true, but when it comes to dividing up the plunder
the lion’s share is yours, and back I go to my ships,
clutching some scrap, some pittance I love,
when I have fought to exhaustion.” (I 193–199)
Here, then, the relationship of the greatest warrior to the greatest king dissolves into a one-sided exercise in resentment. In the heat of the moment, Achilles loses touch with the inner sense of greatness that has been largely responsible for his heroic deeds, instead focusing on the insufficiency of the prizes he has won in compensation for them. He is right that the prizes have been inadequate to his achievements, but he is wrong, of course, in thinking that better prizes would have somehow satisfied him. Unlike Agamemnon, for whom the prizes are an essential acknowledgment of his authority as “lord of men,” the greatest warrior in his heart knows he needs no such acknowledgment, that he alone is master and judge of himself. This becomes burningly clear once Patroclus dies, as we have seen in the previous chapter. Now, however, Achilles threatens to walk out on Agamemnon, to quit the war and go home to Phthia.
Achilles’s complaint enrages Agamemnon further. With Achilles both denying the authority of Agamemnon over him and calling into question the fairness of his treatment at the hand of the lord of men, the confrontation between the two is getting into very dangerous territory. Agamemnon now chooses to belittle Achilles’s martial prowess as something for which Achilles himself deserves no credit: It is “just a gift of god” (I 211). He then paints Achilles as a deserter. The king warns him:
“[. . . ] I will be there in person at your tents
to take Briseis in all her beauty, your own prize—
so you can learn just how much greater I am than you
and the next man up may shrink from matching words with me,
from hoping to rival Agamemnon strength for strength.” (I 217–221)
At this, Achilles considers drawing his sword on Agamemnon. Homer describes the timely arrival of the goddess Athena, whom only Achilles can see. She urges him on behalf of herself and the goddess Hera to restrain himself: “Obey us both” (I 251). The appeal sways Achilles. He sheaths his sword and rounds once again verbally on Agamemnon, calling him a drunk and a coward, and admonishing him that the day will come when the Achaeans beg Achilles to return to fight for them.
Agamemnon is in turn unrelenting, berating Achilles:
. . . “this soldier wants to tower over the armies,
he wants to rule over all, to lord it over all,
give out orders to every man in sight.” (I 336–338)
Achilles replies that he himself would be a coward if he were willing to submit to any order Agamemnon chose to give: “Never again, I trust, will Achilles yield to you” (I 347). He says contemptuously that he won’t fight over Briseis, since the Achaeans, having been the ones who gave her to him in the first place, could have her back if they want. But he informs Agamemnon in the bloodiest of language that he will kill him if he attempts to take anything else “against my will” (I 353).
The two part ways. Agamemnon arranges for the return of Chryseis. Achilles, for his part, is now so enraged that he importunes the gods to come to the aid of his erstwhile enemy, the Trojans, in battle. The weeping Achilles tells his goddess-mother Thetis that he wants to see the Achaeans driven from their siege of Troy back to their ships, there to be trapped and killed:
“So all can reap the benefits of their king—
so even mighty Atrides [Agamemnon] can see how mad he was
to disgrace Achilles, the best of the Achaeans.” (I 488–490)
Thus is the stage set for the action of the first third of the Iliad: The beleaguered Agamemnon and the Achaeans suffer the full weight of a Trojan onslaught as Achilles sulks in his tent.
First, Agamemnon defies Apollo, courting disaster. Second, Agamemnon proposes a course of action that Achilles must oppose as disgraceful. Finally, Agamemnon proposes to disgrace none other than Achilles himself. The bond between Agamemnon and Achilles is broken, seemingly irreparably.
Agamemnon and Achilles have different ideas about what honor entails. Agamemnon, the lord of men, sees his due as the greatest prize. Under favorable circumstances, Achilles would perhaps not object. In peacetime, each could repair to his own kingdom, there to receive as king top honors in the sense Agamemnon means. Even during wartime, when the war is going well for the Achaeans—when they are sacking the cities of Trojan allies and hauling off booty in surpassing quantity—the difference between receiving Chryseis or Briseis as a concubine is maybe not worth an argument. Yet the circumstances at the beginning of the Iliad are anything but favorable: nine long years into the siege of Troy, and a plague sweeping through the Achaean ranks.
Moreover, it is only wartime that allows for the disclosure of the distinction that exists between the greatest king and the greatest warrior. It is abundantly clear from the exchange between Agamemnon and Achilles in Book I that Achilles’s martial superiority has long been a sore subject for Agamemnon, and Agamemnon’s kingly superiority a sore subject for Achilles. The greatest warrior and the greatest king are not united in one person. Once their row is well under way and tempers are flaring, Agamemnon voices what seems like a long-harbored suspicion: that Achilles would like to displace Agamemnon as “lord of men.” Although Achilles overcomes his impulse to try to kill Agamemnon, which might achieve the unity of greatest king and greatest warrior in the person of Achilles, he nevertheless does nothing to dispel Agamemnon’s suspicion of his loyalty. Achilles says that only a coward would obey Agamemnon unquestioningly, promises to kill anyone who tries to take anything from him against his will, quits the fight, and beseeches higher powers for Agamemnon’s defeat.
As a matter of first impression, Homer’s presentation of the row between Agamemnon and Achilles in Book I is highly unfavorable to Agamemnon. The “lord of men” looks frankly petty, and we know from the first line that the Iliad is Achilles’s story, meaning it is not Agamemnon’s. But we should not leave matters at first impression. Homer has provided a more nuanced account.
We must begin with the observation, to which I have gestured above, that in the course of their argument before the assembly, Agamemnon is in fact in the process of backtracking—conceding all of Achilles’s points. Agamemnon is angry with the seer who told him about Apollo’s anger and how to dispel it, but he gets the message: He will return Chryseis. And he quickly abandons the idea of demanding loot back from his fighters. Moreover, it is entirely unclear that he is actually intending to enforce his musings about taking for himself somebody else’s concubine. “Enough. We’ll deal with all this later, in due time” (I 165), Agamemnon says, just before he begins giving instructions for Chryseis’s return. There is a distinct possibility that “later” means “forget it.” At a minimum, the problem requires more kingly thought. Yet Achilles chooses to interpret Agamemnon’s clearly off-the-cuff comments as a premeditated assault on his honor and stature, adopting Agamemnon’s view of honor and stature as requiring prizes and glory.
What Agamemnon has that Achilles lacks, and what Agamemnon above all must keep, is legitimacy as “lord of men”—king of Argos and top king among the Achaeans. But Agamemnon has not become king by fighting his way to the top; he is the son of King Atreus and is thus rightful heir to the throne of Argos. He needs the people around him to respect his authority as a matter of course, lest seeds of rebellion sprout and the political order constructed around the king become unstable. Yet respecting Agamemnon’s authority is precisely what Achilles has boxed himself into the position of being unable to do. Agamemnon does not need Briseis and may not even want Briseis—until and unless someone tells Agamemnon he can’t have Briseis. At that moment, the issue is no longer who gets which concubine, but the authority of the “lord of men.” Agamemnon must put down challenges to his authority, by force if necessary. And the routine maintenance of that authority is intimately bound to the proposition