Question

How justified is Agamemnon in his actions? How justified is Achilles in his rage? What does the exchange between Achilles and Agamemnon tell us about the nature of honor and respect in the ancient world?

Answer 1

Agamemnon is presented as a king who is expected to carry out his duties towards the Greek society and maintain order. However, while Agamemnon takes some critical decisions about restoring the social order back after his brother’s murder by declaring war on the Trojan kingdom and getting back his brother’s wife, Helen of Troy, he is rather presented as a deeply flawed character. He is often led by his emotions and desires and he is found to place the needs of his community as secondary to his own whims. Even though he shows his prowess as a highly accomplished warrior, he is a weak king an a biased deciosn maker as he vascillates And he takes some very wrong and unfair decisions in moments of depression and discouragement such as when he takes away Briseis from Achailles which ultimately leads to a serious of catastrophic events that results in th death of hundreds of Achaian soldiers. In stealing Briseis who was actually a war captive to Achilles upon his victory Trojan coast, Agamemnon violated the tradition of war and he was therefore not justified in his judgement.

On his part, Achilles’s rage over the capture of Breises led him to withdraw his personal troops from the war against Troy. Homer blames Achilles for causing the death of thousands of Greeks. Howeve, his rage need to be analysed from two perspectives. Firstly, it needs to be  looked at as a loss of property without any retribution form the king in return. The situation is then indeed infuriating for the one who incurred the loss. Secondly, If looked at as a loss of a loved one or paramour than Achilles’s rage is perhaps a much softer way to represent his experience it therefore justifies his emotional experience.

While both Agamemnon and Achilles may present complex personalities who are fraught with emotional whims, they represent a perspective of moral agency where honour and respect for social status become prominent features in determining one’s actions. Both these characters show how honour in the Antiquities was constructed within the discourse of possessions and property. For Agamemnon, the retrieval of his brother’s wife, Helen and for Achilles, his concubine, Breisis set a course of actions which were justified by the two men as their ‘just’ and social obligation in order to defend their social status. Through them, we see how the Ancient Greek society had constructed a social imagination of power and status based on war and ownership of women, slaves and territories as property. In such a worldview, it was but obvious that a justice of definition would be premised on revenge and emotional fantasies and desires of the powerful, the sovereign rather than the welfare of the larger collective.