Opposite Agamemnon and standing to the right of Achilles is Patroclus—the man-killer’s closest friend, whose death by Hector’s hand is fated to set off the true Wrath of Achilles and the greatest slaughter in the history of warfare—as well as Tlepolemus, the mythic hero Herakles’ beautiful son who fled his home after killing his father’s uncle and who will soon die by Sarpedon’s hand. Between Tlepolemus and Patroclus stands old Phoenix (Achilles’ dear friend and former tutor) whispering to the son of Diocles, Orsilochus, who will be killed by Aeneas soon enough. To the raging Achilles’ left is Idomeneus, a far closer friend of the man-killer’s than I had suspected from the poem.
There are more heroes in the inner circle, of course, as well as countless more in the mob behind me, but you get the idea. No one goes nameless, either in Homer’s epic poem or in the day-to-day reality here on the plains of Ilium. Every man carries his father’s name, his history, his lands and wives and children and chattel with him at all times, in all encounters both martial and rhetorical. It’s enough to wear a simple scholar out.
“All right, godlike Achilles, you cheater at dice, you cheater at war, you cheater with women—now you are trying to cheat me!” Agamemnon is shouting. “Oh no you don’t! You’re not going to get past me that way. You have the slave girl Briseis, as beautiful as any we’ve taken, as beautiful as my Chryseis. You just want to cling to your prize while I end up empty-handed! Forget it! I’d rather hand over command of the army to Ajax here . . . or Idomeneus . . . or crafty Odysseus there . . . or to you, Achilles . . . you . . . rather than be cheated so.”
“Do it then,” sneers Achilles. “It’s time we had a real leader here.”
Agamemnon’s face grows purple. “Fine. Haul a black ship down to the sea and fill it with men to row and sacrifices for the gods . . . take Chryseis if you dare . . . but you will have to perform the sacrifices, Achilles, O killer of men. But know that I’ll take a prize as recompense—and that prize will be your lovely Briseis.”
Achilles’s handsome face is contorted with rage. “Shameless! You’re armored in shamelessness and shrewd in greed, you dog-faced coward!”
Agamemnon takes a step forward, drops his scepter, and puts a hand on his sword.
Achilles matches him step for step and grips the hilt of his own sword. “The Trojans have never done us any harm, Agamemnon, but you have! It wasn’t the Trojan spearmen who brought us to this shore, but your own greed—we’re fighting for you, you colossal heap of shame. We followed you here to win your honor back from the Trojans, yours and your brother Menelaus’, a man who can’t even keep his wife in the bedroom . . .”
Here Menelaus steps forward and grips his sword. Captains and their men are gravitating to one hero or the other now, so the circle is already broken, turning into three camps—those who will fight for Agamemnon, those who will fight for Achilles, and those, near Odysseus and Nestor, who look disgusted enough to kill both of them.
“My men and I are leaving,” shouts Achilles. “Back to Phthia. Better to drown in an empty ship heading home in defeat than to stay here and be disgraced, filling Agamemnon’s goblet and piling up Agamemnon’s plunder.”
“Good, go!” shouts Agamemnon. “By all means, desert. I’d never beg you to stay and fight on my account. You’re a great soldier, Achilles, but what of it? That’s a gift of the gods and has nothing to do with you. You love battle and blood and slaughtering your enemies, so take your fawning Myrmidons and go!” Agamemnon spits.
Achilles actually vibrates with anger. It is obvious that he is torn between the urge to turn on his heel, take his men, and leave Ilium forever, and the overwhelming desire to unsheath his sword and gut Agamemnon like a sacrificial sheep.
“But know this, Achilles,” Agamemnon goes on, his shout dropping to a terrible whisper that can be heard by all the hundreds of men assembled here, “whether you leave or stay, I will give up my Chryseis because the god, Apollo, insists—but I will have your Briseis in her stead, and every man here will know how much greater man is Agamemnon than the surly boy Achilles!”
Here Achilles loses all control and goes for his sword in earnest. And here the Iliad would have ended—with the death of Agamemnon or the death of Achilles, or of both—and the Achaeans would have sailed home and Hector would have enjoyed his old age and Ilium would have remained standing for a thousand years and perhaps rivaled Rome in its glory, but at this second the goddess Athena appears behind Achilles.
I see her. Achilles reels around, face contorted, and obviously also sees her. No one else can. I don’t understand this stealth-cloaking technology, but it works when I use it and it works for the gods.
No, I realize immediately, this is more than stealth. The gods have frozen time again. It is their favorite way of talking to their pet humans without others eavesdropping, but I’ve seen it only a handful of times. Agamemnon’s mouth is open—I can see spittle frozen in midair—but no sound is heard, no movement of jaw or muscles, no blinking of those dark eyes. So it is with every man in the circle: frozen, rapt or bemused, frozen. Overhead, a sea bird hangs motionless in mid-flight. Waves curl but do not break on the shore. The air is as thick as syrup and all of us here are frozen like insects in amber. The only movement in this halted universe comes from Pallas Athena, from Achilles and—even if shown only by my leaning forward to hear better—from me.
Achilles’ hand is still on the hilt of his sword—half drawn from its beautifully tooled scabbard—but Athena has grabbed him by his long hair and physically turned him toward her, and he does not dare draw the sword now. To do so would be to challenge the goddess herself.
But Achilles’ eyes are blazing—more mad than sane—as he shouts into the thickened, syrupy silence that accompanies these time-freezes, “Why! Damn, damn, why now! Why come to me now, Goddess, Daughter of Zeus? Did you come to witness my humiliation by Agamemnon?”
“Yield!” says Athena.
If you’ve never seen a god or goddess, all I can do is tell you that they are larger than life—literally, since Athena must be seven feet tall—and more beautiful and striking than any mortal. I presume their nanotechnology and recombinant DNA labs made them that way. Athena combines qualities of feminine beauty, divine command, and sheer power that I didn’t even know could exist before I found myself returned to existence in the shadow of Olympos.
Her hand stays wrapped in Achilles’ hair, bending his head back and making him swivel away from frozen Agamemnon and his minions.
“I’ll never yield!” shouts Achilles. Even in this frozen air that slows and mutes all sound, the man-killer’s voice is strong. “That pig who thinks he’s a king will pay for his arrogance with his life!”
“Yield,” says Athena for the second time. “The white-armed goddess Hera sped me down from the skies to stop your rage. Yield. ”
I can see a flicker of hesitation enter Achilles’ crazed eyes. Hera, Zeus’s wife, is the strongest ally of the Achaeans on Olympos and a patroness of Achilles since his odd childhood.
“Stop this fighting now,” orders Athena. “Take your hand off your sword, Achilles. Curse Agamemnon if you must, but do not kill him. Do what we command now and I promise you this—I know this is the truth, Achilles, just I see your fate and know the future of all mortal men—obey us now and one day glittering gifts three times this will be yours as payment for this outrage. Defy us and die this hour. Obey us both—Hera and me—and receive your reward.”