Delahoyde Orpheus HOMER'S ILIAD: BOOK II

Questions for Book II:

• Are divine dreams true? That is, if your dream is from a god, can you believe it?
• Agamemnon receives word directly from Zeus that now is the time to attack Troy. He summons his chief officers and reports that he received word directly from Zeus that now it the time to attack Troy. He then marches out to speak to the troops and tells them what?
• What is Thersites' problem? Why, although he says some of the same things Achilles did a book ago, is he treated as he is, especially by Odysseus?

"at last one plan seemed best:
he would send a murderous dream to Agamemnon" (2.6-7).

It's an odd dream theory, but apparently your divine revelations can be phony. Zeus, who has agreed to grant Achilles' mother's request that the Greeks start getting their butts handed to them since Achilles is refusing to fight with them now, has insomnia until it occurs to him to give Agamemnon a false "murderous dream" (2.7) wherein the insistence, "attack at once, full force-- / now you can take the broad streets of Troy!" (2.33-34).

As Agamemnon prepares to make his public statement -- with a "challenge" (2.89) -- the Greek army is astir. "Rumor" also "whipped them on" (2.110), signifying that Rumor is something beyond rational control and therefore a supernatural force. We sense that Agamemnon may be carrying out a standard battle test in giving a speech to the troops instead that the revelation indicated that they have been fighting long enough: Troy obviously will never fall and they should all go home. He mentions the Greek concept of "Atê," the blind goddess of ruin whose name means "wrongness" or "wickedness" (Nicholson 182): "Cronus' son has trapped me in madness, blinding ruin" (2.130). Even though they outnumber the Trojans more than 10 to 1, this war is hopeless, he declares. "Cut and run!" (2.164). Apparently all the soldiers are supposed to insist, en masse, "no! no!" -- but Agamemnon's reverse psychology tactics backfire and the Greeks start rushing towards the ships.

Athena visits Odysseus -- again signifying better judgment as a divine force -- and convinces him, "a mastermind like Zeus" (2.197), to reverse the retreat. Odysseus is successful, except for Thersites, a famous malcontent; he's mouthy and deformed and sneers against Agamemnon.

But one man, Thersites, still railed on, nonstop.
His head was full of obscenities, teeming with rant,
all for no good reason, insubordinate, baiting the kings --
anything to provoke some laughter from the troops. (2.246-249) [Shakespeare will pick up on this.]
As with Hephaestos at the end of Book I, physical deformity is demeaned here, even though Odysseus seems to agree with some of Thersites' points about Agamemnon's greed. Anyway, Odysseus beats up Thersites and everyone laughs about it.

We hear of an omen from before the war -- a snake devouring a brood of eight baby sparrows and one mother sparrow in a tree. The snake was struck into stone by Zeus -- spuriously interpreted by Calchas to mean that the Greeks would have to fight for nine years before taking Troy in the tenth (2.386-389). Nestor tries to give some encouraging advice. Agamemnon seems to have a brief moment of clarity.

"Imagine -- I and Achilles, wrangling over a girl,
battling man-to-man. And I, I was the first
to let my anger flare. Ah if the two of us
could ever think as one" (2.447-450). But this seeming realization comes to nothing at this time. Agamemnon sacrifices an ox to Zeus.

A pile-up of epic similes conveys chaos effectively beyond what any single comparison could do (2.539ff). The poet calls on the Muse to help name all the important Greek warriors, and indeed we get the epic list for many pages.

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Iliad: Book III
Iliad Index
Orpheus: Greek Mythology