Reading Notes - Homer's Iliad Part A

 http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/05/myth-folklore-unit-homers-iliad-retold.html

Notes on The Quarrel.

 Agamemnon was head of Greek kings. Achilles had many warriors. 

Agamemnon didn't go out and fight like other people did - he waited for fighting to happen and then claimed victory and prizes because he was in charge. Money, land, people. One of his captives was the daughter of a priest of Apollo. He wanted his kid back, Agamemnon said no. Apollo cursed everyone it was a bad scene. 

The Greeks knew the kid needed to go back, Agamemnon was a stubborn fool. Achilles argued with him and said forget this, I'm out. You all can keep dying while he sits up in his tent with his head in the sand. Obviously that went over like a lead balloon. Everyone is mad, no one knows how to share or talk or compromise. (Presumably because all the ladies were left at home or held captive or only showing up as visions/goddesses to talk a bit of sense into people.)

Anyway. Everyone is mad, Achilles went back to his camp to be mad, Agamemnon stayed mad in his tent. Then Aga. sent messengers to take back Achilles captured woman. Achilles did not shoot the messengers and let her go, although the text notes she wasn't happy about it. Meanwhile the priest's daughter is being taken back home so Apollo let up on the cursing. 

But Achilles called up his mom, who was Thetis a water goddess/sea nymph. And so the cursing will resume in another fashion once she can convince Zeus to do her a favor. 

Achilles' surrender of Briseis to Agamemnon, from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii, fresco, 1st century AD, now in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Story source: The Iliad retold by Alfred J. Church (1907)