Iliad Book 1

Rage: The Theme of the Iliad

As its opening line states, the Iliad is the story of the “rage of Achilles.” The rest of the sentence frames that rage for us, guiding its interpretation throughout the poem:

Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades’ dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done. (2-6)

In other words, Achilles’ rage is a bad thing. It results in immeasurable pain for the Greek expedition (of which Achilles is a part) and presumably for the Trojans as well. Yet death in battle is commonplace. It is even idealized in heroic epic – the Iliad is no exception here; in fact, it’s the gold standard! The key lies in how heroes (or warriors) die in the somber view of these opening lines: “their bodies rot as feasts for dogs and birds.” This is not merely death. Heroic death is admirable, even something that heroes strive for, but to die and have one’s flesh rot like a carcass on the savannah, carrion for scavenging wildlife? That is something else entirely. It is visceral, primal, savage, and horrifying. From the start, the language of the Iliad is couched in a discourse of the civilized and the savage, the human and the animal, the proper and the improper. The tension between these opposing forces will demand constant (re)assessment by its audience. Is Achilles acting properly or improperly? Are these the actions of a man or a beast?

Lastly, it is important to note that this rage, and the accompanying pain, is god-sent. It is the will of Zeus. Achilles often comes off as an unsympathetic character to modern sensibilities. And he does make his fair share of rash decisions, but Homer warns us at the outset of the poem that these events are the will of Zeus. Human agency is a thorny subject in the Iliad specifically and in Greek myth generally. In that way, Achilles is a victim ensnared in the web of Fate just as much as Hector, Helen, Priam, Agamemnon, Patroclus, et al. Something we might do well to keep in mind as we read the Iliad is that it is narrated from an omniscient perspective: not only do we see everything the gods do to humans, but we even see through the tricks that the gods play on each other. This kind of insight is antithetical to Greek views of the human condition in which heroes are defined by their ignorance, and the gods enjoy a state of absolute (divine) knowledge. Life is difficult, even tragic, for humans, and it is the gods, Zeus foremost among them, who make it so. The tragedy of this human condition is bound up in the Iliad’s conception of Fate and human autonomy, subjects that we will return to throughout the poem.

Ransom Gone Wrong: An Example of Epic Affirmation

The conflict that kindles Achilles’ rage, according to Homer, begins with a botched ransom. Chryses, a priest of Apollo, approaches Agamemnon and formally sues for the ransom of his daughter, Chryseis, who was awarded to Agamemnon after the Greeks sacked his hometown, Chryse, near Troy. This encounter illustrates a powerful way in which Homeric epic culturally conditions its audience (i.e., affirms cultural norms and mores). Chryses’ plea to Agamemnon is as follows:

“Sons of Atreus and Greek heroes all:
May the gods on Olympus grant you plunder
Of Priam’s city and a safe return home.
But give me my daughter back and accept
This ransom out of respect for Zeus’ son,
Lord Apollo, who deals death from afar.” (25-9)

It is not uncommon to receive a woman as a prize of honor in the Iliad. Nor is it uncommon to ransom such a prize back. It’s an economic transaction that works as well with the living (aristocratic young women) as the dead (confiscated corpses of enemy warriors). The girl is a nice trophy, but if her surviving family is willing to pay for her return, then all the better. The warrior can sell his trophy back to her family for more money (prestige, prizes, cultural coinage) than she’d otherwise be worth as a slave. Likewise, if a warrior could confiscate the corpse of a fallen enemy, then he would not only receive his foe’s armor as a trophy, but he could sell the corpse back to its family for more prestigious gifts (money or other tokens of honor).

Chryses complicates the matter when he approaches Agamemnon, not simply as a father willing to pay a steep ransom for his daughter, but now as a representative of Apollo. He specifically calls on Agamemnon to accept the ransom “out of respect for…Apollo.” The implication is clear: to refuse the ransom is to insult Apollo – a threat. To accept the ransom is to acknowledge one’s place in the cosmic order – a chance to prove one’s civility.[1]

Homeric epic is generally clear on matters of proper vs. improper conduct.[2] If it were not already clear whether Agamemnon should accept the ransom or not, the poem leaves no doubt: “A murmur rippled through the ranks: ‘Respect the priest and take the ransom’” (30-1). Agamemnon not only refuses the ransom, but he adds further insult to Apollo by threatening to ignore Chryses’ status as priest of Apollo and to slay the man outright if he ever comes back to the Greek camp.

This is the first of many examples in the Iliad of an epic figure acting inappropriately. The poem signals the inappropriateness of Agamemnon’s action in numerous ways: 1) Chryses directly states that to accept the ransom is to respect Apollo, so there is a clear right and wrong choice; 2) The Greek soldiers (representing the community at large) concur with Chryses on the matter; 3) Agamemnon does not simply refuse the ransom, but does so in a dismissive, derogatory way that suggests a lack of fear for divine retribution (to be civilized in Homeric epic is to be “god-fearing”).[3] None of this is lost on Apollo. Throughout Greek myths, from Archaic epic to Classical tragedy, failure to honor the gods, inadvertently or otherwise, results in misfortune for the human agents. This lesson is famously reinforced by Hesiod’s description of the Silver Age in Works and Days:

the Olympians made a second generation [of humans],
Silver this time, not nearly so fine as the first,
Not at all like the gold in either body or mind.
[….]
They didn’t live very long, and in pain at that,
Because of their lack of wits. They just could not stop
Hurting each other and could not bring themselves
To serve the Immortals, nor sacrifice at their altars
The way men ought to, wherever and whenever. So Zeus,
Cronos’ son, got angry and did away with them
Because they weren’t giving the Blessed Gods their honors. (148-60)

Failure to properly honor the gods is a guarantee of pain, psychological trauma, and/or an untimely death in Greek myths. Homeric literature drives this point home time and again. Agamemnon’s folly is the first of many such examples.

Rage, Honor, and the Repercussions of Agamemnon's Folly

The theme of the Iliad is the rage of Achilles, but that is not the only rage in the epic. Book 1 establishes a pattern for how emotions, particularly rage, impact human judgment, and that pattern will be exploited throughout the poem. The catalyst for rage in Book 1 is an affront to honor. We have seen this already in Agamemnon’s mistreatment of Chryses, which was viewed as an affront to the honor of Apollo. Apollo lashed out by striking the entire Greek army with plague. However, the slights to honor that are most notable in the Iliad are more ‘down to earth’; they will spark the rages of Achilles and Agamemnon, respectively.

To begin, the generic Greek term for Honor is timē. It manifests itself physically as trophies, status symbols, or any token that signals one’s status in society. Timē does not need to be a physical item, however. It can be a title. What defines timē in our context is that it is awarded to a member of the society that defines or represents his status in that society. It serves as a societal valuation of the individual.[4] Thus, when a warrior kills an enemy in battle, he will confiscate his opponent’s armor, if he can, and bring it back to his camp where he will hang it on his wall as a trophy signifying his prowess in battle. Similarly, when the Greeks raid a nearby town or Trojan allied settlement, they gather-up all the confiscated valuables (artifacts, precious metals, prisoners, livestock, etc.) and divide them as spoils amongst the troops. The individual portion each warrior receives is dependent on the value assigned to his contribution to the day’s success or the value of the warrior within the social hierarchy – the difference will prove quite important to Achilles. Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, is one such prize awarded to Agamemnon. Thus, her value, outside of any sentimental attachment he may have to the girl, is directly related to his social standing.

The societies (both Greek and Trojan) in the Iliad are timorous, meaning members of these societies are motivated to act appropriately in return for being awarded timē. A timorous culture is also, by its very nature, a shame culture. Members are discouraged from acting inappropriately by the threat of receiving shame (dishonor). Timē and shame are two sides of the same coin. They both motivate members of the community to act in accordance with social norms, either by way of the carrot (timē) or the stick (shame). The rage that we encounter with both Achilles and Agamemnon is predicated on their internalization of timē in just such a culture. If being awarded a prize is the accumulation of timē, then taking away that prize engenders shame. This is where rage enters the equation. As rage is an emotion, we must divert briefly to an explanation of emotion.

Aristotle defines emotions as “feelings, either pleasurable or painful, that affect judgment.” We will adopt this definition for the purposes of our reading. Likewise, Aristotle defines anger (rage) as “an impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight directed without justification towards what concerns oneself or…one’s friend.”[5] In other words, anger is a feeling or impulse for revenge against a person who you think has wronged you. Perception takes precedence over fact: if I think you elbowed me in the face without merit, I will feel anger even though it may have been unintentional on your part, and you could be profusely apologetic. In this way, all emotions are internal (psychological) phenomena. Now we can return to the Iliad and connect the dots between rage and honor.

Achilles, at this point in Book 1, is a dutiful warrior with an eye toward the welfare of his community. He takes action through a reasonable cognitive progression: ‘Apollo is the god of plagues. Our community is plagued. Apollo must be angry. Let’s find out why the god is upset with us and assuage his anger.’ But before Agamemnon and Achilles even butt heads, the poem reveals a fissure between the two heroes: Calchas, the seer of the Greek expedition, is hesitant to reveal the reason Apollo is angry with the Greeks because he’s aware that it will be received poorly by Agamemnon; it will require the Greek king to give up his timē without receiving so much as the compensation of a ransom that he was offered a few lines earlier. Achilles, still concerned with truth, justice, and honorable action, promises to protect Calchas from any threat so long as the seer speaks the truth. This conversation establishes the character of Achilles while simultaneously exposing a heretofore dormant fissure in the world views of Achilles and Agamemnon, a fissure that will become a chasm by the end of Book 1. Achilles’ words to Calchas are as follows:

“Prophesy to the best of your knowledge.
I swear by Apollo, to whom you pray when you reveal
The gods’ secrets to the Greeks, Calchas, that while I live
And look upon this earth, no one will lay a hand
On you here beside these hollow ships, no, not even
Agamemnon, who boasts he is the best of the Achaeans.” (92-7)

Achilles and Agamemnon hold differing views about what constitutes the “best of the Achaeans.” When their individual honors are threatened, this difference of opinion will be magnified.

After Calchas reveals the cause of the plague, Agamemnon is predictably upset, and he makes a rash but logical (in a mercantile way) decision: “I want another prize ready for me right away. I’m not going to be the only Greek without a prize; it wouldn’t be right. And you all see where mine is going” (126-8). On the one hand, there is a cool, mathematical logic to Agamemnon’s demand: He is the leader of the expedition, the ruler of the largest and most powerful kingdom; he belongs at the top of the social hierarchy and should, therefore, receive the highest honor. In giving back his prize, his timē, he becomes the only leader of men without a prize from the sack of Chryse. [6] This turns the system of timē and the social order on its head. On the other hand, as Achilles logically points out, there are no more prizes to award:

“Every town in the area has been sacked and the stuff all divided.
You want the men to count it all back and redistribute it?
All right, you give the girl back to the god. The army
Will repay you three and four times over – when and if
Zeus allows us to rip Troy down to its foundations.” (134-8)

If Agamemnon is to receive the immediate compensation that he demands, he will have to take away a prize that was awarded to another hero. The discussion of honor and shame with which we began this section now comes into play: to give a prize is to honor the hero, but to take away that prize is to shame him. This would be understandable if the hero did something dishonorable to merit the confiscation of his prize. But Agamemnon makes no such claim. He simply demands compensation for his loss and threatens to take his compensation away from someone else: “I’ll just go take something myself, your prize perhaps, or Ajax’s, or Odysseus’, and whoever she belongs to, it’ll stick in his throat” (147-9). It will certainly “stick in his throat,” for to be shamed is no pleasant experience, but to be shamed for no apparent reason is…well…infuriating. It is the definition of an unmerited slight. Conditions are ripe for Aristotle’s definition of rage.

The mere thought that Agamemnon would confiscate a warrior’s prize without merit angers Achilles. Agamemnon, already angered by the impending loss of his own prize (which is, according to his economic rationale, unjustified), is now challenged by Achilles, who becomes an object for Agamemnon’s own anger, since it will do Agamemnon (a mortal) no good to rage against Apollo (an immortal). The war of words between Achilles and Agamemnon escalates, each stoking the other’s fury. Enter: Athena.

Divine and Divided Loyalties

The war of words between Achilles and Agamemnon is about to get violent when Hera sends Athena down from Olympus, and we witness the first of many exchanges in the Iliad between god and human. At that moment Achilles has had enough of Agamemnon’s arrogance and begins to unsheathe his sword:

Athena came, sent by the white-armed goddess
Hera, who loved and watched over both men.
She stood behind Achilles and grabbed his sandy hair,
Visible only to him: not another soul saw her.
Awestruck, Achilles turned around, recognizing
Pallas Athena at once – it was her eyes –
And words flew from his mouth like winging birds:
“Daughter of Zeus! Why have you come here?
To see Agamemnon’s arrogance, no doubt.
I’ll tell you where I place my bets, Goddess:
Sudden death for this outrageous behavior.” (205-15)

To Achilles’ disappointment, however, Athena informs him that she and Hera do not want Agamemnon slain, as he is dear to them both. She instructs Achilles to “Tell him off instead” and then promises him a greater recompense of timē later: “You’re going to get three times as many magnificent gifts because of his arrogance. Just listen to us and be patient” (222-4).

It is unclear if Achilles is sated by Athena’s promise, but his response to her request reveals something more important: despite any differences of opinion with the army’s leader, Achilles is still a normatively good, god-fearing Greek. Consider his measured response to Athena vis-à-vis Agamemnon’s debacle with the earlier ransom: “When you two speak, Goddess, a man has to listen no matter how angry. It’s better that way. Obey the gods and they hear you when you pray” (226-8). Unlike Agamemnon, Achilles reigns-in his anger, subordinating his desires to those of Athena and Hera.

With her task completed, Athena withdraws to Olympus, but Achilles and Agamemnon continue their war of words. Eventually Nestor, the old king of Pylos, attempts to mend the rift between the army’s leader and its greatest champion: “It’s a sad day for Greece, a sad day. Priam and Priam’s sons would be happy indeed, and the rest of the Trojans too… If they learned all this about you two fighting” (1.269-72). The army is divided, and this divisiveness does good only for the Greeks’ collective enemy: Troy. Thus “sweet-worded Nestor” begins an eloquent speech to temper the burning rage of both Achilles and Agamemnon. We pick up with Nestor’s advice at the end of his speech:

“Agamemnon, for all your nobility, do not take his girl.
Leave her be: the army originally gave her to him as a prize.
Nor should you, son of Peleus, want to lock horns with a king.
A scepter-holding king has honor beyond the rest of men,
Power and glory given by Zeus himself.
You are stronger, and it is a goddess who bore you.
but he is more powerful, since he rules over more.
Son of Atreus, cease your anger. And I appeal
Personally to Achilles to control his temper, since he is,
For all Greeks, a mighty bulwark in this evil war.” (290-9)

Nestor does not take sides. Instead, he criticizes and compliments both Agamemnon and Achilles in turn. Indeed, they are both noble and at fault in the society of the Iliad. According to Nestor, Agamemnon is in the wrong for trying to take Achilles’ girl (Briseis, a war prize like Chryseis) because she was already awarded to Achilles, and as we’ve discussed, to take back a war prize without merit creates insult where none is warranted. On the other hand, Achilles’ response to Agamemnon’s actions is equally wrong in the eyes of the warrior society of the Iliad. We can liken Nestor’s position on the matter to a modern soldier arguing with a superior officer on the field of battle, or perhaps a wide receiver on the football field being assigned one pass pattern in the huddle but choosing to run another at the snap of the ball: whether the superior officer or the quarterback is right or wrong is immaterial at that point in time. The cultural value is unity, that all guns point in the same direction or that every player on the field runs the same play. The fact that the soldier or receiver does not act in unison with the rest of the “team” threatens the cohesiveness of the unit and, perhaps, for the army to devolve into chaos.

So both Achilles and Agamemnon act inappropriately. That fact is important by itself, but Nestor’s speech also informs an earlier topic: there is a difference in the ways in which Achilles and Agamemnon view the world. Recall Achilles’ criticism of Agamemnon when he promised protection to Calchas: “Agamemnon…boasts he is the best of the Achaeans.” The criteria that defines “the best,” one’s aretē (virtue or excellence), are not the same in Achilles’ world view as in Agamemnon’s, and Nestor pinpoints the difference: Achilles weighs a man’s valor (courage and prowess in battle) as the supreme aretē, and in that taxonomy, no warrior alive is a match for Achilles. But Nestor suggests that another taxonomy exists, one based at least partially on possessions or wealth: Achilles is the more powerful individual warrior, but Agamemnon can summon more power at his command, and for this reason is endorsed by Zeus as the leader of the united Greek armies.

What’s most amazing about Nestor’s speech is not what he says, but Agamemnon’s response to it: “Yes, old man, everything you’ve said is absolutely right. But this man wants to be ahead of everyone else, He wants to…Lord it over everyone, and he’s not going to get away with it” (301-4). The term Agamemnon uses, translated above as “absolutely right,” is kata moiran, literally “according to fate” or implacable, a kind of natural law behind which there is nothing greater. Agamemnon endorses everything Nestor has said. That includes his criticism of Agamemnon, a grandiose endorsement indeed. Therefore, what follows Agamemnon’s endorsement is shockingly counterintuitive: He refuses to follow Nestor’s advice. How can Agamemnon wholly endorse Nestor’s speech, but still refuse to follow through on it? The answer can be found in Aristotle’s definition of emotion.

Agamemnon knows Nestor is right. He acknowledges the fact of it, but he cannot bring himself to take what he has just acknowledged to be the proper course of action. Achilles is silent on the issue, but it’s safe to say that a similar battle wages within his mind as well. This interaction repeats itself at numerous places throughout the Iliad. Sometimes heroes “control” their “tempers,” as Nestor put it, and accept the corrective advice of others, and sometimes they do not. Book 1 has already provided numerous examples of heroes controlling and failing to control their tempers. We have also seen important ways in which the epic clarifies right from wrong, proper action from improper action. But for all its affirmations of cultural values, Book 1 would seem to have produced a tangled web of contradictory actions and divided loyalties.

Agamemnon and Achilles stand on either side of a divide that threatens to destroy the Greek war effort. This division is reflected in the Anxieties of Hera and Athena. The two goddesses are staunch supporters of the Greeks and sympathetic to both heroes – thus the division of the army is reflected in the goddesses who champion them. Their intervention prevents Achilles from slaughtering Agamemnon, but it also ensures that the quarrel between the two heroes goes unresolved. The loyalties of two other deities also beckon discussion: Thetis and Zeus.

Although her outward shows oscillate between pro-Greek and pro-Trojan, Thetis is consistently loyal to her son, Achilles, throughout the epic. Thus, as Achilles’ loyalties shift in the war, so too do Thetis’. In his rage, but under order from Athena not to physically harm Agamemnon, Achilles withdraws from the war and calls on his mother to beg Zeus for a favor: cause the tide of war to turn in the Trojans’ favor while Achilles and his men sit on the sidelines. In this way, he will humiliate Agamemnon and make the leader of the Greek army acknowledge how great (or at least important) Achilles is to the war effort. Thetis does as her son wishes and beseeches Zeus to aid the Trojans, thereby honoring Achilles.

It is Zeus’ loyalties that are particularly difficult to pin down throughout the Iliad, and they don’t become entirely clear until the death of his own son, Sarpedon, in Book 16. For now, however, let us recall the reference to Zeus’ will in the opening lines of the poem: the “incalculable pain” and death of the epic occur “as Zeus’ will was done.” Zeus is the architect of events in the Iliad. At times he appears sympathetic to the Greeks; at others to the Trojans; and here, at the end of Book 1, he is sympathetic to Achilles. In truth, he is loyal to none and sympathetic to all, but that’s a lecture for another chapter. For the time being, let us leave the matter with Zeus’ assent to Thetis’ request on behalf of Achilles. Zeus agrees to grant the Trojans success in battle as long as Achilles sits out the war.

Okay, But What About Achilles?

At the end of Book 1, we need to assess the position in which Achilles finds himself. When we first met him, he was the ideal hero, confident in his position in society and his faith in an honest social system based on rewards given for services rendered. His first words in the epic were spoken out of concern for the greater good of the community: how best can we sooth Apollo’s anger? He then vouched for Calchas’ safety so long as he did not dissemble – a man who values truth! However, when Agamemnon suggested the possibility of seizing a hero’s prize, Achilles’ faith in this system eroded quickly: “How are you going to get any Greek warrior to follow you into battle again?” (160-1).

Confiscation of Briseis from Achilles

Attic red-figure kylix (cup) by Briseis Painter (c. 480 BCE).
British Museum 1843, 1103.92.

Briseis is led away from Achilles by two heralds who are wearing caps. She is positioned between the heralds. Note the hand on her wrist. Lovers and slaves are often grasped by the wrist or forearm in Greek iconography. Achilles is sitting inside his tent on a folding chair. He is completely wrapped in a mantle, following the iconography of a mourner and especially that of a widower. His hand is on his head in an expression of pain.

Copyright The Trustees of the British Museum via Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) (Opens in new window)

In the timorous society of the Iliad, a warrior’s loyalty is dependent on the timē or payment that he receives for his services. That is why dishonoring the warrior by taking back his prize is so offensive to Achilles. It breaks the carefully forged bond between lord and vassal. The very thought that this could happen to his peers, let alone himself, the greatest of warriors, is an earth-shattering epiphany that causes Achilles to reevaluate the entire social structure through which his identity has been constituted to this point.

Achilles’ immediate reaction was primal (rash?). He chose to fight for his own honor – by refusing to fight for Agamemnon. In calling on Thetis and Zeus to aid the Trojans at the expense of the Greeks, Achilles turned an about face from the young warrior with faith in true speech and honorable action to a bitter, cynical soldier betrayed by his commander and the justice of a social system on which his identity depended. But he has also learned something important about himself and the warrior society of the Iliad, or at least this incident has caused him to turn a critical eye toward the cultural assumptions with which he and his peers have lived. The full implications of Achilles’ new position as an outsider will have to wait until Book 9. For now, however, we are left with an intelligent hero who finds himself in a unique position to critically analyze the social structures that every other hero in the Homeric world continues to take for granted: fight loyally and fight well to earn honor.

Reading The Iliad: Book One