The Embassy to Achilles
The list of gifts Agamemnon offers is so great that everybody thinks Achilles will
accept.
• Remember: Prizes = status = glory for the Homeric warrior.
• But Achilles refuses: he is so disgusted with Agamemnon that he is questioning
the values of his culture.
• He questions whether risking his life for glory is really worth it.
The Two Fates of Achilles
• Achilles reveals in the embassy that his immortal mother Thetis
has told him that he has one of two fates.
• EITHER he will win much glory at Troy and die an early
death,
• OR he can not fight at Troy and go home for a long life in
obscurity.
The Second Interlude: Achilles’ Divided Mind
• Torn by indecision: fight or go?
• His best friend Patroclus, upset by watching the Greeks lose, asks
Achilles to borrow his armor so that he can fight in his stead.
• The Trojans will think Achilles is back and they will retreat,
sparing the Greeks.
The Death of Patroclus
• Patroclus kills Sarpedon, Zeus’ son, and routs the Trojans.
• He fails to heed Achilles’ warning.
• He tries to take Troy.
• Then he meets Hector, greatest of the Trojans, and dies in battle.
• Achilles overcome with grief, realizes that he waffled and that he sent
his friend to do something he should have done.
• His indecision has made his decision for him: he must avenge
Patroclus, which he knows will mean an early and glorious death at
Troy.
The Wrath of Achilles
• But Achilles has no armor, so Thetis gets a new set for him from
Hephaestus (
The Death of Hector
• Remember that Hector is wearing Achilles’ armor!
• Achilles stabs him with his spear, and Hector asks for burial and warns that
Achilles will die soon.
The Body of Hector
Achilles buries Patroclus, but Achilles refuses burial for Hector.
• He’s still attempting to get some sort of compensation for loss from torturing
Hector’s body.
• The gods are offended, and Hermes leads Priam to Achilles to ask for the return
of the body of his son [Book 24].
• Priam surprises Achilles in his tent, appeals to Achilles to think of what his own
father will feel when Achilles dies.
• Priam: “I have done what no other man has done: kissed the hands of the
man who killed my child.”
The Wisdom of Achilles
Achilles explains to Priam that Zeus has two big urns
outside his door.
• One of blessings, one of evils
• Sometimes he gives you things from both urns, sometimes just
evils.
• All lives include evil and suffering, death comes to all
• Mankind must live on despite the suffering.
