, and Agamemnon gets the boats ready to send Chryseis home with Odysseus as her escort.
Briseis is Taken
Agamemnon sends his royal minions Talthybios and Eurybates to go collect Briseis. He threatens that if Achilles does not let them do this, he’ll show up himself to fight the son of Peleus (not really a scary threat to someone like Achilles since he is the greatest warrior ever, but sure Agamemnon).
Homer notes that both Talthybios and Eurybates go to the tent of Achilles against their will, so even they had no desire to do Agamemnon’s dirty work.
They arrive to find Achilles standing outside the tent. The men are so terrified of Achilles that they can’t form the words to speak to him, meaning that Achilles is forced to speak first. He tells them that he’s not mad with them that Briseis is being taken from him, and so they can do what they were told to do without fear of being harmed. Achilles instructs Patroclus to go and retrieve Briseis, after which she then unwillingly follows the henchmen back to the tent of Agamemnon.
Achilles Cries To His Mother
Once the men leave with Briseis, Achilles does what he does best: goes down to the beach by himself to cry to his mum. Before his mother appears, Achilles gives out a general anguished cry about all the gossip we just read, along with complaining about his fate to live an incredibly short life. All in all, Achilles is crying because he feels really hard done by despite being the son of a goddess and the greatest warrior to have ever lived.
While Achilles is doing this, Thetis, his mother, is sitting by her father under the sea. Thetis hears her son pining for her, and so comes up to sit with him on the beach and give him a cuddle. Thetis asks Achilles what’s wrong (no, she did not listen closely enough to catch his wailings the first time around, forcing us to read it all over again a second time), all the while comforting her son as best she can.
Achilles rounds off this conversation by asking Thetis to go to Olympus and ask Zeus, king of the gods, to start favouring the Trojans in war. This is in the hopes that once Agamemnon starts seeing the Trojans successfully beating his army, he will realise just how much the Greeks rely on Achilles and hopefully come begging for his return to battle.
Thetis cries at this, mainly due to the feeling of guilt washing over her for even birthing Achilles in the first place. She does not believe it is fair that fate has decreed that Achilles will have a short life, and further that this minuscule amount of time on Earth is being tainted with his sadness. She agrees to go to Olympus to chat with Zeus, however, she notes that she is unable to do anything at this exact moment. This is because Zeus is currently having lunch with the Ethiopians, BUT he should be back soon and so they’ll chat then (I’m literally not making this up).
Odysseus Takes Chryseis Home
While the Achilles-Thetis-Agamemnon-Briseis drama comes to a close, we cut to Odysseus on the boat with Chryseis. He successfully delivers Chryseis to her father, Chryses.
Homer follows this with an extensive description of how a sacrifice would work and highlights how the hecatomb continues for the rest of the day. The next day, Odysseus returns back to the Greek camps at Troy.
Thetis Goes To Make A Deal
Thetis finally goes to Olympus to plead with Zeus on Achilles’ behalf. She’s described as putting one hand on Zeus’s knee and the other under his chin (an act of supplication) to chat to him about helping Achilles’ honour. Zeus does not immediately reply, so Thetis puts both her hands on his knees and lowly asks him to do this one simple thing for her.
Zeus replies and explains to Thetis that she is putting him in a tough situation with his wife, Hera, as his queen is always getting on his case for helping out the Trojans. Zeus advises Thetis to leave so that Hera won’t know what she’s asked of him, but ensures her that he will help her.
Once Thetis leaves, Zeus walks into a meeting of the gods which he called prior to seeing Thetis (this initial calling is not seen in the present action, but only mentioned as a side note to explain why all the gods have gathered). Upon his arrival, every one of the gods stands up to greet him. He walks over to sit on his throne next to Hera, who can basically smell the deal he just made with Thetis wafting from his entire being. Naturally, Hera confronts him, asking who he has been plotting with and why such meetings always happen when she isn’t around.
The king of the gods has a somewhat suspicious reply, telling his wife that it’s not normal for her to know everything about him despite them being married. He continues on this train of thought by saying if he wants her to know of a deal, he will tell her, however, if he chooses not to inform her of something, she should not probe him.
Obviously, Hera does not like Zeus’s tone. She retorts that she did not probe him — AND THEN SAYS THAT SHE’S PRETTY SURE SHE KNOWS A DEAL WAS MADE WITH THETIS IN ORDER TO BENEFIT ACHILLES’ HONOUR AND PRIDE. Which, of course, hence the capitals, Hera is bang on the money.
Zeus dislikes that his wife figured out his plan with such ease, and decides that the conversation needs to end. He tells her to sit down and shut up because if he chooses to hit her (I wish I could say I’m making this up but I’m genuinely not), nobody in the room will come to defend her. Hearing this, Hera gets scared and stops talking. Every other god in the room is described as feeling a little on edge, too.
Hephaestus then gets up to speak on behalf of his mother. Although his intentions are good, he begins this speech by somewhat blaming Hera for Zeus’s outburst. He claims that if she had been more gentle, Zeus would not have had to threaten her (insanely problematic, but alas, this is the story). He continues, confirming that Zeus was right in that no other god would be able to help her if the king of the gods did decide to get physical because Zeus is stronger that the rest of them.
The next part of Hephaestus’ speech is wonderfully interesting, as we hear of one time he did try to help his mother in a conflict with Zeus. He recalls that when he did step in, Zeus caught him by the foot and threw him off Olympus. The god of ironworks ended up landing on the island of Lemnos after his catastrophic fall. This story explains why Hephaestus is lame, as since that moment his legs haven’t worked properly (please note that this particular myth changes drastically throughout mythology, however, this is the rendition of it in Homer).
Once Hephaestus wraps up his speech, he hands Hera a goblet of wine and she smiles in response. Since Hephaestus is standing up, he decides to go and give everyone else’s glass a top-up of wine, but all the gods see him shuffling on his lame legs and they start laughing at him (honestly such a mean moment considering he’s just trying to be nice and hospitable).
The gods feast for the whole day. Once night falls, they all return to their respective homes (which Hephaestus built for them all, mind you, so the AUDACITY they have in laughing at him is on another level). Zeus and Hera go to their marital bed, no longer angry at one another.
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Thumbnail Image: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/257807
Terracotta stamnos (jar). Attributed to the Painter of London B 343 late 6th century BCE. (On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 154)
Obverse, chariot setting out
Reverse, five hoplites (foot soldiers)
”Representations of Attic symposia (drinking parties) occasionally include stamnoi, indicating that they contained wine; they typically had lids. The decoration here juxtaposes aspects of heroic and contemporary warfare. The chariot evokes a bygone era described in Homer's epics of the Trojan War. The two figures in Scythian dress and the footsoldiers on both sides represent contemporary warriors. The painter was particularly inventive with the shield devices.” (copied from the Met Museum website).