The War That Killed Achilles Read Free Page A

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.
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    â€œSing, 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:
    But when they had put away their desire for eating and drinking, the Muse stirred the singer to sing the famous actions of men on that venture, whose fame goes up into the wide heaven, the quarrel between Odysseus and Peleus’ son, Achilles, how these once contended, at the gods’ generous festival, with words of violence . . .
    â€”Odyssey 8.72ff.
    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:
    â€œI for my part did not come here for the sake of the Trojan spearmen to fight against them, since to me they have done nothing. Never yet have they driven away my cattle or my horses, never in Phthia where the soil is rich and men grow great did they spoil my harvest, since indeed there is much that lies between us, the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea; but for your sake, o great shamelessness, we followed, to do you favour.”
    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