ABSTRACT
The Iliad, Homer’s poem on the anger of Achilles and its dire consequences, starts by invoking “the plan of Zeus” in order to explain the carnage and suffering its singer is about to narrate. But at this point, it is not Zeus who is holding center stage among the gods, it is Apollo, and his role is awe-inspiring and frightening, with no trace of the golden radiance that the classicism of our own time usually ascribes to him. The story, told to explain how it all came about, is familiar, but still worth retelling. At some point in the long siege of Troy, a certain Chryses, priest of Apollo at Chryse somewhere in the Troad, entered the Greek encampment, “carrying the sacred ribbons of Apollo FarShooter on his golden staff” (Il. 1.14f.). He wanted the return of his daughter, Chryseis, whom the Greeks had abducted during one of their raids along the coast, and he brought with him “immense ransom” (Il. 1.13). Agamemnon, the middle-aged commander-inchief who had the girl in his tent and bed, rudely refused – a rash and unwise act by all accounts, as his army was well aware; Homer makes it very clear that the priest’s sacred status, not just the feelings of an elderly father, were violated. Brutally rebuked and frightened, the old man left, going “along the whispering surf line,” a pathetic image for all the fathers whose daughters have fallen easy prey to warriors, from Troy to Iraq and beyond. He did not go home along the beach, however, since Chryse is about twenty-five miles to the south, and he must have come by ship with his ransom: he needed the solitude of the lonely shore, and not only to grieve. Out of sight, he prayed to his god, Apollo Smintheus: “Let the Danaans [that is: the Greeks] pay for my tears with your arrows.” And Apollo reacted fast: “Down he went from Olympus’ peaks, fury in his heart, on his shoulder a bow and arrow case, and the arrows rattled on the shoulders of the angry god while he moved. And he arrived like the night.” At a distance from the Greek army, he sat down and began shooting his arrows into their encampment; the arrows brought illness and death, to dogs and mules first, then to the warriors. “And the corpses burnt in fire without ceasing.” After nine days of unmitigated horror, the Greeks consulted their seer, Calchas, and he revealed the reason for the deadly plague: “Because of his priest whom Agamemnon dishonored.” Agamemnon had to give in; Odysseus, the wily diplomat from the island of Ithaca, was dispatched to bring the girl back to her father, together with a lavish sacrifice for the god, a hecatomb, literally one hundred animals. The restitution was very formal: Odysseus handed her over to her father, the priest, at the altar of his god, Chryses prayed a second time to cancel his first prayer, the Greeks sacrificed their hundred sheep and filled the remainder of the day with yet another cult activity: “The entire day, the young men worshipped the god with song and dance, singing the paean, dancing for the Far-Shooter: he listened and enjoyed it.” They ended only at sunset, and they sailed home at night. And while they were away, Agamemnon
had the army perform their own rites, purifying the encampment and offering “to Apollo a perfect hecatomb of oxen and sheep on the shore” (Il. 1.316).
