The god[s] find fault with flimsy vow or sacrifice.
The priest pities the dishonored Agamemnon.
As the bride price of the daughter was high,
Apollo deals death alone.
He unleashed the plague on the Greeks.
The soothsayer urges the king to heed the god’s desires,
Pay the price for the dancing-eyed girl to her father the priest.
The formal sacrifice will allow Agamemnon to keep his new bride
Since the marriage of Chryseis to the king appeases the god.
Atreus’ son, the warlord Agamemnon,
Desperate and pitiful, unlike twin black thunderheads,
Turned to the soothsayer:
You never give me a good omen.
You prophesy doom, and that nothing good happens!
The ballistic god is destroying a marriage
For the sake of the priest’s daughter at the expense of Clytemnestra
She is the woman I already married, is she not?
Will the god destroy the army like this because of my marriage?
I already have a prize and have no need for another.
However, if the gods say so, let it be so.
Defense
The choice text revolves around Homer’s depiction of the scene in which the prophet Calchas informs King Agamemnon that his refusal to accept the ransom that the priest Chryses offers in exchange for Chryseis, hi daughter, has unleashed Apollo’s rage upon the Greeks. Initially, the depicted scene encompassed the words of the prophet’s information and the King’s angry outburst at the idea of losing his war prize and the shame it would bring his person. Apparently, Chryseis was better no better than the queen Clytemnestra was in “looks, body, mind, [and] ability” (Homer 1.123). In other words, the war prize was fit for royalty and thus, warranted Agamemnon’s anger.
Accordingly, the presented work included the element of worship, where a prophet speaks on behalf of the immortals while explaining why a god interfered with the lives of men for his priest and that he demands a sacrifice for appeasement. Additionally, the concept of marriage is also present as Agamemnon likens Chryseis to his wife in his response to the words of the soothsayer. The tone of anger in the king’s part and that of pride, allows one to portray the power of the gods as beyond the authority of men including royalty. Hence, the element of surrender sets in albeit after a series of questions and a blame game against the prophet who always spells doom and the god who chose sides in the mortal realm.
Homer’s work is a masterpiece in itself and his style of writing is especially tough to imitate. Still, the stripping mentioned above helped. The story had to show evidence of stemming from an original work yet had to have no plagiarism, the best way to meet both demands was to maintain the characters but change their actions and ideologies in the text. Nonetheless, placing Apollo’s anger in the writing was hard before it became apparent that Homer himself had to connect the god to a mortal. The priest was perfect once again.
The imitation does justice to the original work. A slight twist in the role[s] of characters and Homer’s goals for writing the text reveals the different paths that his epic poem would have taken. What would happen if the priest wanted his daughter to be queen? Does Apollo’s quick response to Chryses mean that he could even break sacred laws for the man? How would the story be different is Agamemnon was loyal to his wife? The posed questions are among the many that allowed the writing of the imitation. Subsequently, it is as though the work is an alternative universe to the one Homer writes on in his work.
Notably, attempts to remove the supernatural forces and the king from the work left holes in the resulting text and so, Apollo’s response to his priest’s demands and Agamemnon’s anger are vital to the entire premises of the poem. In that sense, the author’s ability to interconnect his mortal and immortal characters is commendable. The gods are not decorative, and the feelings of the men subject the entire plotline to their whim[s].
Works Cited
Homer. "The Iliad." The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Ed. Sarah Lawall, Lee Patterson, Patricia Meyer Spacks, William G. Thalmann, and Heather James.. 8th. Vol. I. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. 107-205. Print.
