The War That Killed Achilles

by Caroline Alexander

  While the rank and file are mustered, Agamemnon holds a preliminary council with the princes and shares with them the splendid vision of his dream: Significantly, evil Dream had appeared to Agamemnon in the likeness of his most trusted adviser, the perhaps too-aged Nestor. Nestor’s own reaction to Agamemnon’s description of this landmark apparition—Troy to be taken on this very day!—is curious: “ ‘had it been any other Achaean who told of this dream / we should have called it a lie and we might rather have turned from it,’ ” he says, with diplomatic caution. Having faithfully recounted the dream, Agamemnon adds a complicating twist. At some point as events were swiftly unfolding, he devised his own astonishing plan—he will test his men, a spur-of-the-moment ploy that he has apparently dreamed up alone:“Yet first, since it is the right way, I will make trial of them by words, and tell them even to flee in their benched vessels. Do you take stations here and there, to check them with orders.”

  To the place of assembly, the thousands of troops swarm, so many that the earth groans beneath them. Here, leaning upon his father’s scepter, Agamemnon delivers a speech to this grand host in one of the more bizarre episodes in the Iliad. He has had a dream, Agamemnon tells his men, and proceeds to relate the exact opposite of the dream he actually received. There is nothing to be done, he concludes, except to go home:“And now nine years of mighty Zeus have gone by, and the timbers

  of our ships have rotted away and the cables are broken

  and far away our own wives and our young children

  are sitting within our halls and wait for us, while still our work here

  stays forever unfinished as it is, for whose sake we came hither.

  Come then, do as I say, let us all be won over; let us

  run away with our ships to the beloved land of our fathers

  since no longer now shall we capture Troy of the wide ways.”

  What Agamemnon hoped to achieve by his “test” is never stated; presumably he expected the army to rise as a man and declare they would never cut and run, that Troy could be won, that success was just around the corner.16 The actual results of the speech, in any event, are disastrous:All of that assembly was shaken, and the men in tumult swept to the ships, and underneath their feet the dust lifted and rose high, and the men were all shouting to one another to lay hold on the ships and drag them down to the bright sea. They cleaned out the keel channels and their cries hit skyward as they made for home.

  At the height of the crisis, there arises another outspoken critic: Thersites, said to be “the ugliest man who came beneath Ilion,” bandy-legged and hunch-shouldered. “Beyond all others Achilles hated him, and Odysseus. / These two he was forever abusing, but now at brilliant / Agamemnon he clashed the shrill noise of his abuse.”17 Alone of the epic’s major, speaking characters, Thersites has no patronymic, or name that identifies him by his father (“son of Atreus,” “son of Peleus”), an absence indicating his unseemliness, if not low birth. His character may have been invented to serve the single purpose of being an attack dog; his name, Thersites, is derived from thérsos, an Aeolic word meaning “overbold” or “audacious,” well suited to his confrontation here with Agamemnon: 18 “It is not right for

  you, their leader, to lead in sorrow the sons of the Achaeans.

  My good fools, poor abuses, you women, not men, of Achaea,

  let us go back home in our ships, and leave this man here

  by himself in Troy to mull his prizes of honour

  that he may find out whether or not we others are helping him.

  And now he has dishonoured Achilles, a man much better

  than he is. He has taken his prize by force and keeps her.

  The mass desertion advocated by Thersites is averted only by Odysseus, who turns upon the little man, threatening to strip away his clothing and send him “ ‘howling back to the fast ships,’ ” and then beats him with the royal scepter, which he has snatched from the impotent hands of Agamemnon. “Frightened, / in pain, and looking helplessly about,” Thersites wipes away his tears, while the diverted host “laughed over him happily.” After this scapegoating, order is restored. Odysseus bolsters morale with a long, eloquent speech, reminding the army of an earlier omen, made ten years previously, that promised eventual success. Nestor steps in with saber-rattling words, urging, among other things, that the Achaeans not go home until each man “ ‘has lain in bed with the wife of a Trojan’ ” to avenge Helen. Finally Agamemnon reappears, rueful and shaken, and credited with not a single word or action to dispel the disaster he has caused: “Zeus of the aegis, son of Kronos, has given me bitterness,

  who drives me into unprofitable abuse and quarrels.

  For I and Achilles fought together for a girl’s sake

  in words’ violent encounter, and I was the first to be angry.

  If ever we can take one single counsel, then no longer

  shall the Trojans’ evil be put aside, not even for a small time.

  Now go back, take your dinner, and let us gather our warcraft.”

  Thus ends Agamemnon’s test of his army. That this was only a test is never explained to the bewildered men, and the episode remains strangely open-ended. Over the years, many subtle theories have been floated to explain the intent and effect of the astounding act of idiocy represented by Agamemnon’s trial of the army: by “wisely . . . diminishing his soldiers’ own reserves of honor,” Agamemnon “increases their need for battle” is one such example.19 The most straightforward explanation, however, is that as illogical and disastrous as the trial may be, it is entirely consistent with the Iliad’s carefully drawn depictions of Agamemnon in action. His rough handling of Chryses caused the catastrophic plague in the first place, and his tactless pride caused the withdrawal of his most valuable warrior. In Zeus’ judgment, Agamemnon and his delusions were the most effective instrument to turn the course of war against his own army. In fact, Agamemnon’s every word and action in these first, important, stage-setting episodes of the epic has been disastrous. The trial scene is simply one more example—starker and uncomplicated by any other agency—of Agamemnon’s unfitness to command. Is this not the point?20

  The political world the poem purports to evoke is, of course, Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece, when strong rulers controlled centralized bases of wealth and power from palace-citadels such as Mycenae; but the end of the poetic tradition, in Homer’s time, occurred in the late eighth century B.C., on the threshold of an age of extraordinary social innovation that included the establishment of citizen-ruled city-states and of colonies abroad by enterprising individuals and clans. Already, in the last phase of the Iliad’s evolution, questions concerning the nature of authority and power, of individual rights and duties had to have been in the air.21 Those men who, like Achilles, found themselves constrained by the unreasonable authority of lesser men over them or disaffected rabble rousers like Thersites would have been prime candidates to pick up their tent pegs and start their own colony elsewhere.

  There is no way of knowing how an audience of Homer’s time viewed this pointed portrayal of a traditional king who is unworthy of command, but it is unlikely that they had no memory of a real-life analogy to color the portrait, for the realization that a god-sent leader may not be up to the job cycles through many ages of many people, up to the present time; undoubtedly the last wave of Tommies to head dutifully over the top at the Somme had realized that the authority of king and country did not equate with military acumen. The articulated awareness that the authority above may be inferior to the individual soldier below is the beginning of a dangerous wisdom. Achilles’ contempt for Agamemnon is expressed in the words of the highborn hero; Thersites’ in the words of the people, the men in the trenches. Dangerously, both views coincide.

  Behind the straightforward narration of events, from Agamemnon’s first appearance through to the conclusion of his failed trial—the third crisis of his manufacture—is a warning rumble of a not-so-distant political storm. The undisguised ineptness of
the king, a shrill but eloquent rabble-rouser in the person of Thersites, a demoralized army, and a charismatic warrior whose outstanding strength and prowess are matched by a dangerous, unconventional independent-mindedness—in the cluster of these disjointed elements lurks the specter of a coup.

  That Agamemnon is threatened by Achilles is manifest from his first reactions in their confrontation. What the king does not know, however, is that the usurpation he fears has in effect already taken place: Achilles controls the army’s fate and will continue to do so, present or absent, as Achilles controls the epic. In the rebellion of Achilles, two powerful thematic lines have converged, one historical, one mythic: the historic reas- sessment of an individual’s unquestioned duty to his ruler and the playing out of Achilles’ inherently subversive destiny.

  Using the traditional set piece of éris between heroes, the Iliad deliberately probes the consequences of unexamined leadership; the kind of prosaic narrative line hinted at in the summaries of the quarrels of the other, lost epics that fell by the wayside has thus been elevated to cosmic heights. When the Iliad opens, the son of Thetis, who was almost lord of heaven, is taking orders from an ineffectual king. Agamemnon, for whom rank and power, authority and honor are equated with a careful calibration of wealth and prizes, can have no idea of the monstrous scale of real, absolute power, authority, and honor. By taking back a prize of war, he has broken the rules that, had he been wise enough to perceive them, both afforded him his status and were all that kept Achilles’ terrible strength in check. “ ‘Zeus, exalted and mightiest, sky-dwelling in the dark mist,’ ” Agamemnon prays at the conclusion of his disastrous trial, offering accompanying sacrifice:“let not the sun go down and disappear into darkness

  until I have hurled headlong the castle of Priam

  blazing, and lit the castle gates with the flames’ destruction; . . .”

  He spoke, but none of this would the son of Kronos accomplish,

  who accepted the victims, but piled up the unwished-for hardship.

  The king cannot know how wholly he is outranked, that it is Achilles’ prayers, not his, that are heard in heaven. The honor Achilles seeks now will be absolute, such as is demanded by the gods. “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles” are the words of the proem. Achilles will bring his king and the mortal comrades who did not follow him to their knees.

  To the epic’s deliberate, painstaking portrayal of Agamemnon’s ineptness are juxtaposed Achilles’ most pointedly damaging words: “I 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.

  . . . but for your sake,

  o great shamelessness, we followed, to do you favour,

  you with the dog’s eyes, to win your honour and Menelaos’

  from the Trojans.”

  As any audience familiar with the story of the Trojan War would have known, this charge—that Achilles and the Achaeans are at Troy solely on behalf of Agamemnon and his brother—is wholly true. Thus, from the Iliad ’s first scenes, Homer has unambiguously established that the demoralized Achaean army fights under failed leadership for a questionable cause and wants to go home. It is, to say the least, a remarkable way to introduce a great war epic.

  Terms of Engagement

  When Agamemnon has finished his sacrifice and prayers to Zeus, Nestor reminds him of his duty, urging him to muster the Achaeans for battle. As the heralds are duly summoned and the men marshaled with their proclamations and cries, Athene, the warrior goddess, sweeps through the great throng, holding her aegis, “ageless, immortal,” and urges them on:She kindled the strength in each man’s

  heart to take the battle without respite and keep on fighting.

  And now battle became sweeter to them than to go back

  in their hollow ships to the beloved land of their fathers.

  As obliterating fire lights up a vast forest

  along the crests of a mountain, and the flare shows far off,

  so as they marched, from the magnificent bronze the gleam went

  dazzling all about through the upper air to the heaven.

  These, as the multitudinous nations of birds winged,

  of geese, and of cranes, and of swans long-throated

  in the Asian meadow beside the Kaÿstrian waters

  this way and that way make their flights in the pride of their

  wings, then

  settle in clashing swarms and the whole meadow echoes with them,

  so of these the multitudinous tribes from the ships and

  shelters poured to the plain of Skamandros, and the earth beneath

  their

  feet and under the feet of their horses thundered horribly.

  They took position in the blossoming meadow of Skamandros,

  thousands of them, as leaves and flowers appear in their season.1

  The same great host which, provoked by Agamemnon’s trial, had risen as a man to flee to the ships intent on home is now intent on action. The change of heart was brought about in part by the rallying words of Odysseus and Nestor, but mostly by the sinister shadow of Athene’s great aegis. Like the goddess herself, the aegis is invisible to the men, its terror-inducing powers being transmitted to them in some mystical way. In statues and painted art, the aegis is depicted as a short mantle of goat-skin (aígeios) worn over the shoulders or carried on the arm, its scalloped edges bordered with serpents. Elsewhere in the Iliad, it is described as “the betasselled, terrible / aegis, all about which Terror hangs like a garland, / and Hatred is there, and Battle Strength, and heart-freezing Onslaught / and thereon is set the head of the grim gigantic Gorgon, / a thing of fear and horror.” Associated with Zeus, his warrior daughter Athene, and Apollo, all of whom appear to have their own, an aegis is used to incite outright terror or, in Zeus’ case, fearful storm clouds.2 This, then, is the object that ensures that battle for the Achaeans becomes “sweeter to them than to go back . . . to the beloved land of their fathers.” The descent of Athene to the field and the shadow of her terrifying aegis—like the rousing speeches of Nestor and Odysseus—are part of Zeus’ plan to honor his vow to Thetis. The Achaean host must be reassembled and the men’s spirits aroused for war so that they can die at the hands of their enemy and by their great losses bring Achilles honor.

  With bronze armor seemingly ablaze, the tumultuous host marches in all their confident, shouting magnificence into Zeus’ trap. The cascade of extraordinary similes drawn from the natural world, as often in the Iliad, is double-edged, underscoring both the sheer spectacle of a great army on the move and the inherent poignancy of its deadly march. Linguistic evidence shows that the Iliad’s similes are generally “late,” meaning that they were introduced toward the end of the poetic tradition.3 Often they undercut the very martial scenes they so vividly evoke with the sudden flare of a vision from the world of peace; here the apocalyptic image of blazing fire on the mountain heights swiftly gives way to that of a meadow full of migrating birds, a scene of teeming, clamorous life.

  Tell me now, you Muses who have your homes on Olympos.

  For you, who are goddesses, are there, and you know all things,

  and we have heard only the rumour of it and know nothing.

  Who then of those were the chief men and the lords of the

  Danaans?

  As for the multitude, I won’t put them in speech, nor give them

  names,4

  not if I had ten tongues and ten mouths, not if I had

  a voice never to be broken and a heart of bronze within me,

  not unless the Muses of Olympia, daughters

  of Zeus of the aegis, remembered all those who came beneath Ilion.

  This second invocation, far more expansive than the invocation that announces the Iliad itself, intrudes abruptly into this majestic flow of images. Its purpose is to introduce a long list of 226 verses naming each of the twenty-nine contingents that make up the Achaean army. “The Cata
logue of Ships,” as it is dubbed, has been variously interpreted as an authentic survival from the Mycenaean age to a pseudo document postdating Homer; several medieval manuscripts omit the list entirely or place it at epic’s end, as a kind of appendix.5

  Leïtos and Peneleos were leaders of the Boiotians,

  with Arkesilaos and Prothoenor and Klonios;

  they who lived in Hyria and in rocky Aulis,

  in the hill-bends of Eteonos.

  Of the 175 named places, a significant number can be identified with mostly late Mycenaean (circa 1250-1200 B.C.) sites, bolstering the claim that the Catalogue is a surviving relic from the Bronze Age.6 On the other hand, late linguistic forms—the critical, much-repeated word for “ship” is a striking example7—along with certain geographical oddities, such as the omission of important Bronze Age place-names, also indicate that while the main contents of the Catalogue may possibly date to Mycenaean times, the list as a composition does not; this is not, in other words, an authentic muster roll lifted from the late Bronze Age.8 The Catalogue’s strangely qualified prelude—“For you, who are goddesses, are there, and you know all things, / and we have heard only the rumour of it and know nothing”—may point to the fact that the origin of the list was unclear even to the epic poet.9

  According to all surviving traditions about the Trojan War, the Achaean armada was first launched for Troy from Aulis, in Boiotia, which, significantly, is where the Catalogue begins its circuit. Its original poetic purpose, then, was surely to describe the mustering of forces for the Trojan campaign. Like many other favorite events of the Trojan War that fall outside the parameters of the Iliad’s chosen time frame, the muster has been opportunistically relocated here, in different guise.10