Chapter summary
The poem announces its subject in the first verse, and it is not the war of Troy: it is the wrath of Achilles, which brought the Achaeans countless sorrows and sent to Hades the souls of many heroes, while the design of Zeus was being fulfilled. The war is already nine years old when the book begins. Chryses, priest of Apollo, comes to the Greek camp to ransom his daughter, Chryseis, whom Agamemnon received as a war prize. He brings an enormous ransom and the god's insignia. All the Greeks agree that the priest should be respected and the ransom accepted, but Agamemnon drives him away with threats: he wants the girl for himself and says she will grow old in Argos, at the loom and in his bed. The old man falls silent out of fear, walks along the beach, and prays for vengeance to Apollo, who comes down from Olympus with the bow and spreads the plague through the camp for nine days.
On the tenth day, Achilles calls the assembly, at the inspiration of Hera, who suffers seeing the Greeks die. The seer Calchas agrees to speak only after Achilles swears to protect him, because the truth will anger the most powerful man in the army: the plague is punishment for the insult to the priest, and it will end only if Chryseis returns to her father without ransom. Agamemnon insults the seer and agrees to return the girl to save the army, but demands another prize at once, so as not to be the only one without reward. Achilles replies that there is no booty stored away and that the Greeks will pay three or four times over when they take Troy. Agamemnon takes the answer as an affront and threatens to seize the prize of whoever it is, Achilles', Ajax's, or Odysseus's.
The quarrel rises in pitch. Achilles recalls that he did not come to Troy because of an offense by the Trojans, but to give honor to Menelaus and Agamemnon, and that he is the one who bears the greater weight of the war to receive the smaller share; he announces that he will go home. Agamemnon lets him go and decides to take Briseis, Achilles' prize, to show everyone how much stronger he is. Achilles hesitates between killing him right there and restraining his anger; he is already drawing his sword when Athena, sent by Hera and visible only to him, seizes him by the hair and promises that he will receive three times as many gifts for this affront. Achilles obeys the goddess, but not the king: he sheathes the sword, insults Agamemnon as a coward, swears by the scepter that one day the Greeks will feel the lack of him when they fall under the hands of Hector, and throws the scepter to the ground. Nestor tries to calm the two and fails.
Agamemnon returns Chryseis by a ship commanded by Odysseus and sends two heralds to fetch Briseis. Achilles hands her over without resistance, through the hand of Patroclus, declares the heralds innocent and makes them witnesses, before the gods, men, and the king, that when they need him, he will not come. Then he weeps on the seashore and calls his mother, the goddess Thetis. He asks her to beg Zeus to give victory to the Trojans until the Greeks are penned in beside the ships, so that all of them, and Agamemnon himself, will understand the error of having dishonored the best of the Achaeans. Thetis weeps over her son's short life and promises to climb to Olympus when Zeus returns from the feast among the Ethiopians.
Meanwhile, Odysseus hands Chryseis over to her father, Chryses asks Apollo to lift the plague, and the god grants it. Achilles stays by the ships, neither going to the assembly nor to war, consumed with longing for battle. On the twelfth day, Thetis embraces the knees of Zeus and asks honor for her son. Zeus takes his time answering, because he knows Hera will quarrel with him, and then confirms with a nod of the head, the sign he never revokes, and Olympus trembles. Hera perceives the conversation and accuses him of plotting in secret; Zeus orders her to be silent under threat of violence. Hephaestus, her son, persuades his mother to give in, reminds her that he was once thrown from heaven for trying to defend her, and serves wine to the gods, limping through the hall, which provokes endless laughter. Night falls over a divine banquet, while on earth Thetis' pact has already condemned many Greeks.
Analysis
Achilles' anger is born of a question of honor, not of love for Briseis: what he loses is the prize, that is, the public sign of his worth, and what wounds him is seeing the weaker man in combat take the prize of the stronger one merely because he commands more men. That is why the punishment he asks for is collective: he does not only want to recover the girl, he wants everyone to measure what his absence is worth. The book leaves the question standing: how far does the right of a wronged man extend when the price of the reparation is the lives of his companions?
The book has two planes that mirror each other. On earth, a king insults a priest and a warrior, and the two respond by asking a god to punish the entire army. In heaven, the wife of Zeus accuses him of plotting in secret, and the quarrel is dissolved only in laughter before Hephaestus. The gods quarrel and soon after banquet; men quarrel and die. This difference runs through the whole poem.
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