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AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY
American Journal of Philology 109 (1988) 473-481 ? 1988 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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474 ROBERT J. RABEL
5 Cf. Iliad 2.690-693, and John W. Zarker, "King Eetion and Thebe as Symbols
in the Iliad," CJ 61 (1965) 110.
6 Cf. William R. Nethercut, "The Epic Journey of Achilles," Ramus 5 (1976)
8-9.
7 Cf. James M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of H
(Chicago 1975) 94: "The priest is himself a somewhat problematic figure; h
cultural specialist who stands somewhat outside the status order. Or, to put
another way, he is a low-status person with special powers.... Agamemnon se
reason why he, a powerful man, should give way to someone insignificant and w
For the special powers inherent in the curse of the lowly, cf. Gilbert Murray, Th
of the Greek Epic4 (Oxford 1934) 86-88.
8 Mabel L. Lang, "Reason and Purpose in Homeric Prayers," CW 68 (1975)
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CHRYSES AND THE OPENING OF THE ILIAD 475
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476 ROBERT J. RABEL
sack of Thebe. Lines 372-379 are repeated verbatim from the poet's
own description. Homer's purpose in having his protagonist retell a
story so fresh in our minds is at least threefold. According to J. T.
Sheppard, he wishes to emphasize the importance of Agamemnon's
cruelty to the old suppliant.12 Secondly, Mark W. Edwards notes the
psychological relevance of such repetition. Homer emphasizes
Achilles' sorrow by having him pour out his woes at great length.13
In addition, I believe that the retelling serves equally to illuminate
the depths of Achilles' anger and the motivation underlying his
subsequent request. Explaining to his mother the origins of the
quarrel with Agamemnon, Achilles in the process hits upon the best
means of winning a second such victory. I am suggesting, in other
words, that the Chryses story becomes a pattern and a subject for
imitation not merely because of an oral poet's well known tendency
to attach the same kind of song to different characters,14 in this case
Chryses and Achilles. Rather more subtly, Homer allows the parallels
to emerge at least in part from the perceptions of Achilles himself.
In fact, the hero seems even to work against his artful narrator by
discerning a pattern quite different from what the poet presented
to his audience.
Achilles' narrative differs in two very significant details from
Homer's earlier account. Edwards has pointed out that he describ
Apollo's launching of the arrows and their deadly effect in rathe
flat and objective terms-in contrast to the poetic and emotion
account which Homer earlier provided.15 Secondly, and in keepin
with Edwards' observation, Achilles attributes the angry reaction
(Xc06opvoq, 1.380) not to Apollo but to Chryses himself.l6 Thus the
human victim of Agamemnon's caprice and not the god becomes the
emotionally charged focus of Achilles' narrative-precisely the op
posite of Homer's earlier emphasis. The young hero sees that h
shares the old man's plight and quite naturally, but wrongly, assumes
the motivating force of anger in the formulation of the earlier pla
for restitution. In this way, the analogy between the two mortals i
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CHRYSES AND THE OPENING OF THE ILIAD 477
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478 ROBERT J. RABEL
wishes (7.132f.; 16.97f.); to seal an oath (3.298f.; 19.258f.); and to seek the help of a
god in war or in council. The latter is the most frequent form of prayer in the Iliad
(cf. 2.412f.; 5.115f.; 10.278f.; 16.514f.; 17.561f.). However, heroes are not given to
asking the god's service while they sit in idleness. Achilles repeats his unheroic form
of prayer at 16.233f., with three lines borrowed from Chryses' second prayer to Apollo
(16.236-238 = 1.453-455).
The closest analogues to Achilles' prayer in the Iliad seem to be the prayer of
Chryses to Apollo and the curses of Amyntor (9.453f.) and Althaea (9.565f.) upon
their children. Whether Achilles' and Chryses' prayers may properly be considered
curses is difficult to determine. L. R. Farnell, The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion
(Chicago n.d.) 52, argues that the Greeks early associated curses with their belief in
gods, so that curses are difficult to distinguish from prayers. The curse was originally,
he says, "an ebullition of personal destructive will-power." Wolfgang Hiibner, Dirae
im romischen Epos: Uber das Verhiltnis von Vogeldaimonen und Prodigien (Hildesheim 1970)
60, claims that curses never invoked Zeus directly.
In contrast to my argument, Gregory Nagy (n. 11 above) 80, and Mary Louise
Lord, "Withdrawal and Return: An Epic Story Pattern in the Homeric Hymn to
Demeter and in the Homeric Poems," CJ 62 (1967) 241-248, discern in Achilles'
actions a significant parallel with an immortal. The akhos of Demeter begins with the
abduction of Kore. Her resulting menis causes devastation which is replaced by fertility
when she receives the appropriate timai (H. Dem.) In this paper, however, I have
attempted to separate Achilles' perception of parallels from those drawn by the poet
or enforced by the epic tradition.
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CHRYSES AND THE OPENING OF THE ILIAD 479
21 The word menis in the Iliad denotes the anger of a god. The on
where it is applied to heroes is the mutual anger between Achilles and
cf. Nagy (n. 11 above) 73. James Redfield finds Achilles' ambiguous status
in the first line of the poem: cf. "The Proem of the Iliad: Homer's Art,"
98: "The first line of the Iliad qualifies the hero [Achilles] in terms of his
and his human father, and thus places him between god and man."
22 Cf. Arthur W. H. Adkins, "Values, Goals, and Emotions in the Ilia
(1982) 306.
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480 ROBERT J. RABEL
23 Odysseus (9.260), Achilles (9.426), Phoenix (9.436), and Ajax (9.628-629) all
find anger to be the major stumbling block.
24 I refer the reader to the brilliant analysis of Cedric Whitman, Homer and the
Heroic Tradition (New York 1958) 186f.
25 Cf. Adkins (n. 22 above).
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CHRYSES AND THE OPENING OF THE ILIAD 481
ROBERTJ. RABEL
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
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