My notes on The Iliad, Book I, from line 240-315

All book and line numbers from the Fagles translation of Homer, the Penguin paperback addition (ISBN 0-14-044592-7);

Hera sends Athena down to tell Achille's to check his rage and he reponds, "'I must-/ when the two of you hand down commands, Goddess,/ a man submits though his heart breaks with fury'"(1,252-254). Achilles offers this as a moral pronouncement and a piece of strategy. Further defining the Gods and the relationship possible between mortal and immortal, he offers, "'If a man obeys the gods/They're quick to hear his prayers'"(I, 255-256).

Then, Achille's continues his scathing verbal attack on Agamemnon. He accuses him of cowardice and of being a parasite on his troops and people. He suggests that their is a crucial tie between a king and the quality of his subjects, that there is a father/child relationship, and that a bad king leads to a worthless citizenry. He calls Agamemnon a "King who devours his people! Worthless husks, the men you rule!'"(I, 270). The Lattimore translation at the Chicago Homer suggests the relationship works in the reverse: "King who feeds on your people since you rule nonentities'"(1, l.231). As I read this, Agamemnon feeds on his people because they let him. By this particular reading, Achille's speech is really incendiary and can be seen as openly subversive.

Achilles then swears an oath, using a sceptre to seal the oath. He uses the sceptre to illustrate the nature of the division that he's about to vow. The sceptre is a branch from a tree. Just as it will never bloom again, having been severed from the tree that gave it life, so will Achilles, the branch, fail to blossom for Agamemnon, his former trunk. Or, that would seem to be the straightforward reading. Maybe Achilles is suggesting a more subversive reading, suggesting that it is Agamemnon who is the branch to Achille's crucial, foundational trunk?

Hector's first mention, as man-killing Hector at line 285.

We have Agamemnon the king and the chief warrior Achilles now sitting across from each other, opposed and smoldering. Enter Nestor, who is an old, wise, politic mediator, "the man of winning words, the clear speaker of Pylos/ Sweeter than haney from his tongue the voice flowed on and on "(I, 291-292). Here is one of the first instances in the book indicating all the important and various role voice and vocal sound play throughout the book. Nestor is wise; the content of his words is worth listening to, but he's aided in passing them along by the sound of them.

Nestor first tells everyone to cool it and to think about how this bickering only helps and bucks up their enemies. Then, he invokes his age. He begins to tell of older heroes. He tells stories. He invokes legendary times when he "'fresh out of Pylos'"(314) fought alongside heros who took on "'Shaggy Centaurs, wild brutes of the mountains-/They hacked them down terrible, deadly work'"(I, 312-313).