When Agamemnon’s men show up at Achilles’s tent for Briseis, Achilles turns her over voluntarily, as he said he would. If he did not, we would perforce go on to read a very different book: It would be the story of a struggle to the death for supreme political power between Agamemnon and Achilles. Such a book, in Homer’s hands, would no doubt have been interesting—but not as interesting as the Iliad. What makes the Iliad more interesting is that it is not a struggle for political power, which is of no apparent interest to Achilles. There is no indication Achilles is afraid of fighting Agamemnon. Achilles has asserted that he will fight anyone who tries to take something from him against his will. Agamemnon, for his part, has expressed his willingness to fight for Briseis if he must, as a warning to others about the danger of defying the “lord of men.” But the two headstrong wills do not collide. Agamemnon’s primary purpose is the defense of his kingly authority, and Achilles is not interested in challenging him on the point. He demonstrates as much by his willingness to yield Briseis.
Achilles’s position in the row with Agamemnon is to reject Agamemnon’s authority over himself. Achilles answers only to the gods. At the heart of the Iliad is the self-struggle of Achilles to assert his greatness—not to prove it to others, not to win the acclaim of others, not to rule over others, but to do his greatness justice by his own inner light. He is Agamemnon’s biggest problem. And when you are the biggest problem of the “lord of men,” you are a mighty big problem indeed.
In the end, the resolution of the conflict between the greatest warrior and the greatest king comes only with the foretold death, freely chosen, of the greatest warrior. Nevertheless, at the end of the penultimate book of the Iliad, Homer offers a subtle but poignant illustration of the relative stature of the two men. In tribute to Patroclus, Achilles has convened funeral games and put up lavish prizes for the fastest charioteer, best wrestler, best archer, and so forth. The last contest is throwing a spear, a task at which Agamemnon himself excels. As the lord of men is about to take on his challenger, Achilles calls it off:
“Atrides [i.e., Agamemnon]—well we know how far you excel us all:
no one can match your strength at throwing spears,
You are the best by far!
Take first prize [an ornate cauldron] and return to your hollow ships
while we award this spear [the one that was to have been thrown in the contest]
to the fighter Meriones,
if that would please your heart. That’s what I propose.”
And Agamemnon the lord of men could not resist. (XXIII, 986–992)
We recall the outbreak of the row between Agamemnon and Achilles, a dispute over a battle prize Agamemnon has bestowed upon himself, the concubine Chryseis. The row escalates into a challenge from Achilles to the very legitimacy and authority of Agamemnon as “lord of men.” Its practical consequence is Achilles’s withdrawal from battle and his prayer for the Achaeans’ defeat, a prayer on the verge of being granted until the death of Patroclus brings Achilles decisively back into the fight.
Now Agamemnon gets a prize again, and a fine one it is indeed. Achilles also heaps lavish praise on Agamemnon, open acknowledgment of the primacy of “the lord of men.” But this time it is not Agamemnon granting himself honors appropriate to his primacy, but Achilles who is doing the bestowing. Achilles repudiates his challenge to Agamemnon’s authority, having realized that the accoutrements of greatness in the form of prizes and glory and even supreme political power are no measure of greatness within. The scene of the final encounter between the two in the Iliad, fewer than 20 lines in all, is almost chilling in its depiction of Achilles’s self-assured, god-like superiority over the “lord of men,” who cannot resist.
Although it is true that the majority of heroes from ancient times were men, the ability and at times the willingness to risk or give up one’s life is not unique to men, nor is the danger such a willingness can pose to the established political order under the right circumstances. For one such female paragon, consider the (possibly legendary) case of Lucretia, a figure from the Rome of the sixth century BCE described by the later authors Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Titus Livy and the subject of a dramatic poem by Shakespeare.
Lucretia was the wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus (anglicized as “Collatine”), a grand nephew of the king of Rome. Her husband was governor of Collatia, a town in Central Italy not far from Rome.
In Livy’s version of the story, which became the basis of Shakespeare’s retelling, Collatine was at a drinking party in Ardea with a number of royal princes, including Sextus Tarquinius (anglicized as Tarquin), son of the king and heir apparent. As the alcohol flowed, the men took to debating the question of whose wife was the most virtuous. Collatine declared that they could settle the matter at once by riding out at that very moment to see what their wives were up to. “What we see of the behaviour of each on the unexpected arrival of her husband, let that be the surest test,” Collatine said (57). And so they did, riding first to Rome and then on to Collatia, where they discovered, first, all the king’s daughters-in-law “passing their time in feasting and luxury” (57) and then Lucretia in Collatia late at night spinning her loom in the company of her handmaids. The princes all agreed that Lucretia deserved the palm in this competition.
But there was a dark side to the men’s revelry. Tarquin became “inflamed by the beauty and exemplary purity of Lucretia” (57). In the Dionysius of H. version, there is no drinking party, but the king has dispatched Tarquin to Collatia on a military mission, and Lucretia has received him there with great hospitality (64). Whether, as in Livy, Tarquin traveled to Collatia for the purpose of having his way with Lucretia, or whether he conceived his plan on the spot, late the night of his arrival he stole into Lucretia’s room. Brandishing a sword, Tarquin told Lucretia that she must submit willingly to him sexually, or he would kill her.
But even as Tarquin continued to entreat and threaten her, Lucretia would not submit. Livy says that Lucretia “was inflexible and not moved even by the fear of death” (58). So Tarquin escalated, seizing upon a threat to Lucretia that he sensed she would deem even worse than death: submit willingly to him sexually, or die and be dishonored. Tarquin told her that after he killed her, he would kill one of the household slaves, whose naked corpse he would position alongside her, claiming he found the two lovers in flagrante delicto.
The thought of this lasting dishonor, the desecration of her reputation for all time, was too much for Lucretia to bear. She chose to submit. In the Dionysius account, Tarquin accompanied his threat with a blandishment as well: If Lucretia willingly complied, he would marry her, and she would rule the Roman kingdom alongside him (65). But Dionysius portrays the offer of marriage as of no weight in Lucretia’s decision to submit. Both paint portraits of a strong and virtuous woman who prided her virtue above all. When at last she gave in, it was to avoid the dishonor Tarquin had promised would accompany her death.
After Tarquin finally took his leave, Lucretia was beside herself with mortification. In Livy’s account, she sent for her father to come from Rome and for her husband to come from Ardea, telling them each to bring a loyal friend along (58). In Dionysius’s, which is rather more theatrical, Lucretia rode to her father’s house in Rome, where she threw herself in tears at his feet and asked him to summon the leading figures of the city (66). The point is that Lucretia has chosen a public setting, with witnesses, for what will ensue.
The assembly completed, Lucretia unburdened herself of everything that had happened the previous night, and asked of those present that they avenge the wrong Tarquin did to her. Those assembled were shocked by the news, but what happened next was more shocking still. Immediately upon completion of her revelation, accusation, and demand for justice, she took out a dagger concealed in her dress and stabbed herself mortally in the heart.
As Dionysius describes what happened next: “This dreadful scene