“If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,
my pride, my glory dies . . .
true, but the life that’s left me will be long ...” (9.502-4)
This speech of Achilles is sometimes seen as a repudiation of the heroic ideal, a realization that the life and death dedicated to glory is a game not worth the candle.
“Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding,
tripods all for the trading, and tawny-headed stallions.
But a man’s life breath cannot come back again—
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man’s clenched teeth. ” (9.493-97)
These are indeed strange words for Achilles, but in the context of the speech as a whole they are not inconsistent with his devotion to honor. It is the loss of that honor, of recognition as the supreme arbiter of the war, which has driven him to these formulations and reflections. He would still be ready to choose the other destiny, a short life with glory, if that glory had not been taken away from him by Agamemnon, and were not even now, in the absence of an apology, withheld.
In the face of this passionate rejection there is nothing Odysseus can say. It is Phoenix, Achilles’ tutor and guardian from the days of his boyhood, who now takes up the burden. In the name of that relationship he asks Achilles to relent. Even the gods, he says, can be moved, by prayer and supplication. He goes on to describe the spirits of Prayer, “daughters of mighty Zeus.” Litai is the Greek word, and “prayer” is not an exact translation, for the English word has lost some of its original sense of “supplication”—the root sense of the Greek. These “Prayers for forgiveness” are humble and embarrassed—“they limp and halt, / ... can’t look you in the eyes” (9.609-12). Their attitude represents the embarrassment of the man who must apologize for his former insolence: it is hard for him to humble himself; it affects even his outward semblance. But he makes the effort, and the Prayers, the entreaties, come to repair the damage done by Atê, the madness of self-delusion and the ruin it produces—they must not be refused.
But this appeal, too, will fall on deaf ears. And with some justice. Apollo relented in Book I, but only after full restitution was made and a handsome apology—“Prayers for forgiveness.” And where are the prayers, the embarrassed pleas of Agamemnon? The madness of Agamemnon is all too plain, but Achilles has seen no prayers from him—only from Odysseus, and then from Phoenix. Who now tries again, with an example of another hero, Meleager, who relented, but too late: a prophetic paradigm in the framework of the poem. He, too, withdrew from the fighting in anger, endangered his city, refused entreaties of his fellow citizens and even of his father, refused the gifts they offered him, and finally, when the enemy had set fire to the city, yielded to the entreaties of his wife and returned to the battle. But the gifts he had spurned were not offered again. You in your turn, Phoenix is saying, will someday relent, if Hector drives the Achaeans back on their ships, but if so, you will fight without the gifts that are the visible symbols of honor, the concrete expression of the army’s appreciation of valor. Phoenix is talking Achilles’ language now, and it has its effect: Achilles admits that he finds Phoenix’ appeal disturbing—“Stop confusing / my fixed resolve with this, this weeping and wailing” (9.745-46). And he speaks now not of leaving the next day but of remaining by the ships and ends by announcing that the decision, to stay or to leave, will be taken on the morrow.
Ajax, the last to speak, does not mention Agamemnon but dwells on the army’s respect and affection for Achilles. It is the plea of a great, if simple, man and again Achilles is moved. Though he still feels nothing but hate for Agamemnon, he now decides that he will stay at Troy. But he will not fight until
“ . . . the son of wise King Priam, dazzling Hector
batters all the way to the Myrmidon ships and shelters,
slaughtering Argives, gutting the hulls with fire. ” (9.796-98)
Since his ships, as we have been told, are drawn up on the far flank of the beachhead, this is small comfort for Agamemnon; the embassy is a failure.
The battle resumes, and Zeus fulfills his promise to Thetis: Hector and the Trojans drive the Achaeans back on their ships. The main Achaean fighters—Agamemnon, Diomedes and Odysseus—are wounded and retire from the melee. Achilles, watching all this from his tent, sends Patroclus off to inquire about another wounded man who has been brought back to the ships, Machaon, the physician of the Greek army. And he revels in the setbacks of the Achaeans. “Now,” he says, “I think they will grovel at my knees, / our Achaean comrades begging for their lives” (11.719-20). This passage is of course one of the main-stays of those who wish to attribute Book 9 to a later poet: it seems to them to show ignorance of the embassy to Achilles. But this is because they take it that Agamemnon’s offer of gifts was a fully adequate satisfaction; Grote (the most eloquent champion of this view) even speaks of “the outpouring of profound humiliation” by the Greeks and from Agamemnon especially. But as we have seen, Odysseus’ speech to Achilles contained not the slightest hint of apology on Agamemnon’s part, and certainly nothing like what Achilles demands—that Agamemnon pay “full measure for all his heartbreaking outrage.” There was no supplication made on behalf of Agamemnon; Phoenix’ mention of the Litai that come humbly and embarrassed to beg favor only underscored the point. Now, says Achilles, now they are beginning to feel the pinch, they will fall at my knees, in the suppliant position of abject prostration, a confession of utter weakness and dependence.
Patroclus comes back from the tents of the Achaeans with news of Machaon’s wound and with a purpose: Nestor has primed him to ask Achilles, if he will not fight himself, to send Patroclus out in his armor. What Achilles now hears from Patroclus is the kind of balm for his wounded pride that he had hardly dared to hope for. Not only is Hector at the ships but:
“There’s powerful Diomedes brought down by an archer,
Odysseus wounded, and Agamemnon too, the famous spearman,
and Eurypylus took an arrow-shot in the thigh . . . ” (16.28-30)
This should be enough to satisfy even Achilles: no more dramatic proof of his superiority in battle could be imagined. And he begins to relent. Though he is still resentful of Agamemnon’s treatment of him, “Let bygones be bygones now. Done is done. / How on earth can a man rage on forever?” (16.69-70). He is willing to save the Achaeans, now that they are suitably punished for the wrong they did him. Why, then, does he not go into battle himself? He tells us:
“Still, by god, I said I would not relax my anger,
not till the cries and carnage reached my own ships.
So you, you strap my splendid armor on your back,
you lead our battle-hungry Myrmidons into action!—” (16.71-74)
But Patroclus is not to go too far. He is to drive the Trojans back from the ships, no more: above all, he is not to assault Troy. He is to win glory for Achilles by beating off the Trojan attack, and then “they’ll send her back, my lithe and lovely girl, / and top it off with troves of glittering gifts” (16.99-100). Unlike the Meleager in Phoenix’ cautionary tale, he will receive the gifts once offered and refused, even though he does not join the fighting himself.