Agamemnon will agree to pay Achilles a king’s ransom—more than a king’s ransom—seven fire tripods, ten bars of gold, twenty burnished cauldrons, a dozen stallions, seven beautiful woman, and I can’t remember what else—a partridge in a pear tree, perhaps. Most important, the bribe will include Briseus’ daughter Briseis—the slave wench who was at the center of this whole argument. To wrap this gift in a red ribbon, Agamemnon will also swear that he’s never bedded Briseis. As a final incentive, he also throws in seven citadels, Greek kingdoms—Cardamyle, Enope, Hire, Anthea, Pherae, Aepea, and Pedasus. Of course, Agamemnon doesn’t own or rule these citadels—he’s giving away his neighbors’ lands—but I suppose it’s the thought that counts.
The one thing Agamemnon will not offer Achilles is his apology. The son of Atreus is still too proud to bow. “Let him bow down to me!” he’ll shout at Nestor, Odysseus, Diomedes and the other captains in a few hours. “I am the greater king, I am the elder born, and, I claim, the greater man.”
Odysseus and the other will see a way out despite Agamemnon’s arrogance. They realize that if they bring the message of Briseis’ return and all these other marvelous gifts—and just happen to leave out the “I’m the greater man” bit—there’s a chance that Achilles might rejoin the fight. At least this embassy to Achilles offers a ray of hope.
But here the complicated part begins—here the fulcrum may yet be found.
As a scholar, I know in my soul that the embassy to Achilles is the heart and pivot of the Iliad. Achilles’ decisions upon hearing the embassy’s entreaties will determine the flow of all future events—the death of Hector, the subsequent death of Achilles, the fall of Ilium.
But here’s the tricky part. Homer chooses his language very carefully—perhaps more carefully than any other storyteller in history. He tells us that Nestor will name five men for the embassy to Achilles—Phoenix, Big Ajax, Odysseus, Odios, and Eurybates. The last two are mere heralds, decorations for the sake of protocol, and will not walk to Achilles’ tent with the real ambassadors nor take part in the discussion there.
The problem here is that Phoenix is an odd choice—he hasn’t appeared in the story before, he’s more of a Myrmidon tutor and retainer to Achilles than a commander, and it makes little sense that he would be sent to persuade his master. To top that off, when the ambassadors are walking along the ocean’s edge—“where the battle line of breakers crash and drag”—on their way to Achilles’ tent, the verb form that Homer uses is a dual form—a Greek verb set between singular and plural always relating to two people—in this case, Ajax and Odysseus. Homer uses seven other words that, in the Greek of his day—this day—relate to two men, not three.
Where’s Phoenix during this walk from Agamemnon’s camp to Achilles’ part of the encampment? Is he somehow already in Achilles’ tent waiting for the embassy? That makes little sense.
A lot of scholars, before and during my time on earth, argued that Phoenix was a clumsy addition to the tale, a character added centuries later, which explains the dual verb form, but this theory ignores the fact that Phoenix will give the longest and most complex argument of the three ambassadors. His speech is so wonderfully digressive and complicated that it reeks of Homer.
It’s as if the blind poet himself had been confused about whether there were two or three emissaries to Achilles and what, exactly, Phoenix’s role was in the conversation that would decide all the players’ fates.
I have a few hours to think about this.
If you want to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum.
But that’s hours in my future. It’s still mid-afternoon here, and the Trojans are pausing on the Ilium-side of the Achaeans’ moat while the Greeks mill around like ants behind their wall of rocks and sharpened stakes. Still morphed as a sweaty Achaean spearman, I manage to get close to Agamemnon as the king first berates his men and then pleas for Zeus’s aid in their darkest hour.
“Shame on all of you!” shouts the son of Atreus at his bedraggled army. Only a hundredth of the men can hear him, of course, ancient acoustics being what they are, but Agamemnon has a powerful voice and those in the back pass the message on to others.
“Shame! Disgrace! You dress like splendid warriors, but it’s pure sham! You vowed to burn this city and you gorged yourself on cattle—bought at my expense!—and drank to the full those brimming bowls of wine—bought and shipped here at my expense!—and now look at you! Beaten rabble! You bragged that each of you could stand up to a hundred Trojans—two hundred!—and now you’re no match for one mortal man—Hector.
“Any minute Hector will be here with his hordes, gutting our ships with blazing fire, and this vaunted army of . . . heroes . . .”—Agamemnon all but spits the word—“will be fleeing home to wife and kids . . . at my expense!”
Agamemnon gives up on the army and lifts his hands to the southern sky, toward Mount Ida, from where the storms and thunder and lightning bolts have come. “Father Zeus, how can you tear away my glory so? How have I offended thee? Not once—I swear, not a single time!—have I passed a shrine of yours, not even on our ocean voyage here, but did I stop and burn the fat and thighs of oxen to your glory. Our prayer was simple—to raze Ilium’s walls to its roots, kill its heroes, rape its women, enslave its people. Is that too much to ask?
“Father, fulfill this prayer for me: let my men escape with their lives—at least that. Don’t let Hector and these Trojans beat us like rented mules!”
I’ve heard Agamemnon give more eloquent speeches—hell, all of the speeches I’ve heard from him have been more eloquent than this, and I understand Homer’s need to rewrite all this—but at that second a miracle occurs. Or at least the Achaeans take it as a miracle.
Out of nowhere, an eagle appears, flying from the south, a huge eagle, carrying a fawn in its talons.
The mob who had been surging toward their ships and safety on the seas and who paused only briefly for Agamemnon’s speech freeze in place and point at the sight of this.
The eagle soars, circles, dips lower, and drops the still-kicking fawn a hundred feet to a sandy bump right at the base of the stone altar the Achaeans had raised to Zeus upon their landing so many years ago.
That does it. After fifteen seconds of stunned silence, a roar goes up from the men—men beaten into cowardice ten minutes earlier, but a fighting mob now, hearts and hands strengthened by this clear sign of forgiveness and approval from Zeus—and without further ado, fifty thousand Achaeans and Argives and all the rest surge back into formation behind their captains, horses are re-tethered to chariots, chariots are driven out across the earth-bridges still spanning the defensive trenches, and the battle is on again.
It becomes the hour of the archer.
Although Diomedes leads the counterattack, followed closely by the Atrides, Agamemnon and Menelaus, followed in turn by Big Ajax and Little Ajax, and although these heroes take their toll on the Trojans in spearcasts and shortsword clashes, the fighting now is centered around the Achaean archer Teucer, bastard son of Telamon and half-brother to Big Ajax.
Teucer has always been considered a master-archer, and I’ve seen him shoot dozens of Trojans over the years, but this is his day in the limelight. He and Ajax get into a rhythm whereby Teucer crouches under the wall of his half-brother’s shield—Big Ajax uses a giant rectangular shield that military historians say wasn’t even in use during the time of the Trojan War—and when Ajax lifts the shield, Teucer fires from beneath it into the Trojan ranks some sixty yards away. On this day he can’t seem to miss his mark.