The Wrath (Books 1–2)

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus — the accursed wrath which brought countless sorrows upon the Achaeans, and sent many strong souls of heroes down to Hades, and made their bodies a prey for dogs and all the birds; and so the will of Zeus was being fulfilled — from the time when first they parted in strife, Agamemnon, son of Atreus, lord of men, and godlike Achilles.

Which of the gods set them to quarrel? Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto. For he was angry with the king, and sent a deadly plague upon the army, and the people were dying, because the son of Atreus had dishonoured his priest, Chryses.

Chryses had come to the swift ships of the Achaeans to ransom his daughter, bringing a boundless ransom, and holding in his hands the wreaths of Apollo the far-shooter on a golden staff; and he begged all the Achaeans, and most of all the two sons of Atreus, the marshals of the people: "Sons of Atreus, and you other well-greaved Achaeans, may the gods who have homes on Olympus grant you to sack the city of Priam, and to come home safely; but release to me my dear daughter, and take this ransom, in reverence for the son of Zeus, far-shooting Apollo."

The other Achaeans all shouted that the priest should be respected and the ransom taken; but it did not please Agamemnon. He sent him away roughly: "Let me not find you, old man, by the hollow ships, lingering now or coming back hereafter, lest your staff and the god's wreath do you no good. Her I will not release; old age will come upon her in my house, in Argos, far from her country, working at the loom." The old man was afraid, and obeyed, and went in silence along the shore of the loud-roaring sea; and when he was alone, he prayed to Apollo: "If ever I roofed a pleasing temple for you, or burned the fat thighs of bulls and goats for you, grant me this wish: let the Danaans pay for my tears with your arrows."

So he prayed, and Phoebus Apollo heard him, and came down from the peaks of Olympus, angry at heart, with his bow and closed quiver on his shoulders; the arrows rattled on his shoulders as he moved, and he came like the night. He sat down apart from the ships and let fly an arrow; terrible was the twang of the silver bow. First he went after the mules and the swift dogs; then he aimed his sharp arrows at the men themselves; and the pyres of the dead burned thick, without ceasing.

For nine days the god's arrows went through the army; on the tenth, Achilles called the people to assembly. The prophet Calchas, when Achilles had promised to protect him, revealed the cause: the god was angry for his priest; the plague would not end until the girl was given back to her father, without ransom, with a holy offering.

Agamemnon rose in anger, his heart black with rage, his eyes like blazing fire. He would give her back, if he must — though he preferred her, he said, to his own wife, Clytemnestra; but he must have another prize at once, so that he alone of the Argives should not be without one. Achilles told him that there was no common store of prizes left; all had been divided; let him wait until they took Troy, and they would repay him three and four times over. And so they quarrelled.

"You clothed in shamelessness, you with your mind on profit," cried Achilles, "how can any Achaean obey you willingly? I did not come here to fight because of the Trojans; they have never done me any harm — they never drove off my cattle or my horses, nor ravaged my harvests in deep-soiled Phthia; for there are many shadowy mountains between us, and the echoing sea. But we followed you, you shameless one, to win honour for Menelaus and for you, dog-face, from the Trojans. And you threaten to take my prize from me yourself, for which I toiled so much. I never have a prize equal to yours when the Achaeans sack a Trojan city; the greater part of the fighting is the work of my hands, but when the division comes, your prize is far greater. Now I will go home to Phthia."

"Go, then, if your heart drives you," said Agamemnon. "I will not beg you to stay for my sake; I have others who will honour me, and above all Zeus the counsellor. You are the most hateful to me of all the kings, for you are always fond of strife and wars and battles. And so that you may know how much greater I am than you — I will come myself to your hut, and take the fair-cheeked Briseis, your prize."

Briseis was a woman of a sacked town, captured by Achilles and given to him as his share of the spoils; in the warrior code of the poem, such a "prize" was a measure of a man's honour.

Grief came upon the son of Peleus, and his heart within his shaggy breast was divided: whether to draw his sharp sword from beside his thigh and kill the son of Atreus, or to check his anger. And while he pondered, and was drawing his great sword from its sheath, Athena came down from heaven, sent by white-armed Hera, who loved both men alike; she stood behind him, and caught him by his golden hair, visible to him alone. He turned, amazed, and knew Pallas Athena; terribly her eyes shone. She told him to stop: let him wound Agamemnon with words, not with the sword; for one day, because of this insult, three times as many glorious gifts would be offered him. Achilles obeyed: "It is better so; whoever obeys the gods, they too listen to him." He thrust his sword back into the sheath.

But he did not leave off his anger. "You heavy with wine, with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer! . . . I tell you this, and I swear a great oath on it: by this sceptre, which will never again put forth leaves and branches — a day will come when longing for Achilles will come upon all the sons of the Achaeans; and then you will be able to do nothing to help them, for all your grief, when many fall dying before man-slaying Hector; and you will tear your heart within you, in anger that you did not honour the best of the Achaeans." And he flung the sceptre, studded with golden nails, to the ground.

Old Nestor, the sweet-voiced orator of the men of Pylos, from whose tongue speech flowed sweeter than honey, who had seen two generations of mortal men pass away, tried to make peace between them; neither would listen.

Odysseus took the girl Chryseis back to her father, with a hecatomb for the god; and Apollo ended the plague. And Agamemnon sent his heralds to the hut of Achilles. Achilles did not resist them; he greeted the heralds kindly — they were not to blame — and told his dear companion Patroclus to bring out Briseis, and give her to them; and she went with them, unwilling.

Then Achilles, weeping, sat apart from his companions on the shore of the grey sea, looking out over the wine-dark water, and prayed to his mother, the sea-goddess Thetis. She came up out of the grey sea like a mist, and sat beside him, and stroked him with her hand. "My child, why do you weep?" He told her everything, and asked her to go to Zeus, and clasp his knees, and beg him to help the Trojans, and pen the Achaeans in among their ships at the sea's edge, to be killed — so that they might all have joy of their king, and Agamemnon might know his folly in dishonouring the best of the Achaeans. Thetis wept: "Ah, my child, why did I raise you, born to sorrow? I wish you could sit by your ships without tears or grief, since your life is short, and not long at all; but now you are both short-lived and wretched above all men."

On Olympus, Thetis sat before Zeus, and clasped his knees with her left hand, and touched his chin with her right, and begged him. He was silent a long time; then he nodded his dark brows, and the ambrosial locks waved on the lord's immortal head, and great Olympus shook. Hera, who had seen Thetis with him, quarrelled with her husband; and their lame son Hephaestus made peace, pouring sweet nectar for all the gods, and they laughed unquenchably to see him bustling through the hall.

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That night Zeus sent a deceitful Dream to Agamemnon, in the likeness of old Nestor, telling him to arm the Achaeans at once: now he would take Troy. Agamemnon believed it, and called an assembly; but first, to test the army, he told them that Zeus had deceived him, and that they should all go home. And at once the whole army rushed to the ships with a shout, like great waves of the sea, eager to launch them. It was Odysseus, prompted by Athena, who turned them back: he took the sceptre of Agamemnon, and went through the army, speaking gently to the kings and beating the common men with it: "Let there be one lord, one king." And when an ugly, loud-mouthed common soldier, Thersites, railed at Agamemnon's greed in front of the whole assembly — saying much what Achilles had said — Odysseus beat him with the sceptre until he wept; and the whole army laughed.

The army armed for battle, and marched out across the plain of the Scamander, as countless as the flocks of geese, cranes and swans on the meadows of the Cayster, as countless as the leaves and flowers in spring. Here the poet calls on the Muses once more: "Tell me now, Muses who have homes on Olympus — for you are goddesses, and are present, and know all things, while we hear only a rumour, and know nothing — who were the leaders and lords of the Danaans?" And there follows the great Catalogue of the Ships: the contingents of the Greek army, region by region — twenty-nine contingents, eleven hundred and eighty-six ships — with their leaders: Agamemnon with a hundred ships from Mycenae, Menelaus from Sparta, Nestor from Pylos, Odysseus from Ithaca, Ajax son of Telamon from Salamis, Diomedes from Argos, Idomeneus from Crete, Achilles with fifty ships from Phthia, idle now by the shore. And then the Trojans and their allies, under Hector, son of Priam, of the glancing helmet.

The Catalogue of Ships, nearly four hundred lines long, is given here only in outline.