Iliad, Book 9 — The Embassy to Achilles

Reading Troy — chapter 9 of 74 · Iliad, Book 9

Iliad, Book 9 — The Embassy to Achilles (Night of Day 25 into Day 26 of the Iliad; ~1184 BCE traditional date for the Trojan War; the Greek camp at the ships and Achilles's tent by the sea)

The Greek camp at nightfall is in panic. The watch-fires of the Trojans burn on the plain as stars about the moon; Agamemnon weeps openly before the council and proposes, this time in earnest, to launch the ships and sail. Diomedes rises against him in scalding contempt — Zeus has given you a sceptre but not the courage that is the great strength of kingship — and says again that the others will stay even if Agamemnon goes. Nestor, ever the mediator, defuses the moment, calls for food and watches, and then privately tells Agamemnon what he could not say in council: the quarrel with Achilles was your doing; offer him gifts; send embassy. Agamemnon accepts. He recites in detail what he will give: seven new tripods that have not seen fire, ten talents of gold, twenty bright cauldrons, twelve prize-winning racehorses, seven Lesbian women he took from there himself, twenty Trojan women after the city falls, the choice of any of his three daughters with a great dowry of seven cities, and — most pointedly — Briseis herself, returned untouched, upon my great oath that I have never gone up into her bed nor lain with her.

The embassy is chosen. Phoenix the old guardian, Ajax the bulwark, and Odysseus the eloquent — with two heralds, Odius and Eurybates. They walk down along the beach by the loud-resounding sea, praying to Poseidon, the dark-haired earth-shaker, to soften the heart of the haughty son of Aeacus. They come to Achilles's tent. He is alone with Patroclus; he is playing on a clear-toned lyre which he had taken from the spoils of Eëtion's city, singing of the glories of heroes. He sees the men, sets down the lyre, rises in surprise — you are the dearest of the Achaeans to me even now in my anger — orders Patroclus to mix stronger wine, kills a sheep, a goat, and a great hog, and prepares a meal himself.

After they have eaten, Odysseus speaks first. He lays out Agamemnon's gifts in the order Agamemnon recited them. He adds, in his own voice, the army's danger: Hector is at the wall; tomorrow he will burn the ships. He invokes Peleus's parting words to Achilles when the boy left home: hold back your high heart, and an honoured place will be yours among the Greeks. He asks Achilles to pity the army.

Achilles answers with the most famous speech in the poem. He hates lies as the gates of Hades; he will speak plainly. He has fought for nine years and sacked twenty-three cities by sea and eleven on foot, and he has always given the best of the spoil to Agamemnon, who takes what others have toiled to win and treats us all as cowards. The gifts mean nothing — I would not take them if they were as the sands of the sea or the dust of the earth. Agamemnon took his geras, his prize-woman, the one I loved as I would have loved a wife. As for the marriage offer, let Agamemnon find another daughter; the daughters of Greece are many. He will sail at dawn. His mother told him long ago that two fates were spun for him: stay at Troy and die young with eternal kleos; sail home and live long without it. He now chooses the long life. Let Phoenix sleep here tonight and sail with him in the morning if he wishes.

Phoenix, in tears, answers next. He tells the story of his own life — how his father cursed him, how he fled to Peleus's house, how Peleus made him as a father, how he raised Achilles on his knee, and you would not eat or drink unless I cut your meat and held the wine-cup to your lips. He tells the paradeigma of Meleager — the hero who refused to fight in anger, was begged by city and family and wife, refused all gifts, and finally fought only when the city was burning, and got no gifts at all. Phoenix's plea: take the gifts now; later you will save the city without them and the army will hate you.

Achilles is moved by the old man but unchanged. Phoenix, father, stay with me, sleep here, and we will decide at dawn whether to sail or stay. Then Ajax rises — short, blunt, scornful of the long speeches. Let us go; this man has no pity. Other men accept compensation even for a brother's killing. Achilles will not accept it for one woman. The simplicity of the soldier's complaint reaches Achilles where Odysseus's rhetoric did not. Ajax, you have spoken much as I myself would. But my heart still rages. I will not fight — until Hector reaches the Myrmidon ships and threatens fire there. Then perhaps I will think again.

The embassy returns. Odysseus reports Achilles's refusal in full. The captains sit silent. Diomedes alone speaks: Agamemnon, you should not have prayed to him with all those gifts; he is a proud man and you have made him prouder. Let him fight or not. Eat, sleep, fight at dawn. They drink, pour libations, and lie down. The book ends on the Greek captains sleeping, the Trojan fires burning on the plain, and the embassy unanswered.

Analysis

The book that is the Iliad's hinge

Book 9 is the structural centre of the Iliad and the moment the wrath becomes irreversible. Agamemnon offers everything Achilles asked for in Book 1 — Briseis returned untouched, gifts beyond restitution, public honour — and Achilles refuses. The refusal is the choice. After Book 9 the death of Patroclus is fated, because Achilles has now passed the moment when accepting the gifts would have saved his closest comrade. The Iliad is structured around this refusal. Everything before it is the wrath rising; everything after it is the consequence. The book is also the cycle's most extended single-night scene, and the only time we are allowed inside Achilles's tent on his own ground.

What Achilles actually says

Achilles's central speech is the most analysed passage in Homer because it puts pressure on the heroic code itself. He has noticed that the system rewards the king who takes what others win. He has noticed that the same fate — one portion for the man who fights hard and one for the man who shirks; death comes equally to both — falls on warrior and coward, and that the system's promise of kleos (immortal fame) is the only compensation, and that the compensation can be withdrawn by a king who confiscates the warrior's geras (his honour-prize, his Briseis). If the kleos-system can be cheated, what is the war for? Achilles is the only Iliadic warrior who asks this question explicitly. He does not answer it; he chooses the long life — the nostos, the homecoming — over the kleos. The Iliad allows the choice to stand without ironising it. He will change his mind in Book 18 (after Patroclus's death), but the change of mind will be made knowing exactly what it costs. Book 9 is where the cost is named.

Odysseus's silent edit

Watch the moment Odysseus reaches the gift-list. Agamemnon told Odysseus to recite the offer; Odysseus recites it exactly — except for Agamemnon's closing phrase, let him yield to me as the younger to the elder, since I am his king. Odysseus deletes the line. He knows Achilles. He knows that the gifts can be accepted but the demand for subordination cannot. Achilles still refuses — but he refuses the gifts on their own terms, not on the terms of Agamemnon's enclosed insult. The silent edit is one of Homer's finest single dramatic touches. It is also our first sustained portrait of Odysseus as the ambassador of clean speech — the diplomatic Odysseus who will be the polytropos of the Odyssey is born from this edit.

Phoenix and the Meleager paradigm

Phoenix's long autobiographical speech and the paradeigma (paradigm-tale) of Meleager is the Iliad's clearest single window onto how Homer thinks an epic operates. Phoenix tells the story of a hero who refused to fight, was offered gifts, refused, and at last had to fight without gifts to save what gifts would have rewarded him to save. The story is offered as warning: Achilles, do not be Meleager. Achilles, of course, is Meleager: he will fight without the gifts, to save Patroclus's corpse, and the gifts will become irrelevant. Phoenix is right but Achilles cannot hear him in time. The use of an old paradigm-story within an epic to predict and influence the present action is the device Virgil will borrow for the Aeneid's many embedded narratives (Hercules and Cacus in Aeneid 8, Anchises's pageant of Roman souls in Aeneid 6) and the Odyssey will borrow for Demodocus's songs in Odyssey 8.

The three speakers as three rhetorics

Odysseus speaks the rhetoric of policy: here are the gifts, here is the danger, here is the king's word. Phoenix speaks the rhetoric of love: I raised you, I love you, here is a story to teach you. Ajax speaks the rhetoric of the line: we are dying; you should care; this is what a comrade does. Homer is exact about which one Achilles answers. Odysseus's policy is brushed aside (I hate lies as the gates of Hades). Phoenix's love is held but refused (stay with me, sleep here, we will decide at dawn). Ajax's plain-soldier complaint is the one that gets a movement of the wrath — I will think again when Hector reaches the Myrmidon ships. Achilles will think again earlier than that: he will think again the moment Patroclus dies. But the door Ajax opens in Book 9 is the door Patroclus will walk through in Book 16. Without Ajax's plainness here, Patroclus's plea in Book 16 has no precedent.

Butler's prose and the cycle's longest speeches

Book 9 is one of the longest single books in the Iliad and is built almost entirely of speeches — the gift-recital, Odysseus's address, Achilles's reply, Phoenix's autobiography and Meleager, Ajax's blunt rebuke, Achilles's softening, Diomedes's verdict. Butler's flat prose is at its most ambivalent here. The plainness keeps the speeches legible — you can read Book 9 in Butler and follow every argument — but the music is gone. The speeches in the original Greek have different metrical signatures and rhetorical registers. Butler prints them as if they were transcripts of a courtroom. For Book 9 alone, the reader who can do so should sample at least one other version — Lattimore's hexameter for the rhetorical music, Fagles's blank verse for the emotional weight, Pope's couplets for the heroic dignity of the speeches. The book is too important to be read in one register only.

What to watch for

Watch what Achilles says about Briseis. I loved her as I would have loved a wife. This is the only passage in Homer where Achilles attaches a marriage-language to her, and the line will be paid off in his Book-19 lament for Patroclus where he is paired with her in the catalogue of losses, and again in Posthomerica 4 where Briseis is the first mourner at his bier. Watch Achilles's two fates — Book 9 is the first time he speaks them aloud, and they will be re-spoken by his mother in Book 18 and by his own ghost in Odyssey 11. Watch Ajax's plainness — it is the moment that gets the only real movement of the wrath in this book, and the moment that authorises Patroclus to ask the same thing more personally in Book 16. And watch Diomedes's closing verdict: let him fight or not. The Greek who turned back to save Nestor in Book 8 is the Greek who says, here, that the war must go on without Achilles if it must. He is the figure who carries the army's weight through the Iliad's middle, and the embassy's failure does not break him.

Echoes across the cycle

Backward echoes

Book 9 is the long-form answer to Book 1. Agamemnon's confiscation of Briseis in Book 1 is here undone with interest — the gifts on the table are the original geras multiplied many times over, plus public marriage-alliance, plus a sworn oath that Briseis was untouched. The structural symmetry is exact: the king who took in Book 1 now offers; the warrior who left in Book 1 now refuses. Phoenix's paradeigma of Meleager is the cycle's first sustained use of an older heroic story to comment on the present action — a method the Iliad has been hinting at (Nestor's reminiscences, Glaucus's Bellerophon-genealogy in Book 6) but here makes formal. Achilles's lyre — taken from the spoils of Eëtion's city — connects backward to Book 6, where Andromache mourned her father Eëtion as killed by Achilles. The lyre Achilles is singing on in Book 9 is the lyre of the man whose death Andromache mourned. Homer does not flag the connection; the reader is left to find it. The cycle's network of grief is denser than any one passage admits.

Forward echoes

Inside the Iliad. The refusal in Book 9 is the action that kills Patroclus. If Achilles had accepted, the army's pressure on his lines would have eased and Patroclus would not have had to plead in Book 16. The Meleager paradigm is fulfilled exactly: Achilles will fight without the gifts, to save what gifts would have rewarded him to save (Patroclus's corpse, the Achaean line). The two fates Achilles speaks here will be re-spoken by Thetis in Book 18 (if you kill Hector you will die) and made operative in Book 22. Achilles's I will think again when Hector reaches the Myrmidon ships is paid off literally in Book 16, when Patroclus reports that the Trojan fires are already at Protesilaus's ship and Achilles releases him to the field. The trigger-condition Achilles names here is the trigger-condition that destroys his world.

Into the Posthomerica. Quintus reads the Book-9 refusal as the originating decision of the whole Achilles-arc, and his Achilles in Books 1–3 is constantly weighed against the Book-9 Achilles — the man who once refused gifts is now the man who must die before the gifts can mean anything. The lyre-and-singing image is restaged in Posthomerica 4 (Achilles's funeral games), where the Greek captains sing his deeds — the singer become subject. Phoenix appears in Posthomerica 7 as one of the captains who fetch Neoptolemus from Scyros, and Quintus stages his meeting with the son as the structural counterpart of his Book-9 meeting with the father — the old tutor offering one Achilles a second life through another.

Into the Aeneid. Virgil reads the embassy as a model for several scenes — the legation to Latinus in Aeneid 7 (which fails for the opposite reason: too small a gift); the legation Aeneas sends to Tarchon in Aeneid 8; most directly Drances's speech in the Latin council of Aeneid 11, where the eloquent counsellor pleads with the proud warrior (Turnus) to accept reasonable terms — a structural quote from Phoenix to Achilles. The Meleager paradeigma is the form Virgil uses for every embedded heroic narrative in the Aeneid; the technique is Homer's invention here.

Into the Odyssey. The embassy's failure prefigures the long Odyssean pattern of failed persuasions — the suitors who will not be persuaded by Telemachus (Books 1–2), by Penelope (Books 18, 21), by the disguised Odysseus (Book 18); only the bow ends the deadlock. Achilles's choice in Book 9 — long life over kleos — is the choice Odysseus inverts in Odyssey 5: Calypso offers immortality (no death, no homecoming), and Odysseus chooses Penelope and death. The two heroes are the cycle's matched pair on this single question, and Book 9 is the speech that authorises the comparison. The lyre-and-song image — Achilles singing of the glories of heroes — is the structural origin of Odyssey 8 (Demodocus singing of Troy in Achilles's voice, with the man who fought the war now silently weeping in the audience). Homer is putting in Book 9 the picture that Odyssey 8 will pay off forty books later: the hero who is the song's subject becoming the song's listener.

Cast in this chapter

On stage

• Achilles — alone in his tent playing the lyre and singing of heroes; refuses Agamemnon's gifts; names the two fates aloud for the first time
• Patroclus — silent companion at Achilles's side; mixes the strong wine; the figure on whose absence the rest of the wrath turns
• Odysseus — speaks first in the embassy; recites Agamemnon's gifts but silently edits out the king's demand for subordination
• Ajax Greater — speaks last; the bluntness that wins the only movement of Achilles's heart
• Phoenix — old guardian who raised Achilles; tells his own life-story and the paradigm of Meleager
• Agamemnon — weeps in council; offers everything; including Briseis returned untouched; including any of his three daughters
• Nestor — privately advises Agamemnon to send the embassy; chooses the three ambassadors
• Diomedes — scalds Agamemnon for proposing flight; closes the book with the verdict let him fight or not

Mentioned / off-stage

• Briseis — the prize-woman whose return is the embassy's chief offer, whom I loved as I would have loved a wife
• Hector — the threat at the wall; Achilles names him as the trigger condition for reconsideration
• Thetis — Achilles attributes the two-fates prophecy to her in this book
• Zeus — Diomedes invokes him as the giver of the sceptre but not the courage
• Helen — the war's cause, the unmoved cause of every embassy
• Poseidon — the ambassadors pray to him as they walk the beach
• Peleus — Achilles's father whose parting words Odysseus invokes (cast file linked through Achilles's dossier)

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This post is part of Reading Troy, a slow daily readalong through the four canonical Trojan-cycle epics — Homer's Iliad, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Virgil's Aeneid, and Homer's Odyssey — read in chronological narrative order.