The situation is diffused by Hephaistos. In this scene, Zeus is sitting at the head of the chamber, while the other gods are in audience with him. Hephaistos moves among them, pouring wine.
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Jira links. He vengefully yearns to see the Achaeans destroyed and asks his mother, the sea-nymph Thetis, to enlist the services of Zeus, king of the gods, toward this end. The Trojan and Achaean sides have declared a cease-fire with each other, but now the Trojans breach the treaty and Zeus comes to their aid. With Zeus supporting the Trojans and Achilles refusing to fight, the Achaeans suffer great losses.
Several days of fierce conflict ensue, including duels between Paris and Menelaus and between Hector and Ajax. The Achaeans make no progress; even the heroism of the great Achaean warrior Diomedes proves fruitless. The Trojans push the Achaeans back, forcing them to take refuge behind the ramparts that protect their ships.
Several Achaean commanders become wounded, and the Trojans break through the Achaean ramparts. They advance all the way up to the boundary of the Achaean camp and set fire to one of the ships. Defeat seems imminent, because without the ships, the army will be stranded at Troy and almost certainly destroyed.
Concerned for his comrades but still too proud to help them himself, Achilles agrees to a plan proposed by Nestor that will allow his beloved friend Patroclus to take his place in battle, wearing his armor. Meanwhile, the Achaean commander Odysseus is navigating the ship that Chryseis has boarded. When he lands, he returns the maiden and makes sacrifices to Apollo. Chryses, overjoyed to see his daughter, prays to the god to lift the plague from the Achaean camp.
Apollo acknowledges his prayer, and Odysseus returns to his comrades. But the end of the plague on the Achaeans only marks the beginning of worse suffering. Ever since his quarrel with Agamemnon, Achilles has refused to participate in battle, and, after twelve days, Thetis makes her appeal to Zeus, as promised. Zeus is reluctant to help the Trojans, for his wife, Hera , favors the Greeks, but he finally agrees. Hera becomes livid when she discovers that Zeus is helping the Trojans, but her son Hephaestus persuades her not to plunge the gods into conflict over the mortals.
Like other ancient epic poems, The Iliad presents its subject clearly from the outset. Although the Trojan War as a whole figures prominently in the work, this larger conflict ultimately provides the text with background rather than subject matter.
By the time Achilles and Agamemnon enter their quarrel, the Trojan War has been going on for nearly ten years. Instead, it scrutinizes the origins and the end of this wrath, thus narrowing the scope of the poem from a larger conflict between warring peoples to a smaller one between warring individuals.
But while the poem focuses most centrally on the rage of a mortal, it also concerns itself greatly with the motivations and actions of the gods. Even before Homer describes the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, he explains that Apollo was responsible for the conflict. Surprisingly, Achilles surrenders the girl without any difficulty. Achilles, in despair, prays to his mother, Thetis, the sea-goddess asking her to use her influence with Zeus to ensure that the Trojan armies defeat his fellow Achaian soldiers.
Achilles hopes that this result will cause disgrace for Agamemnon and so repay the wrong that the King did to Achilles. Thetis visits Zeus on Olympos, and the king of the gods agrees to aid the Trojans, although he expresses a fear that his wife, Hera, will be annoyed because she is jealous of Thetis and hates the Trojans and hence cannot bear to see them win the war. Readers discover that Hera does indeed hate the Trojans, but she fears Zeus' wrath even more, and so she quiets her protests.
The first book ends with a banquet of the gods in Zeus' palace. In Book I, the initial quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, mediated by Nestor, is paralleled at the end of the book by the quarrel between Zeus and Hera, mediated by Hephaistos. The quarrel among the gods breaks down into a humorous scene that ironically accentuates the seriousness of the human quarrel.
Homer's technique of repeating an earlier scene with a later one is used throughout the Iliad. In fact, this structural technique is a basis for the entire work. However, Book I essentially sets up the tension for the rest of the poem. He further introduces in the word "rage" one of the human qualities, along with pride and honor, that will make up a major theme of the work as a whole.
Initially, Achilles' anger seems a reasonable response to the arrogance of Agamemnon, but as the poem progresses, it becomes clear that righteous anger can degenerate into petty resentment or escalate into uncontrollable rage. The necessity for reason and self-control over emotions becomes an overriding idea in the Iliad. Similarly, the related concepts of pride and honor are introduced in Book I.
Both Agamemnon and Achilles believe that their honor is compromised in the decisions involving the female captives, Chryseis and Briseis. Pride and honor were important principles to the Greeks, particularly because those traits involved public perception. Agamemnon thinks that Achilles, by calling the council and demanding that Chryseis be returned to Chryses, has challenged his leadership and impugned his honor.
Likewise, Achilles feels that Agamemnon's decision to take Briseis as a replacement for Chryseis is an affront to his honor and a public show of disrespect by the Achaian leader. Individual senses of pride and honor here blind the two warriors to the greater good.
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