long and undistinguished life if he returned home or eternal fame if he remained at
Troy (9, 410–416). Thetis herself later tells us that Zeus had allowed her to produce
a child who would excel all heroes. We can imagine that the myth of Achilles as
Homer inherited it was the supremely heroic myth: the greatest glory exacts the
greatest price and Achilles is the supreme hero in making his heroic choice in full
knowledge of its ultimate cost.
The anger of Achilles: the tragic pattern
Thecelebration of the hero, and of the Mycenaean culture which had fathered the
myth, is not the main subject of Homer’s Iliad. The heroic choice is taken for granted
and is of secondary significance; ironically, we only hear of it when Achilles is
threatening to throw it away by going home. Homer’s subject, announced in the very
first word of the poem, is the anger of Achilles that brings ruin in its train. His heroic
aspirations are threatened by a chain of events following on from the quarrel he has
with Agamemnon in the opening book. In the ninth year of the siege of Troy, the god
Apollo is angry because Agamemnon will not restore for ransom the daughter of one
of his priests whom the Greek leader had taken as his prize in the general allotment
of spoils. Apollo has sent a plague to infest the Greek camp. In a council called by
Achilles, Agamemnon reluctantly agrees to give up his prize but haughtily vows to
make up his loss by depriving Achilles of his slave girl Briseis, also a spoil of war. Thus
slighted and dishonoured, Achilles angrily withdraws from the fighting. In Achilles’
eyes Agamemnon abuses the power he has as leader of the Greeks and is guilty of
hybris, arrogant behaviour that offends the gods (I, 203). After the quarrel, Achilles
asks his goddess mother to persuade Zeus to grant the Trojans success so that the
Greeks will be forced to recognize his worth. Zeus agrees and the Trojans advance
from the city to the camp upon the plain. Faced with this threat, the Greeks petition
Achilles to return; Agamemnon, who privately admits his error, offers gifts of com-
pensation going beyond what was required by good form alone. But the insult to his
honour is so deeply felt that Achilles remains obdurate.
To the other Greeks it seems that Achilles is arrogantly acting as though he were
a law unto himself. His response may seem disproportionate but it has its origin in
something exceptionally pure and noble. No other Homeric hero has the aspiration
for glory in so intense a form, for Achilles is not fighting for revenge or the defence
of loved ones, neither has any other Homeric hero consciously made the sacrifice
that is reflected in his stark choice in opting for a glorious death at Troy rather than
a long undistinguished life. With this purity of motive, Achilles has an absolute sense
of his own worth and of the honour due to him because of it. Any diminution of this
honour diminishes the whole man and renders his choice of life null and void. There
is honourable truth in such feeling and Achilles honours this single truth so absolutely
EARLY GREECE: HOMER AND HESIOD 17