A priest named, Chryseis, asked Agamemnon to let his daughter go from his captivity. Agamemnon laughed in his face. Apollo set a plague on the Achaian’s when Agamemnon did let Chryses’s daughter go. Achilles, the Achaian’s greatest warrior and Agamemnon’s wingman is started to get fed up with Agamemnon. Achilles is a sensitive guy who displays his true character and heart, throughout The Iliad.
<br> It all began when Agamemnon stole away Briseis, Achilles’ woman. To ease the <br>anger Achilles had for Agamemnon, Thetis asked Zeus to provide honor for her son, <br>Achilles. Zeus granted her request by promising that the Achaeans would suffer enough <br>losses to force Agamemnon to come begging for Achilles’ help. <br> The first major change in Achilles was caused by his rage toward Agamemnon. <br>Achilles, the great warrior, allowed his wrath to infest his desire to help his own comrades <br>in the battle against the Trojans.
A character will fail to come across as heroic without self-sacrifice. It is the altruistic act, the putting of others before oneself, that separates the bloodthirsty Achilles from the heroic Ajax. From the outset, Achilles is depicted as rash, selfish and a megalomaniac. Feeling robbed of glory after Agamemnon stole Breseis away, Achilles states that one day “… a yearning for Achilles will strike Achaea’s sons… nothing you do can save you - not when your hordes of fighters drop and die… Then you will tear your heart out, desperate, raging that you disgraced the best of the Achaeans” (1. 281-286).
He even begins the Iliad’s introduction with “the rage of Achilles” (Homer xvii). This shows how significant Achilles is to the poem and history. Homer’s use of the word “rage” is said to only be used when talking about the gods, thus exposing the importance of Achilles (Homer xvii). The poem places Achilles within the “top of its hierarchical structure” because he seen as a hero and superior man (Homer xxi). Achilles follows tradition through the heroic code and through the fight with Hector.
Right from the beginning of the Illiad, the reader finds out a lot about Achilles. When the Illiad starts, the reader quickly learns the selfishness of King Agamemnon. The muse tells the tale of how the Greeks captured two beautiful maidens named Chryseis and Briseis. Achilles being the great warrior he is, claims Briseis as his prize and he actually really likes her. Then, Chryses begs to get his daughter Chryseis back and offers Agamemnon a huge ransom.
He had decided to kill Agamemnon but Athena came to him, sent by Hera, and told him to get his anger under control. With that he left in anger and stayed by his ships drowning in sorrow. Here was the fearsome warrior brought to his knees by the loss of a woman, a prize, a piece of property, taken from him by another. He did not fight in the war for a time due to his anger and humiliation but when his best friend Patroclus was slain by Hector he was driven by revenge and rejoined the fight. Hector was considered the warrior-champion for the Trojans, who had persuaded the Trojan warriors to leave Troy and the safety it provided while Achilles was not taking part in the battle.
A tragic hero is virtuous character in a dramatic tragedy that is destined for a downfall. The hero learns from his mistakes and is the protagonist in the story. To be a tragic hero the character must display the elements of a Greek tragedy. In the play ‘Antigone' by Sophocles, Creon forbids Polynices to be buried because he fought with his brother for the throne and wanted the throne to destroy Thebes. Antigone; Polynices sister tries to bury him and Creon has her captured for a punishment.
Grief Lessons- Herakles This play begins with Amphityron and Megara, Herakles’ father and wife conversing about their fate. Herakles has gone to Hades and they are awaiting his return daily. Lykos is the next one we encounter. He comes in to where Amphityron and Megara are speaking and relays that their hopes of Herakles’ returning are useless. He believes that Herakles is nothing to boast about and that the idea of him coming back from Hades is impossible because he is worthless.
It is the intemperance of the man, famously referred to as the “rage of Achilles,” which is perhaps his tragic flaw, a failing which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of untold scores of Greeks and Trojans and nearly spelled complete destruction for the Greek fleet. Driven by his ill-tempered thirst for glory and prizewinning, Achilles is unable to control himself in the face of humiliation and defeat. It is this character flaw which makes the son of Peleus an unacceptable role model. We begin the Iiad with Achilles already in a rage as victory in the Trojan War, the epic confrontation between Ilium and Hellas sprung from the Trojan abduction of Helen of Troy from her lawful Greek husband Menelaus, looms overhead, the Greeks having finally sacked one of the last remaining Trojan allied towns and now preparing to march on the glorious city of Troy itself. In the looting of the town the Greek King Agamemnon had claimed Chryseis as a war prize while Achilles claimed Briseis.
In Agamemnon, Aeschylus uses his characters to express his political opinion on war. In lines 49-54 Agamemnon and Menelaus’s war cry, at the outset of the Trojan War, is compared to that of eagles stricken with agony after they lose their young and their homes. Aeschylus’s statement is one of doom and destruction on many levels. Troy is destroyed, many Greeks die, and the House of Atreus is destroyed. On line 437, the chorus is speaking and they say that the god of war was the “money changer” of dead bodies.