The curtains open on Agamémnon, the Akhaian King, in full "ego mode" * (a self-invented term that I'll be using often).
Captured during the Trojan war, Chryseis is the daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo.
When one was taken as a war prize back then (which often happened to women), a ransom could be given by their families in order for them to be returned.
Chryses in this case offered a generous payment to the Akhaians*, even referencing the Sun god to which he was devoted.
None of the men were opposed to his gifts, save for the King himself. He threatened the priest, and quoting him, vowed that Chryseus "shall grow old at Argos far from her own home, busying herself with her loom and visiting [my] couch".
Like I said, full ego mode.
The priest is scared shitless and leaves, disheartened. He desperately prays to Apollo, requesting his intervention in the whole conflict. The god pitying him obliges, angered by the Argives.
What follows is a massive plague sent by the Sun god, devastating many soldiers. The troops know that some divine punishment is the reason why so many men are dying, and they ask one of their diviners to interepret the message behind this.
The poor guy (named Kalkhas) is scared of getting harmed if one of the marshals dislike his transmission, but Akhilleus swears that nothing bad will happen to him as long as he tells the truth.
So Kalkhas follows his orders and tells everyone that the whole thing is basically Agamémnon's fault. In order to stop the plague, Chryseis would have to be returned to her father, and a boar or some other animal would need to be sacrificed to Apollo.
Easy to solve, right?
You wish lol.
Again, Agamémnon goes full ego mode: he states that there is no way he'll return the girl since he "earned her" in the war. He's willing to compromise, but will only let her go if each man gives him a share of their earnings after battle.
Akhilleus intervenes, trying to bring reason to him. Unfortunately, that's when shit really hits the fan.
The King basically threatens to take someone else's woman if not awarded a prize. When it comes to the options he's thinking about, he mentions the wives of Odysseus, Aías (there are two of them and they truly are the least problematic I'd say), and... Akhilleus.
Just in case you're unfamiliar with the lore, these guys are literally the best soldiers. Akhilleus is comparable to the M.V.P of a basketball team in their troops: he's always the one winning, opponents run when they see him, so to make a claim like that is pretty reckless, and plainly put, just dumb.
Akhilleus gets angry as heeeell, and reminds him that whenever there are any battles, he fights more. Most of the shares go to Agamémnon despite his minimal contributions to the actual victories. So Akhilleus, rightfully angry, basically decides to bail on the army because he's being "cheated of his winnings" and is offended that Agamémnon would even think about stealing his girl.
I also gotta mention that said woman, Briseis, was related or married in some kind of way to the royal family in Lynerssus, a city allied to Troy. So yeah, the girl was married, but Akhilleus "won" her or rather got her as a "gift" from the other soldiers for his contributions. I found it pretty ironic that he was getting all hissy for a woman whose husband he killed before forcing her out of her hometown, but again we are in ancient Greece.
So Akhilleus walks back home, and the goddess Athena (sent by Hera) wants to know why he is so angry. He tells her what went on and she tells him to calm down, promising triple his wealth in exchange for his calm and obedience in the matter.
Then that one annoying f*ck a** elder called Nestor gets up and tries to diffuse the situation. He's seen as the wisest in the troops, and even though he can't fight that much, his advice is seen as valuable and is taken very seiously by everyone.
However, before actually bestowing others with said wisdom, he goes on tangeants that sometimes last pages about how he was a strong fighter, defeated said person and said territory back in his days, had said possessions, and consequently should be listened to. He got more on my nerves as the story kept going, but I'll dive deeper into that in the next chapters.
He basically tells them both to stop acting like little boys, but they both are too wounded in their pride to listen. Akhilleus leaves and states that Agamémnon can do whatever he wants, including stealing the girl, but promises that he will regret his actions and won't get anything else from him.
Agamémnon later on sends two soldiers to go grab Bryseis, despite Nestor's protesting, and the poor dudes didn't wanna do it because imagine having to walk to the best guy's tent and be like "Hey...we gotta capture your wife for the King but we love you dude."
He's not mad at them for this, but once they leave with her, he starts sobbing uncontrollably, even while Patroklós, his platonic soulmate I guess, consoles him
His mom Thetis comes out of nearby river (she's a nymph) and asks him what's wrong. He, once again, summarizes the whole thing, and begs her to go plead to Zeus for him to make the King regret his actions and obtain more glory for himself.
She doesn't like where this is going, because she knows and told him that if he ever got involved too deep into the war, he'd die even though his name would be famous throughout the entire country. However, if he came back to his hometown, he'd have no glory but would live an ordinary life.
Honestly, dude should've just picked the first one. But of course, it's never that simple.
She knows she won't be able to convince him to drop the anger, so she obliges, painfully aware of his inevitable death.
So she goes to Zeus. For once, he doesn't jump on a woman-like figure and get her pregnant. He actually respects her because... more lore incoming...she saved him when the other gods rebelled against him (including his wife lmfao). So he's of course gonna try his best to repay her whenever he can. He promises to her that the Akhaians will fail against the Trojans until Akhilleus comes back, granting them victory, honor, and all that good stuff.
Hera sees this, but she can't hear what they're talking about. She snarkily tries to get him to spill the tea, wondering if he's cheating again. He's annoyed and tells her that she doesn't need to know what's going on and won't interfere unless she wants to anger him and get hurt.
She gets scared and begrudgingly shuts up and drops it.
Whew! That's it for the first chapter guysss! There's a looot of lore that I had to familiarize and re-familiarize myself with in order to understand the entire context. If you decide to read the actual book, there is a high probability that like me, you get bored by the dozens of imageries that go on for chapters when Homer (the author) wants to describe a detail that's insignificant and won't get mentioned again. It sometimes pulls me out of the narrative. Otherwise, it's probably one of the greatest and most action-filled book I've read. It also shows how dumb humans are at times: Agamémnon could've just handed over the girl without doing the whole threatening thing; Akhilleus could've just gone back home like he said he would and live peacefully; Nestor could've just kept quiet following the first chapter.
But anyway...Bye and see you for the next upload!
