which Homeric heroes can acquire valuable items is on the battlefield, by slaying a notable warrior in
single combat and then stripping the armor from his body. This armor can then be displayed (and the story
of its acquisition told) as visible proof of the victor’s prowess.
Homeric heroes sometimes strike modern readers as being excessively acquisitive, but the material
objects that the hero values so highly are unique marks of his identity and his standing in the community. If
he is deprived of one or more of them his honor is seriously diminished and his capacity for being
acknowledged as a leader may be jeopardized. This is the situation that sets in motion the plot of the
Iliad. During the 10 years of the Trojan War, the Greeks supplied themselves by attacking and plundering
smaller cities in the region of Troy. In one of these raids, Agamemnon, Menelaus’ brother and the
acknowledged leader of the Greek forces, acquired as his personal property the young woman “Chryseis
of the lovely cheeks,” daughter of a priest ofApollo. The Iliad opens with her father entreating
Agamemnon to return her to him and offering to pay substantial ransom, but Agamemnon refuses, despite
the general sentiment among the Greek troops that the priest’s request is reasonable. Chryseis’ father then
prays to Apollo, who afflicts the Greek army with a plague, which can only be ended by Agamemnon’s
restoration of Chryseis to her father. Agamemnon reluctantly sends her back to her father and her function
in the Iliad is complete (although she will live on as Criseyde in Chaucer and as Cressida in
Shakespeare). Agamemnon feels that his honor has been diminished and he demands recompense.
Achilles suggests that Agamemnon wait until Troy has been taken, at which time the Greeks will more
than compensate Agamemnon for his loss. Agamemnon is angered by this suggestion and, after both men
have exchanged insults, Agamemnon appropriates “Briseis of the lovely cheeks” – Briseis and Chryseis
are metrically equivalent names – whom Achilles had acquired on an earlier raid. This in turn provokes
the anger of Achilles, which lasts throughout most of the lengthy epic.
“Anger,” in fact, is the first word of the poem, which begins by invoking the Muse, whose inspiration
ensures the authenticity of Homer’s account: “Sing, goddess, of the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles.” In his
anger Achilles refuses any longer to fight, and he threatens that he and the troops under his command will
return home to Greece, where his aged father longs to see him. There is no point in his risking his life if
he is not going to be accorded the respect and the honor to which his military accomplishments entitle
him. Eventually respect and honor become irrelevant, as Achilles returns to the fighting, not because of
the insistent pleas of Agamemnon and the other Greeks, but in order to avenge the death of his closest
friend Patroclus, who is killed in battle by the foremost Trojan warrior Hector. Even after he has avenged
himself by killing Hector, Achilles’ anger does not abate and, contrary to the normal standards of the
society which the Homeric poems purport to represent, Achilles is unwilling to grant burial to Hector’s
corpse. In the last of the 24 books of the poem, however, Hector’s father Priam, the king of Troy, comes
under cover of darkness to the tent of Achilles to entreat Achilles to return to him the body of his son. In
one of the most sublime passages in all of literature, Achilles and Priam together come to a recognition of
the essence of human existence, that it is limited and, therefore, defined by death. Achilles knows,
because he has been told by his divine mother Thetis, that his own death is soon to follow upon that of
Hector. Priam knows that, in the absence of the mighty warrior Hector, the city of Troy is doomed to
destruction at the hands of the Greeks.