Oh My Gods, page 27
The marriage of the sea goddess Thetis and her mortal husband Peleus had been a happy one until their son Achilles was born. Some say the cause of their marital problems was the day Peleus discovered his wife was secretly dipping their son in ambrosia and roasting him in a fire at night to make him immortal, as Demeter had done for a human child at Eleusis. When Peleus saw this, he cried out in terror and grabbed the boy from the flames. Thetis was so indignant that she left her husband and returned to the sea, though she always had a mother’s love for Achilles. Others say that the goddess tried to make her son immortal by dipping him into the waters of the river Styx, but she held Achilles by his heel during the process so that this one part of his body did not get wet and was therefore vulnerable to weapons.
Peleus took his young son to Mount Pelion to be raised by the wise centaur Chiron, just as Jason had been. His half-human, half-horse teacher instructed Achilles in music and poetry, athletics and war, feeding him the entrails of wild animals to make him brave. While he was still a youth, he returned to his father in Phthia and completed his education under an aged tutor named Phoenix. While there, he met a young man named Patroclus, who became his best friend and, some say, his lover.
When preparations for the Trojan War began, the Greek leaders received an oracle that they needed the son of Peleus on their side to take the city. But Achilles’ divine mother Thetis knew that if her son sailed to Troy, he would not return. The Fates had decreed that Achilles would either live a long, quiet life, dying in bed and soon forgotten, or he would become the greatest hero of the age and be remembered forever, though his life would be short. Thetis knew which path her son would pick if he could choose, so she sent him to the small island of Scyros in the Aegean and dressed him like a girl to keep his identity a secret.
Achilles hated this deception, for he longed to prove himself in battle, but he was an obedient son and followed his mother’s wishes. Odysseus, nonetheless, received word that Achilles was hiding on Scyros and set out to find him. He came as a merchant to the palace there and spread out his wares in the courtyard for the king’s many daughters to examine. Among the jewelry and perfumes he placed a fine sword and spear, hoping it would attract the eye of the missing boy. At a prearranged signal, his herald sounded a trumpet as if the palace were being attacked. The girls all screamed and ran for cover, but one especially tall and well-built young woman grabbed the weapons and ran to the walls to fight the enemy. That was when Odysseus knew he had found Achilles. The youth was relieved to have been discovered and gladly boarded the ship to sail to Aulis with Odysseus. Childhood was over and he was at last going to war.
The men who had sworn the oath to Tyndareus formed the heart of the Greek expedition against Troy, but many flocked to Aulis who had never sought the hand of Helen, all hoping for fortune and glory. Agamemnon brought a hundred ships full of men from Mycenae when he took command of the expedition, while his brother Menelaus came with sixty from Sparta. Young Achilles may have arrived late, but he brought many brave warriors from the kingdom of his father Peleus, including his friend Patroclus. Besides Ajax the son of Telamon, there was the son of Oileus bearing the same name, known to the men as Little Ajax. Old King Nestor came from Pylos leading ninety ships, while the great warrior Diomedes of Argos came with thirty ships. Menestheus brought fifty long black ships from Athens, with Agapenor leading enough men to fill sixty ships from the mountains of Arcadia. Idomeneus, king of Crete, arrived with eighty ships. Philoctetes, who had once kindled the funeral pyre of Hercules, could muster only a few shiploads of men, but he brought the weapons he had received as a gift from the great hero. Agamemnon also recruited Calchas the great prophet from Megara. Besides these, there were countless other kings, princes, and warriors gathered on the beach at Aulis to launch a thousands ships for the sake of a beautiful woman.
The vast armada set sail with great fanfare across the Aegean and in a few days arrived on the coast of Asia Minor near the Hellespont. If they had been better sailors, they might have taken the Trojans by surprise, but instead they landed and began to lay waste to the countryside. It did not take them long to figure out they were not at Troy at all but somewhere on the shore of Mysia to the south. By the time they started back to the ships, the king of Mysia, a son of Hercules and son-in-law of King Priam named Telephus, had already launched an attack on their rear and killed many of the invaders. Achilles did manage to wound Telephus with his spear when the king tripped on a vine, but it was an inglorious beginning for the Greeks.
The ships were tossed by storms on their retreat and were soon separated from one another. At last they made their way back to Aulis, where the disheartened men grumbled that this was no way to wage a war. To make matters worse, the winds had begun to blow against them so that they could not set out to sea again.
One day not long afterward, they were surprised to see King Telephus of Mysia arrive on the beach limping from his recent wound. He made his way to the tent of Agamemnon under a flag of truce and explained that he was there because of an oracle. He was in excruciating pain from the wound Achilles had given him, so he had sought the advice of Apollo, who had told him he could be healed only by that which had harmed him. Achilles protested that he was no physician, but Odysseus suggested they interpret the words of the god in a different way. It wasn’t really Achilles who had injured Telephus, he argued, but his spear. Therefore they took the weapon and scraped the rust from it into the wound. Soon the pain had ceased and the injury began to heal.
Agamemnon was actually glad to see Telephus since the Greeks had just received their own oracle saying that they could not win the war unless the Mysian king came with them to Troy. This put Telephus in a terrible predicament, since he owed a debt of honor to the Greeks for healing him, but also had familial obligations to the Trojans. He compromised by agreeing to guide the armada to Troy, but not to fight on their side. Agamemnon agreed and Telephus readied himself to lead the fleet across the Aegean—if only the wind would stop blowing.
Weeks went by in the Greek camp at Aulis while the enthusiasm of the men for the war rapidly began to wane. Food ran short, disease set in, and the idle soldiers grew more and more restless. It was a nightmare for Agamemnon, who tried to keep up the spirits of the men but knew they would have to sail soon or disband the army. He prayed to the gods and sacrificed extravagantly that they might stop the wind, but still it blew.
At last Agamemnon sent for the seer Calchas. He came, most reluctantly, and said had already consulted every sign he could think of from the flight of birds to the entrails of bulls, but the answer was always the same. Artemis was angry because King Agamemnon had once boasted during a hunt that he could hurl a spear even better than the goddess. When Agamemnon demanded to know what he must do to propitiate the goddess, Calchas hesitated and begged him to send the army home. When the king grabbed him by the throat and threatened to strangle him unless he spoke, the soothsayer declared that the only way to win the favor of Artemis and calm the contrary wind was for Agamemnon to sacrifice his own daughter, the beautiful maiden Iphigenia, to the goddess.
Agamemnon loved his daughter, but he loved power more. The other captains said they could not hold their men at Aulis much longer and demanded he sacrifice the girl for the sake of the war effort. The king reluctantly agreed. He sent a message to his wife, Clytemnestra, at Mycenae that he had decided to give Iphigenia to handsome young Achilles as his bride. The queen was thrilled with the match and quickly brought their daughter to Aulis. But when they arrived, Agamemnon seized Iphigenia and bound her for the altar. The priests first placed a gag tightly around her mouth, for the curse of a doomed virgin was powerful.
Agamemnon recited the ritual prayers and raised his hands to the goddess of the hunt that she might let them sail to Troy. The priests then lifted the maiden in her wedding dress, a bride of death, onto the altar. The girl could not believe what was happening. Would her own father, who had held her as a child in his arms, who had loved to hear her sing in his halls, really kill her? But there she was, trussed like an animal, throat bared to his sharp blade. She pleaded with him with her eyes, but he refused to meet her gaze. Tears rolling down his cheeks, Agamemnon raised the knife to the sky, then slit her throat in one quick movement.
Some say that at the last moment Artemis rescued the girl, substituting a doe for the sacrifice. These stories say the goddess took Iphigenia to live among the wild Taurian natives of the Crimea, where she became a priestess presiding over the sacrifice of strangers unlucky enough to land on those shores. But most agree that the maiden met her end there on a bloody altar at Aulis, a sacrifice to the ambition of men.
The wind died away, then the Greeks set off from Aulis to sail once again to Troy. Scrupulous in their desire to stay on the good side of the gods, they stopped at the island of Lemnos halfway across the Aegean to offer sacrifices. Philoctetes, a master archer, helped with the preparation of the sheep, goats, and oxen for the altar, but while he was busying himself around the rough-hewn stone, a snake crawled out and bit him on the foot. Soon his foot swelled to twice its normal size and began to ooze a horrid pus that smelled even worse than it looked. The men all liked Philoctetes, but they could not stand the stench and so abandoned him on the island to fend for himself. Only the kindness of a local shepherd saved him from starving to death as he passed his days in agonizing pain from a wound that would not heal.
The fleet made its way toward the Hellespont, past the small island of Tenedos just off the Asian coast, then to the mainland near the mouth of the Scamander River that flowed near Troy. The men could all see the great city in the distance, prominent on its hilltop citadel overlooking the plain above the sea. Few had ever gazed at walls so tall and strong, and none had ever seen an army like the one that had gathered to meet them. The Trojans had known the Greeks were coming ever since word of their misadventure in Mysia had reached the city. They had gathered their allies from all over Asia Minor to stand with them on the plain before their city. More than one brave man in the Greek army stared at the vast Trojan forces and wondered why he had ever left home.
The Greeks had earlier received an oracle that the first man to land on Trojan soil would die. Knowing this, everyone hung back, afraid to be the first to leap onto the beach, until at last Protesilaus, king of Phylace in southern Thessaly, set aside his fear and jumped onto the sand. Hector met him with a spear through his heart, shedding the first blood of the war. Achilles was there in an instant to drive Hector away, then he attacked Cycnus, a Trojan ally and ruler of a nearby town. His father, Poseidon, had made him invulnerable to weapons, so Achilles strangled him with the man’s own helmet strap. The rest of the Greeks soon reached the shore and began to drive back the defenders to establish a beachhead. It was slow, bloody work, but by nightfall the Trojans had withdrawn to their city, leaving the Greeks to make a fortified camp on the shore. Priam and his subjects, watching from the walls, were not worried to see the foreigners holding their coast, for they knew the walls of Troy could not be breeched by any man. If the Greeks chose to stay, it was going to be a long war.
The conflict quickly evolved into a stalemate, with the Greeks unable to take the city and the Trojans unable to drive the Greeks from their shores. Battles were fought on the plain in front of the town, but neither side could gain a decisive advantage. When the Greeks realized they could not take Troy by force, they began to attack the lands of the city’s allies in an attempt to disrupt Troy’s supply chain. These raids also served to keep up the morale of the invaders by offering the men booty and captives as the war dragged on. The Greeks, led by Achilles, sacked over twenty cities that supported Troy, killing their men, taking their treasure, and marching their women and children back to camp as slaves.
For nine years the conflict continued with no end in sight. The Trojans still flourished behind their walls, transporting food and luxuries into the city with ease in spite of Greek efforts to stop them. Agamemnon and his army maintained a marginally profitable war due to their raids, but after so long everyone was growing weary of the increasingly pointless conflict.
It was the captive women who kept up the spirits of the Greeks on those dark nights, though in their hearts they had no wish to do so. The women of Asia were exotic compared with the wives of the Greeks back home and more willing to please since their very lives depended on keeping the Greek warriors happy. Agamemnon was particularly enchanted by a beautiful young slave named Chryseis, taken from a small town south of Troy. She was the daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo. Achilles also had his favorite, a young woman named Briseis from Lyrnessus near Mount Ida. He had killed her husband, parents, and brothers when he sacked their town, then bound her and put her on board his ship. When he returned to the Greek camp near Troy, she served him fearfully but faithfully in his tent.
It was the custom of the time to ransom captives for gold, if there were any relatives left alive to make such a payment. This practice was looked on favorably both by the gods and by those holding the slaves since the women were a replaceable source of profit. Accordingly, one day soon after his daughter was taken, the priest Chryses made his way to the camp of the Greeks bearing gifts and holding before him the sacred staff of Apollo. He asked Agamemnon to accept his ransom and release his daughter, as it would be pleasing to the god. The Greeks all agreed this was a reasonable request and urged their leader to accept, but Agamemnon rose from his throne and knocked the gifts from the hands of the suppliant priest, crying, “Get out of my sight, old man, and never let me see you in this camp again! I will never give up the girl! I’m taking her back to Mycenae with me when this war is over to work at the loom and share my bed.”
With that, the king drove the terrified priest out of his tent. Chryses lifted his hands to the god he served and prayed, “Apollo, god of the silver bow, if ever I have offered pleasing sacrifices to you, if ever I have burned the bones of bulls and goats wrapped in rich fat at your altars, hear my prayer! Strike down these Greeks who mock your priest. Rain your arrows down upon them!”
The god heard the prayer of his faithful priest and flew down from Olympus bow in hand. He knelt on a hill above the Greek camp and shot his arrows of plague among the tents. The men began to fall, then die, and soon the funeral fires burned day and night.
At last Achilles called an assembly of the Greek leaders and said they should sail for home unless they could find out why the gods were punishing them. The seer Calchas arose and said he would reveal the truth, but first Achilles had to promise he would protect him from the wrath of the one at fault. The young warrior agreed, then Calchas said Agamemnon was to blame for spurning the ransom offered by Apollo’s priest Chryses. If the king of Mycenae would return the girl, the archer god would stop the plague.
Agamemnon raged against Calchas and complained that it wasn’t fair that he, the leader of the Greek expedition, should have to give up his prize while others kept theirs: “I like this young woman of mine, even better than my own wife Clytemnestra. But I’m a reasonable man. I’ll give up the girl if I receive a slave of equal beauty and quality from one of you.”
Achilles shot back, “And just who do you expect to give up his woman to keep you happy, you greedy pig? It’s not like we have a tent full of women for you to choose from. For once think of the troops more than yourself. Surrender the girl and you can have all the women you want when we sack Troy.”
But Agamemnon would not change his mind: “You’re telling me how to lead an army, you young pup? I was killing men on the battlefield while you were still wetting your pants. Just to show you who’s in charge, I’m going to take your prize, Achilles. Have the girl Briseis made ready and I’ll send my men for her.”
Achilles was going to draw his sword and kill Agamemnon then and there, but the goddess Athena, visible only to him, appeared and ordered him to stop. Achilles reluctantly agreed, but he told Agamemnon and the rest of the men present that he was withdrawing from the war along with all his men. The other leaders begged him to reconsider, but he would hear none of it. His honor had been insulted and his anger would not be mollified. They would all see the face of Hades before he or his soldiers fought the Trojans again.
Obedient to the goddess, Achilles sent Briseis to Agamemnon, then sulked in his tent until his divine mother, Thetis, came and asked what she could do. He urged her to go to Zeus and ask the ruler of the gods to help the Trojans, just to teach the Greeks how much they needed him. He wanted to see thousands of Greeks lying dead on the plains of Troy so that Agamemnon would be humbled and beg him to fight for them again. Thetis agreed and flew to Olympus, where she grasped the knees of Zeus in supplication and asked him to abandon his neutrality, at least for a little while, and aid the Trojans. Zeus agreed, though he knew it would get him into trouble with Hera, who staunchly supported the Greeks.
To urge the king into ill-timed action, Zeus sent a misleading dream down to Agamemnon telling him that if he attacked the Trojans at once, a great victory would be his. The Greek leader jumped from his bed and called an assembly, telling the soldiers he had received a vision from the gods that they would crush the Trojans and take their city that very day. Restless after years of waiting, the Greek warriors all cheered the king and put on their armor. The great battle was upon them at last.
