RABEL, ROBERT J., Agamemnon's "Iliad" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:2 (1991:Summer) p.103 Agamemnon's Iliad Robert J. Rabel 1\:.AMEMNON'S FAMOUS SPEECH on the nature of delusion (&'tTl) in the lives of men and gods (Il. 19.78-144) tells with parable and paradigm how Hera publicly frustrated Zeus, deluded by a personified Au, in accomplishing his pur­ poses, and he claims that these events on Olympus provide a meaningful precedent for his quarrel with Achilles. This speech has attracted voluminous commentary, especially since E. R. Dodds discerned within it the profound and sincere meditation of 'Homeric man' on the theme of moral responsibility and human freedom. 1 More recently, in a spirited critique of the character of Agamemnon, Oliver Taplin has dismissed the speech as a case of "obvious special pleading," carried out by a man who, despite his every advantage, behaves badly and is characterized by the poet in a consistently negative light. 2 Yet judgments of Agamemnon's character, whether based upon the construction of the poem, the observations of other characters, or the remarks of the narrator, ought to take into account the perspective of the king, who in his last major speech in the poem is permitted a vigorous personal self-defense. 3 In this paper I argue that Agamemnon's words in the assembly of Book 19 reflect the humiliation that he suffered at Achilles' I E. R. Dodds, "Agamemnon's Apology," in The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951) 1-27. 2 O. TAPLIN, "Agamemnon's Role in the Iliad," in C. Pelling, ed., Charac­ terization and Individuality in Greek Literature (Oxford 1990: hereafter 'Taplin') 65, 76. J M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, tr. C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Austin 1981) 334, argued that the crucial distinction between the novel and the epic lies in the 'polyphony' of the former, i.e., the hero of the novel is allowed a personal voice that may stand over against the claims of the voices of other characters and of the narrator or the author. Bakhtin claimed that in the epic, on the other hand, "all meanings are shared" and "there is one unitary and singular belief system." This paper is based on the premise that Homer accords a character like Agamemnon full status as an 'I' who is able to contest meaning both with the other characters in the story and with the epic narrator. In this way Homer resembles Dostoevsky, whom Bakhtin took as the ideal exemplar of the" dialogic imagination." 103 RABEL, ROBERT J., Agamemnon's "Iliad" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:2 (1991:Summer) p.103 104 AGAMEMNON'S ILIAD hands at the conclusion of the assembly in Book 1, and also that they comprise a sort of panoramic summary of the Iliad from his own idiosyncratic viewpoint. A close analysis of the climactic scene of the assembly in Book 1 will provide the context necessary to appreciate how cleverly the king, despite his obvious limitations as a speaker, manages to employ the resources of rhetoric in Book 19. I recognize that in arguing for a close connection between events so remote from each other I am assuming for the poet great powers of foreshadowing in the maintenance of a grand architectural design that probably transcends the limitations of oral improvisation and implies the careful planning ahead possible only through literary compo­ sition.4 Agamemnon closes his part of the debate in the fateful assembly of Book 1 with what some commentators suppose to be a rhetorical question assessing the character of his rebellious subordinate Achilles. At 1.290f Monro and Allen read: 5 d ()£ ~lV aiX~Trrilv £8£1to~aA.A.(() occur in Homer only in these two lines (1.292, 19.80). According to Leaf, however, the claim that it is unseemly to interrupt is spoken in response to the loud applause of the army that has just greeted Achilles' short speech unsaying his wrath (74f). Yet the Achaean expres­ sion of joy constitutes no interruption. Agamemnon's gesture of sitting compels the audience to seek a more remote context for the proper target of his remark, since no speaker is standing at the moment of utterance. The king in fact is obliquely alluding to a very painful memory, the origin of his quarrel with Achilles, and providing a bit of social commentary on an action that the narrator in his typically non-judgmental fashion had earlier qualified simply through the adverb i>1tO~A."bTlV.21 Further­ more, the gesture of sitting, as the commentator Epaphroditus saw, nicely enforces the content of his message by demon­ strating the fragility of the spoken word: a sitting speaker would be heard only with difficulty.22 The ensuing story of Ate's deception of Zeus-which, among its other interests and concerns, is an elaborate negative paradigm of the destructive effects of such interruption-demonstrates that the king shares the common Iliadic, and human, tendency to reduce problems and conflicts to intelligible forms of creative fiction through easily apprehensible parables and paradigms. Yet the form that his fiction takes on this occasion exemplifies an element of rhe­ torical hybris in the unfounded claim to unprecedented insight into the workings of the minds of the gods. In the Iliad not even the prophet Calchas quotes the exact words of the gods, and any valid claim to intimate knowledge of divine affairs-whether on the part of narrator or characters-requires explanation or apology.23 Thus Achilles' confidence about Zeus' high regard for his mother rests upon a story that the goddess often used to tell in the halls of Peleus (1.396-406). Contrary to the normal 21 Edwards (supra n.16) 244 believes that 19.80 refers to 1.292, but he finds Agamemnon's tone ungracious and jealous, and argues that the allusion to the earlier assembly is a pointed one. I find the king's rhetorical strategy quite subtle on this occasion. 22 ~ ad loco (Erbse IV [1975]). Epaphroditus erred, however, in believing that the king's gesture was intended to emphasize the humility of his words. 23 Page (supra n.14) 313 finds Agamemnon's feat of temporary omniscience merely another of the many flaws of Book 19. A referee has suggested that the king's usurpation of the poet's prerogative of reporting conversation among the gods may provide evidence of his hybristic character. RABEL, ROBERT J., Agamemnon's "Iliad" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:2 (1991:Summer) p.103 ROBERT J. RABEL 113 practices of epic, Agamemnon here repeats verbatim the gods' words, a circumstance rendering the historicity of his account highly suspect. The rhetorical form of Agamemnon's story has few parallels in the Iliad. George F. Held has pointed out that only the speech of Phoenix in Book 9, of Agamemnon in Book 19, and two speeches of Achilles to Priam in Book 24 contain both a parable and a paradigm. In addition, Held says, the stories of these speeches uniquely draw from sources other than the personal experience or imagination of the character-narrator. 24 The influ­ ence of the rhetorical agendas and subjective experiences of both Phoenix and Achilles upon the stories that they tell has been clearly documented. Thus Achilles' portrait of the dining Niobe (24.602), for example, arises from his wish to persuade Priam to eat, and the detail of the surrounding people turned to stone (611) may be a product of the hero's profound meditation on the destructive effects that sometimes attend the innocent when presumptuous mortals such as Priam, Agamemnon, and even Achilles dare to challenge the gods. 25 Similarly, Agamem­ non's story about &:'t11 bears witness to the creative effects of personal experience upon existing traditional stories-or more likely, the story is an extemporaneous creation, a microcosmic summary of the Iliad from the king's viewpoint.26 After his exordium, Agamemnon shifts from generalization to parable and paradigm in pursuing his rhetorical strategy of covert criticism of Achilles, whom he attacks indirectly and by inference. The speech does close with explicit acknowledge­ ment of the speaker's folly (acxcrall11v: 19.137) and a promise of gifts by way of compensation for the theft of Briseis. But early in the speech Agamemnon denies responsibility for the disaster in the assembly of Book 1 (19.86-89). Further, in the paradigmatic story about the origin of &:'t11 among mortals he establishes a parallel between himself and Zeus, who was similarly once deluded, and by inference casts the upstart Achilles in the role of Hera, trouble-making underling of the king of the gods. In a 24 G. f. Held, "Phoinix, Agamemnon and Achilleus: Problems and Para­ deigmata," CQ N.S. 37 (1987) 245--61, esp. 245, 254. 25 Cf J. T. Kakridis, Homeric Researches (Lund 1949) 101. 26 P. Vivante, The Iliad: Action as Poetry (Boston 1991) 99, considers the possibility that Agamemnon invented the story about Zeus and Ate; cf M. Mueller, The Iliad (London 1984) 130, who rightly argues that Agamemnon has made up the story to make his responsibility appear in a flattering light. RABEL, ROBERT J., Agamemnon's "Iliad" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:2 (1991:Summer) p.103 114 AGAMEMNON'S ILIAD continuing set of correspondences between the paradigm and the plot of the poem, Agamemnon casts himself as Eurystheus and Achilles as Heracles, in an eloquent and subtle justification of the legitimacy of his rule over the army at Troy.27 Lohmann (supra n.l2: 77f) has meticulously elucidated the careful structuring of the main body of the speech and the elaborate set of parallels that link Agamemnon's experiences within the Iliad to Zeus' tribulations on Olympus. He shows that the account of Zeus' a:tl1 (19.95-133) has been carefully inserted within two statements of the theme of Agamemnon's a'tl1 (86-94, 134ff): I. Agamemnon's ci-t11 (19.86-94, 134ff) a. I was not to blame but Zeus, Moira, and the Furies, who cast o:t11 on me in the assembly (86£) b. on that day when I took Achilles' prize (89) c. but what was I to do? (90) d. Allegory about Ate (91-94) [II. Zeus' U't11 (19.95-133) a 1. Zeus also once suffered from U't11 (95££) b1. on that day when Alcmene was about to give birth to Heracles (98f) Cl. lengthy description of the (h1] of Zeus that was brought about through the intrigues of Hera (100-25) d1. Allegory about Ate (126-31) [ e1' the laments of Zeus when he saw Heracles in service to Eurystheus (132f)] e. so also I lamented when Hector was slaying the Argives (134ff) By thus inextricably linking the two stories, Agamemnon implies an intricate set of correspondences between himself and Zeus. First of all, both were the victims of a'tl1. Second, the day on which Agamemnon took Achilles' prize (TlJlun 'tip o't', 89) nicely corresponds to the day on which (TlJlun 'tip o't', 98) Alc­ mene prepared to give birth to Heracles. The king cleverly sidesteps any elucidation of the third parallel. By praeteri tio, he dismisses his own case in one line with the rhetorical question: 27 The following section of this paper owes much to the helpful comments of Richard Janko and to O. M. Davidson, "Indo-European Dimensions of Heracles in Iliad 19.95-133," Arethusa 13 (1980) 197-202. RABEL, ROBERT J., Agamemnon's "Iliad" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:2 (1991:Summer) p.103 ROBERT]. RABEL 115 "But what was I to do?" (90) and then describes at length the details of Zeus' manipulation by Hera, the premature birth of Eurystheus, and his ascendancy over Heracles (100-25). Accord­ ing to Lohmann (supra n.12: 77f), the argument between Aga­ memnon and Achilles is simply too well known to the listener for the poet to repeat it in detail. Unfortunately, such an explanation forestalls a proper appreciation of the speaker's consistent rhetorical agenda throughout the speech: significant elements of Agamemnon's own story must of necessity be suppressed lest the implied equation within the paradigm between Achilles and the troublemaking Hera become too explicit. As in the exordium of the speech, Achilles is damned, but only by inference. Fourth, the allegorical description of Ate (91-94) nicely balances the account of her dismissal from Olympus (126-31). Finally, the aftermath of Zeus' regret (132f) is set immediately before the description of Agamemnon's similar suffering (134ff). Let us return for a moment to a consideration of the odd disproportionality in length of Agamemnon's treatment of the third parallel: the ellipsis contrived in the rhetorical question of line 90 and its carefully-elaborated Olympian counterpart in lines 100-25. The obvious but unstated analogy between Aga­ memnon and Zeus, on the one hand, and Achilles and Hera, on the other, actually repeats, while reducing to crudely simplistic form, a complex set of parallels and contrasts drawn by the narrator in Book 1 between the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles and the domestic spat between Zeus and Hera that closes the book. 28 Moreover, what the king conceals about his personal interpretation of the quarrel with Achilles can be gleaned from what he reveals about the intrigue on Olympus. For Hera, challenging the authori ty of the greatest of the gods, thwarted him in the accomplishment of this purpose-or in the goddess' cleverly ambiguous language, she prevented him from putting 'the finishing touches' ('tEA-o<;: 107) on his speech (Jlu8