Agamemnon

Who He Is

Agamemnon is the king who commands the Achaean expedition against Troy and the man on whom the order of the army depends. He is the son of Atreus and brother of Menelaus, the offended husband, and he carries the scepter his lineage passed down to him, the sign that Zeus gave him the right to command. In the first book, the decision to take Achilles' prize of war opens the conflict that drives the whole poem. From then on the poem shows him as a king who needs support from outside to keep the army on its feet: from Nestor, Odysseus, Diomedes, and Zeus. After taking the prize, he tries to repair it with goods and with the explanation that a god blinded him.

Trajectory

In Book I, the priest Chryses comes to ask for his daughter back, whom Agamemnon received as a prize, and brings an enormous ransom. All the Greeks approve, but the king sends him away with threats and says the girl will grow old in Argos, at the loom and in his bed. Apollo sends the plague. In the assembly, Agamemnon insults the seer Calchas, agrees to return the girl to save the army, and demands another prize at once, so as not to be the only one without a reward. On hearing that no spoils are stored away, he takes Achilles' answer as an insult, threatens to take the prize of whoever has one, and decides to take Briseis, to show how much stronger he is. He returns Chryseis on a ship commanded by Odysseus and sends two heralds to fetch Briseis.

In Book II, Zeus sends a deadly Dream, in the form of Nestor, to tell the king that he could take the city now. Agamemnon wakes convinced that he will take it that very day, and the narrator calls him foolish for not knowing what Zeus is plotting. He tells the council that he will test the army by proposing flight. In the assembly, holding the scepter inherited from his father, he speaks like someone who has given up: nine years, ships rotting, wives and children waiting. The assembly rushes to the ships, and only the intervention of Athena, through Odysseus, who takes the king's scepter to speak in his name, prevents the return that the poem calls beyond fate. Praising Nestor, Agamemnon admits that he was the one who began the quarrel with Achilles, and that if they ever agree, the ruin of Troy will not be long in coming. At the sacrifice, he prays that the sun not set before he tears down the palace of Priam, and Zeus accepts the offerings but does not grant the request.

In Book III, at the cutting of the lambs' hair, Agamemnon adds a clause to the terms set by Paris: if Menelaus wins, the Trojans must return Helen and the goods and pay a compensation that men to come will remember, and if Priam and his sons refuse, he will keep fighting until the end of the war. After the duel, he declares Menelaus the winner and demands Helen, the goods, and the compensation.

In Book IV, when Pandarus' arrow wounds Menelaus, Agamemnon shudders, holds his brother's hand, and accuses himself of having sworn the oaths for his death. He says he knows that Troy will fall, and fears that if Menelaus dies, he will return to Argos covered in shame. He walks on foot along the ranks, encouraging those who hurry and rebuking those who seem idle. He accuses Odysseus and Menestheus of waiting for others to begin, and withdraws his words when Odysseus answers with a dark frown. He rebukes Diomedes by recounting the mission of Tydeus to Thebes, and Diomedes falls silent out of respect.

In Book V, Agamemnon asks the Achaeans to respect one another, because more are saved than die when there is shame. In Book VI, when Menelaus was about to spare the Trojan Adrastus, who had promised an enormous ransom, Agamemnon arrives running and rebukes him: no one should escape, not even the child in its mother's womb. The counsel turns Menelaus's mind, and Agamemnon wounds Adrastus in the side.

In Book VII, Agamemnon holds his brother by the right hand when he rises to face Hector: Hector is the better man, and even Achilles shuddered to face him. The lot is drawn from his helmet, and the name of Ajax comes out. After the duel, Agamemnon sacrifices an ox to Zeus and honors Ajax with the whole rib pieces of the loin. When he receives Paris's offer, he hears from Diomedes that no one should accept the goods or Helen, and he gives his answer to Idaeus: he accepts the truce to burn the dead and calls on Zeus as witness to the oaths.

In Book VIII, when Zeus's scales force the Achaeans to retreat, Agamemnon withdraws with the other chiefs. Hera puts in him the impulse to encourage the Achaeans. At the ship of Odysseus, in the middle of the camp, from where his voice carries to the tents of Ajax and Achilles, he rebukes the men for the boasts about Lemnos. He prays to Zeus: he has never passed an altar of the god without burning fat, eager to destroy Troy, and he asks whether the god has ever blinded a king like this. His request shrinks from conquering the city to surviving it, and Zeus signals that the people will not perish and sends an eagle with a deer.

In Book IX, Agamemnon opens the assembly weeping and says that Zeus has bound him in a heavy folly: he promised him the fall of Troy and now sends him back to Argos. He proposes fleeing, and Diomedes replies that Zeus gave him the scepter and the honor, but not the courage. When Nestor confronts him over the seizing of Achilles' prize, Agamemnon admits he was mad and wants to appease him with gifts: seven tripods, ten talents of gold, seven women of Lesbos, Briseis returned with an oath that he never touched her, the hand of one of his daughters, and seven cities. He ends by demanding that Achilles submit, because he is the greater king and the older man. Achilles' reply, carried by Odysseus, is a refusal.

In Book X, Agamemnon cannot sleep: he looks at the Trojan fires and is amazed, looks at the Achaean ships and tears at his hair, and groans turned toward Zeus. He tells Menelaus that they need a council, because the mind of Zeus has turned. He orders him to summon the chiefs by their fathers' names, without pride, and says that he himself will also work. When he sees Diomedes choose his companion for the spying mission, he gives him a rule: to take the best one and not the one of highest birth, and the narrator says that he feared for his brother.

In Book XI, after putting on the armor that Cinyras gave him, he is the first to attack, kills Isus and Antiphus, sons of Priam, and pursues the Trojans to the Scaean Gates. He refuses the ransom for the sons of Antimachus, the Trojan who wanted to kill Menelaus when he came as an envoy, and gives them death as payment for a family debt. Zeus sets the day: while the king is in the front line, Hector withdraws, and only when he is wounded does Hector receive the strength to kill until sunset. Coon wounds him in the arm, Agamemnon kills him and keeps fighting, but the pains overcome him like those of childbirth. He orders him taken to the ships and shouts that the crafty Zeus did not let him fight the whole day.

In Book XIV, Agamemnon comes up from the ships with Odysseus and Diomedes, the three of them wounded and leaning on their spears. He fears that Hector will carry out his threat to burn the ships and that the other Achaeans will hold Achilles' wrath against him. He concludes that Zeus wants the Achaeans dead without name and proposes launching the ships into the sea at night, because fleeing evil is no shame. Odysseus rebukes him harshly: he ought to command a worthless army, and retreat would break the men's spirit. Agamemnon yields and accepts Diomedes' counsel, to return to the fight out of reach of the darts. Poseidon, disguised as an old man, takes his hand and says that the gods are not wholly angry with him.

In Book XVI, Patroclus names Agamemnon among the wounded chiefs, and urges the Myrmidons to make the king recognize the blindness of having dishonored the best of the Achaeans.

In Book XIX, the reconciliation is public. Achilles puts an end to his wrath, and Agamemnon speaks seated, so that everyone can hear him: the fault is not his, it is Zeus's, the Fate's, and the Erinys who wandered the air who cast a savage blindness upon him. He tells the story of Ate, who deceived even Zeus himself on the day Heracles was born, and concludes that, since he was blinded, he wants to make amends with boundless compensation. Odysseus persuades him to bring the gifts into the middle of the assembly and to swear that he did not touch Briseis. Agamemnon swears over a sacrificed boar and speaks of her as untouched. Achilles replies that Zeus gives great blindness to men.

In Book XXIII, at the funeral games for Patroclus, Agamemnon sends wood for the pyre under the direction of Meriones. In the javelin throw, Achilles gives him the prize without dispute and asks that the spear go to the hero Meriones, and the king accepts without resistance.

In Book XXIV, Agamemnon does not appear on stage, but his weight is felt in Priam's night: Achilles mocks the old man for sleeping outside so that no Achaean counselor sees him, warns Agamemnon, and delays the ransom, and Hermes wakes him, saying that the sons would have to pay three times as much if the king learned he was there.

Themes Embodied

Agamemnon embodies Honor and reputation as seen from the side of the one who commands: he cannot bear being the only one without a prize, and so he takes Achilles', which is what makes the army fall. He embodies Fate and free will twice: the Dream deceives him, and he says that Ate blinded him. And he embodies War as a collective enterprise, in which the chief depends on the counsel of those around him. In Book VI and Book XI, Compassion and charity appear in reverse, in the supplications he refuses, and in Book IX he begins to offer reparation.

The king explains the defeat as Zeus's doing in two places in the poem, in Book IX and in Book XIX, and in both he uses the word Ate, the folly that takes away judgment. Two readings coexist. It may be an honest description of how madness comes upon a man, with the gods acting on the mind, or a way of making amends without declaring oneself guilty. The text does not choose, and Achilles repeats the same explanation later on. What the king offers is reparation in objects, and what Achilles says he has lost is of another kind: the prize, a life at risk with no return, the treatment received. Hence the mismatch, because each offer adds to the list without touching the grievance. The scepter, for its part, changes its function over the course of the poem: in Book II it is Odysseus who takes it to speak in the king's name, and in Book IX it is, in Diomedes' words, the honor that Zeus gave without courage, and, in Nestor's, the sign that the king was placed there to deliberate.

Relationships

• Achilles: the warrior from whom he takes the prize in Book I, to whom he offers reparation in Book IX, and with whom he is reconciled in Book XIX.
• Menelaus: the brother whose wound makes him shudder in Book IV, and whom he holds back in Book VII and Book X.
• Odysseus: the counselor who answers him sideways and convinces him that the army needs courage.
• Nestor: the elder who confronts him with his error in Book IX and organizes the battle lines in Book IV.
• Diomedes: the young chief whom he rebukes in Book IV and who tells him, in Book IX, that the scepter does not give courage.
• Zeus: the god he prays to and blames, who deceived him with the Dream and accepts his sacrifices without granting the request.
• Athena: the goddess who, with Hera, thunders in his honor in Book XI.
• Hera: the goddess who puts in him the impulse to encourage the Achaeans in Book VIII, and who, in the story of Ate, deceives Zeus on the day Heracles was born.
• Hector: the adversary whom Zeus makes wait, in Book XI, until the king is wounded.
• Calchas, the seer whom he insults in Book I, and Briseis, the captive whom he returns in Book XIX with the oath that he never touched her.