The quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles
The first word of the poem is rage — and the rage starts here, over a captured woman and a king's pride.
Summary
The poem opens with a plague. Apollo is shooting his arrows into the Greek camp because Agamemnon, the commander of the army, has refused to ransom the captured daughter of one of Apollo's priests. After nine days of dying men and burning pyres, Achilles calls a council. The seer Calchas reluctantly identifies the cause; Agamemnon, furious, agrees to return the girl but only if a prize is taken from someone else to replace her. Achilles is contemptuous — Agamemnon, he says, has done nothing to earn his prizes, and the Greeks will not hand them back to feed his greed.
Briseis is led away from his tent. Achilles goes alone to the shore and weeps and calls to his mother. Thetis, a sea-goddess, rises out of the waves to him. He tells her what has happened and asks her to go to Zeus, to ask him to let the Greeks be pushed back to their ships, so they will know what they have lost in him. Thetis goes. Zeus owes her a favor and reluctantly agrees, knowing it will mean a fight with his wife Hera.
Hera is furious. The poem closes with the gods quarreling at their evening feast, the lame smith Hephaestus pouring wine to defuse them, the Olympians laughing at his limp. The contrast is the poem's signature: a day in which men die and lives change forever, ending in the easy laughter of immortals who will be exactly the same tomorrow.
- Book 1The poem's first day. Apollo's plague, Agamemnon's refusal, Achilles's withdrawal. The chain of bad decisions that the rest of the...
- Book 2Zeus's deceitful dream rouses the Greek army; Agamemnon's botched test nearly breaks it; Odysseus rallies the men. The book ends...
- Book 3The duel that should have ended the war. Paris and Menelaus fight; Aphrodite saves Paris just before he is killed. Helen, on the...
- Book 4The gods on Olympus argue. Athena tricks a Trojan archer into shooting Menelaus and breaking the truce. The first full day of...
- Book 5Diomedes's day of glory. Athena fills him with battle-fury and lets him see the gods on the field. He wounds Aphrodite, then Ares....
- Book 6The poem's most famous domestic scene. Hector returns to Troy and finds his wife Andromache on the wall with their infant son. She...
- Book 7Hector and Ajax fight to a draw and exchange gifts. The Greeks, that night, build a defensive wall around their camp. Poseidon...
- Book 8Zeus forbids the gods from interfering and weighs the day on golden scales. The Greeks lose. Hector pushes the army to the Greek...
- Book 9Agamemnon's great offer. Three captains — Odysseus, Phoenix, Ajax — go to Achilles's tent with restitution beyond anyone's memory....
- Book 10Sometimes called a later interpolation. A nighttime raid: Diomedes and Odysseus catch a Trojan spy, kill him, then go behind the...
- Book 11Agamemnon's day of glory. He kills men until midday, then is wounded in the arm. Diomedes wounded by Paris; Odysseus wounded; the...
- Book 12The Trojans reach the Greek wall and attack on foot. An omen warns them off; Hector dismisses it ("the only good omen is to fight...
- Book 13The fight is inside the Greek camp now. Zeus looks away; Poseidon, in disguise, walks the line and rallies the Greeks. Idomeneus...
- Book 14The most flagrant scene in the poem. Hera dresses up, borrows Aphrodite's magic belt under false pretenses, and seduces Zeus to...
- Book 15Zeus, awake and furious, sends Apollo to restore Hector. The line breaks. Apollo himself kicks down the Greek wall. Hector reaches...
- Book 16The middle of the poem. Patroclus puts on Achilles's armor, leads the Myrmidons out, drives the Trojans back from the ships, then...
- Book 17The whole afternoon spent fighting over the corpse. Hector strips Achilles's armor and dons it. The Greek captains, one by one...
- Book 18Achilles hears and collapses. Thetis rises from the sea. Hephaestus, on Olympus, forges him new armor — including the great...
- Book 19Achilles formally renounces the wrath in front of the assembled army. Agamemnon makes his own speech of restitution. The men eat...
- Book 20Zeus releases the Olympians to choose sides openly. The gods pour onto the field. Achilles meets Aeneas in single combat...
- Book 21The most surreal book in the poem. Achilles kills so many men in the river Scamander that the river-god himself rises to fight...
- Book 22Hector waits outside the walls. He sees Achilles coming and runs. They run three times around the city before Athena, in disguise...
- Book 23Patroclus is given his funeral. The pyre burns through the night. In the morning Achilles holds funeral games — chariot race...
- Book 24Twelve days after Hector's death. Priam goes alone, with Hermes guiding him, through the Greek camp to Achilles's tent. He kneels...