30 Ancient Ideals
does not mention Agamemnon’s fi nal, rather anguished demand,
that Achilles recognize him as the greater man.
It does not matter. Achilles holds the entire off er in contempt.
Heroes (like saints, like true thinkers) have no deep concern with
wealth. Trea sure to them is tantamount to trash, except as it testi-
fi es to their preeminence. They receive it as tribute; they give it away
to others as a form of largesse and recognition. But material wealth
does not mean very much to true warriors. They live for other goals.
There is one gift that Achilles wants from Agamemnon and it is very
simple. Agamemnon could get Achilles back into the fi ghting im-
mediately if he called the troops together, stood up, apologized to
the hero, and announced to everyone that Achilles is by far the better
man, the best of the Achaeans. With Achilles the Greeks were vic-
torious, without him they are being decimated by Hector and the
Trojans. But Agamemnon will not say what he needs to say, and so
Achilles is bound in his tent.
Every true hero must have an adversary worthy of him. The fi gure
must be formidable, but in literary renderings of the hero at least,
the adversary often illustrates something essential about the hero
himself. In the adversary, we often see what the hero overtly is
not— and what he, rather secretly, might be. Beowulf becomes as
ferocious and even monstrous as Grendel in order to defeat him;
Goliath, the giant, may adumbrate some of the excesses that David
will indulge when he is king. Part of what grieves Achilles while he
is keeping to himself in his tent is that he must postpone his ulti-
mate encounter with his great adversary Hector.
Hector is a remarkable hero— strong, courageous, daring— but he
is a very diff erent being from Achilles, something we see with clarity
in one of the most moving scenes in the poem. Hector has come in
from the battlefi eld and his armor is covered with dust, grime, and
blood; he’s exhausted from fi ghting, though he will soon return to