I realize that I’m famished. If I am called in to speak now—if all of our fates depended on it—I couldn’t do it because my mouth is watering so.
As if hearing my stomach rumbling, Achilles looks out into the foyer and almost freezes with surprise. “Phoenix! Honored mentor, noble horseman! I thought you ill in your tent these weeks last. Come in, come in!”
With that the young hero comes into the foyer, embraces me, and leads me into the firelit center of his home, the air smelling now of roasting mutton and pork. Odysseus shoots daggers from his eyes, silently warning me to keep silent during the discussions.
“Be seated, beloved Phoenix,” says Achilles, this old man’s former student. But he sets me on red cushions, not purple, and farther from the fire than is either Odysseus or Ajax. Achilles is loyal to his old friends, but he understands protocol.
Patroclus brings in wicker baskets of fresh-baked bread and Achilles rakes the meat from their spits and sets the steaming portions out on wooden platters. “Let us sacrifice to the gods, dear friends,” Achilles says, nodding to Patroclus, who tosses the firstlings—the strips of meat chosen as offerings—into the flames.
“Now, eat,” commands Achilles, and all of us set into the bread and wine and meat with a will.
Even while I’m chewing and enjoying the food, my mind is racing: How do I get to make the speech I have to make to change the fates of everyone here, of the gods themselves? It seemed so simple an hour earlier, but Odysseus hasn’t bought my statement that Agamemnon sent me along as an emissary. In the poem, Odysseus speaks soon—relaying Agamemnon’s offer to Achilles—then Achilles replies in what I’ve suggested to my students is the most powerful and beautiful speech in the Iliad, then Phoenix gives his long, three-part monologue—part personal history, part the parable of the “Prayers,” and part allegory of Achilles’ situation in the myth of Meleagros—a paradeigma where a mythical hero waits too long to accept offered gifts and to fight for his friends. All in all, Phoenix’s speech is by far the most interesting entreaty from the three ambassadors sent to persuade Achilles. And, according to the Iliad, it is Phoenix’s argument that persuades the angry Achilles to back away from his vow to sail away the next morning. By the time Ajax speaks, after me, Achilles will agree to stay around the next day to see what the Trojans do and, if necessary, to protect his own ships from the enemy.
My plan is to repeat parts of Phoenix’ long speech from memory, then veer away to insert my own suggestions. But I see Odysseus frowning at me from across the tent and know that I’m not going to get the chance.
And what if I do? I’ve considered the fact that the gods will be monitoring this assembly—it’s one of the key elements of the Iliad, after all, although perhaps only Zeus knows that in advance. But even without advance knowledge, some of the gods and goddesses must be watching this meeting in their video pools and on their image-tabula. Zeus has ordered them not to intervene this day, and most are complying with his ultimatum, but that must make their curiosity about the embassy to Achilles even greater. If Achilles agrees to Agamemnon’s bribe price and the power of Odysseus’ persuasion this night, then Hector’s offensive and perhaps even the will of Zeus himself will be thwarted. Achilles is a one-man army.
So if I suborn him to heresy this night as I’ve planned, if I try to rally Achilles to war against the gods, won’t Zeus intervene at once, blasting this tent and all its occupants? And even if Zeus holds back his wrath, I can imagine Athena or Hera or Apollo or one of the other interested parties swooping down to destroy this . . . “Phoenix” . . . for suggesting a course of action so inimical to their ends. I’ve imagined these things, of course, but trusted the QT medallion and the Hades Helmet to save me.
But so what if I save myself by fleeing again, but these heroes end up killed or dissuaded by the wrath of the gods? The whole plan will have been for nothing and my existence revealed to all the gods. The Hades Helmet and QT medallion won’t help me then—they’ll track me to the ends of the earth, to prehistorical Indiana if need be. And that, as they say, will be that.
Perhaps Odysseus has done me a service by not letting me speak.
Then why am I here?
When we’ve all feasted well, empty platters pushed aside and only crusts of bread remaining in the baskets, and are ready for our third cup of wine, I see Ajax nod ever so slightly to Odysseus.
The great strategist takes the hint and lifts his cup in a toast to Achilles.
“Your health, Achilles!”
We all drink and the young hero bows his blond head in acknowledgment.
“I see that we lack nothing for this feast,” continues Odysseus, his voice surprisingly low and soft, almost mellifluous. Of all the great Achaean captains, this bearded man is the softest spoken and the most devious. “We lack nothing either in Agamemnon’s camp nor here in the house of the son of Peleus. But it’s not the bounteous feast that’s on our minds this stormy night—no, it’s a terrible disaster, bred and willed by the gods, that we’re looking on and fearing tonight.”
Odysseus goes on, slowly, smoothly, never rushing, rarely reaching for rhetorical effect. He describes the rout of the afternoon, the Trojans’ victory, the Achaeans’ panic and will to flee, and Zeus’s complicity.
“These brazen Trojans and their boasting allies have pitched their tents within a stone’s throw of our ships, Achilles,” continues Odysseus, speaking as if Achilles has not already heard all of this from Patroclus, Automedan, and his other friends. Or simply watched it from the hill outside his tent.
“Nothing can stop them now,” continues Odysseus. “That’s their boast, and thousands of their watchfires back that boast with threat tonight. They plan to bring those flames to our ships at first light, then hurl themselves at our blackened hulls, slaughtering the survivors. And Zeus, son of Kronos, sends them signs of encouragement, firebolts crashing on our left wing, all the while Hector rages on furiously, drunk on his strength. He fears nothing, Achilles, neither man nor god. Hector is like a rabid, frenzied dog this day, and the demons of katelepsis have him in their grip.”
Odysseus pauses. Achilles says nothing. His face shows nothing. His friend Patroclus is watching Achilles’ face all this time, but the hero does not even glance his way. Achilles would make one hell of a poker player.
“Hector is eager for the dawn,” Odysseus continues, voice even softer now, “since, at first light, he threatens to shear the horns from our ship sterns, light those ships with consuming fire, and—with all our comrades trapped against the burning hulls, rout and kill and cut down us Achaeans to the man. A nightmare, Achilles—I fear it with all my heart—I fear the gods will give Hector the means to carry out these threats and our destiny will be to die here on the plains of Ilium, far from the horse-pasturing hills of Argos.”
Achilles says nothing when Odysseus pauses again. The dying embers crack. Somewhere several tents away, someone is playing a slow dirge on a lyre. From the opposite direction comes the drunken laugh of a soldier who obviously thinks himself doomed.
“Up with you then, Achilles,” says Odysseus, voice rising at last. “Now, rise with us now, eleventh hour though it be, if you want to rescue the doomed sons of the Achaeans from Trojan slaughter.”
And now Odysseus is asking Achilles to put aside his wrath and describes Agamemnon’s offer, using the same words Agamemnon had chosen to list his unfired tripods and dozen racehorses and so on, and so forth. I think he lingers a bit too long on the description of unbedded Briseis and the Trojan maidens waiting to be ravished and Agamemnon’s three beautiful daughters, but he ends with a passionate peroration, reminding Achilles of his own father’s advice, Peleus’ admonition to value friendship over quarrels.