All through this speech confused emotions are at war within him. What does he really want? He talks of the restitution of Briseis and gifts, the compensation offered and refused before. He talks of “the beloved day of our return” (16.95). Perhaps he does not know himself at this moment. But at the end of the speech there comes out of him the true expression of the godlike self-absorption in which he is still imprisoned.
“Oh would to god—Father Zeus, Athena and lord Apollo—
not one of all these Trojans could flee his death, not one,
no Argive either, but we could stride from the slaughter
so we could bring Troy’s hallowed crown of towers
toppling down around us—you and I alone!” (16.115-19)
Clearly what he really wishes for is a world containing nothing but himself and his own glory, for Patroclus, whom he now sends out in his own armor, he regards as a part of himself. This solipsistic dream of glory—“everybody dead but us two,” as a scandalized ancient commentator summarized it—so offended the great Alexandrian scholar Zenodotus that he condemned the lines as the work of an interpolator who wished to inject into the Iliad the later Greek idea (for which the text gives no warrant) that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers.
All too soon the news comes from the battlefield: Patroclus is dead and the armies are fighting over his corpse. Achilles will return to the battle now, to avenge his friend; he sees the death of Patroclus as the fatal consequence of his quarrel with Agamemnon and wishes that “strife could die from the lives of gods and men” (18.126). He will make peace with Agamemnon. “Enough. / Let bygones be bygones. Done is done” (18.131-32). But this is not regret or self-criticism: he is still angry. “Despite my anguish I will beat it down, / the fury mounting inside me, down by force” (18.133-34). But he is angrier still with Hector. “Now I’ll go and meet that murderer head-on, / that Hector who destroyed the dearest life I know” (18.135-36). His mother has just told him that his death is fated to come soon after Hector’s, and though deeply disturbed by this news, he accepts his fate. Not to avenge Patroclus by killing Hector would be a renunciation of all that he stands for and has lived by, the attainment of glory, of the universal recognition that there is “no man my equal among the bronze-armed Achaeans” (18.124).
He cannot go into battle at once, for he has no armor: his father’s panoply has been stripped from the corpse of Patroclus. Hector wears it now. Thetis goes off to have the god Hephaestus make new armor for her son, and when she brings it he summons an assembly of the Achaeans, as he had done at the very beginning of the poem. The wounded kings, Odysseus, Diomedes, Agamemnon, their wounds testimony to Achilles’ supremacy in combat, come to hear him. His address is short. He regrets the quarrel with Agamemnon and its results. He is still angry—that emerges clearly from his words—but he will curb his anger: he has a greater cause for anger now. He calls for an immediate general attack on the Trojan ranks, which are still marshaled outside the city walls, on the level ground.
Agamemnon’s reply to Achilles’ short, impatient speech is long and elaborate. It is, in fact, an excuse. Achilles has come as close as he ever could to saying that he was wrong, but Agamemnon, even now, tries to justify himself as he addresses not only Achilles but also the army as a whole, which, as he is fully aware, blames him for the Achaean losses. His opening lines are an extraordinary appeal to the assembly for an orderly reception of his speech: “when a man stands up to speak, it’s well to listen. / Not to interrupt him, the only courteous thing” (19.91- 92). He disclaims responsibility for his action.
“. . . I am not to blame!
Zeus and Fate and the Fury stalking through the night,
they are the ones who drove that savage madness in my heart . . .”
(19.100-2)
He is the victim, he claims, of Atê, the madness of self-delusion and the ruin it produces. “I was blinded,” he says, “and Zeus stole my wits .. ” (19.163). He is talking now to a full assembly of the Achaeans, which includes
Even those who’d kept to the beached ships till now,
the helmsmen who handled the heavy steering-oars
and stewards left on board to deal out rations— (19.48-50)
At the council of the kings, when the embassy to Achilles was decided on, he had spoken more frankly: “Mad, blind I was! / Not even I would deny it” (9.138-39). He does not make so honest an admission of responsibility here. And now he promises to deliver the gifts that were offered and refused, and to restore Briseis and swear a great oath that he has not touched her.
To all this, Achilles is utterly indifferent. He shows no interest in Agamemnon’s excuses or in the gifts: clearly he feels that this is all a waste of time. He has only one thing on his mind: Hector. And he urges immediate resumption of the fighting. He is talking of sending back into combat men who are many of them wounded, all of them tired, hungry, thirsty. Odysseus reminds him of the facts of life. “No fighter can battle all day long, cut-and-thrust / till the sun goes down, if he is starved for food” (19.193-94). Odysseus suggests not only time for the army to rest and feed, but also a public ceremony of reconciliation: the acceptance of Agamemnon’s gifts, the swearing of the oath about Briseis. Agamemnon approves the advice and gives orders to prepare a feast. But Achilles’ reply is brusque and uncompromising. He is not interested in ceremonies of reconciliation which will serve to restore Agamemnon’s prestige; he is not interested in Agamemnon’s excuses, still less in food; he thinks of one thing and one thing only: Hector. He is for battle now, and food at sunset, after the day’s work. The corpse of Patroclus makes it impossible for him to eat or drink before Hector’s death avenges Patroclus and reestablishes Achilles’ identity as the unchallengeable, unconquerable violence of war personified:
“You talk of food?
I have no taste for food—what I really crave
is slaughter and blood and the choking groans of menl” (19.253-55)
Achilles’ outburst is inhuman—godlike, in fact. But the others are men, and Odysseus reminds him what it is to be human.
“. . . We must steel our hearts. Bury our dead,
with tears for the day they die, not one day more.
And all those left alive, after the hateful carnage,
remember food and drink—” (19.271-74)
Human beings must put limits to their sorrow, their passions; they must recognize the animal need for food and drink. But not Achilles. He will not eat while Hector still lives. And as if to point up the godlike nature of his passionate intensity, Homer has Athena sustain him, without his knowledge, on nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods.
When he does go into battle, the Trojans turn and run for the gates; only Hector remains outside. And the two champions come face-to-face at last. Hector offers a pact to Achilles, the same pact he has made before the formal duel with Ajax in Book 7—the winner to take his opponent’s armor but give his body to his fellow soldiers for burial. The offer is harshly refused. This is no formal duel, and Achilles is no Ajax; he is hardly even human: he is godlike, both greater and lesser than a man. The contrast between the raw, self-absorbed fury of Achilles and the civilized responsibility and restraint of Hector is maintained to the end. It is of his people, the Trojans, that Hector is thinking as he throws his spear at Achilles: “How much lighter the war would be for Trojans then / if you, their greatest scourge, were dead and gone!” (22.339-40). But it is Hector who dies, and as Achilles exults over his fallen enemy, his words bring home again the fact that he is fighting for himself alone; this is the satisfaction of a personal hatred. The reconciliation with Agamemnon and the Greeks was a mere formality to him, and he is still cut off from humanity, a prisoner of his self-esteem, his obsession with honor—the imposition of his identity on all men and all things.