"Cliff Notes - Iliad, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Tell me now, you Muses who have your homes on Olympos. For
you, who are goddesses, are there, and you know all things, and
we have heard only the rumour of it and know nothing. Who then
of those were the chief men and the lords of the Danaans? I
could not tell over the multitude of them nor name them, not if
I had ten tongues and ten mouths, not if I had a voice never to
be broken and a heart of bronze within me, not unless the Muses
of Olympia, daughters of Zeus of the aegis, remembered all those
who came beneath Ilion. I will tell the lords of the ships, and
the ships numbers.

-Richard Lattimore

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THE ILIAD: THE PLOT

For nine years the Achaians have besieged Troy. During one
of their raids on a nearby town they take as captives two women:
Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, priest of Apollo, and Briseis.
Chryseis is given to King Agamemnon as a war prize; Briseis is
allotted to Achilleus. When Chryses the priest comes to the
Argive camp seeking to ransom his daughter, Agamemnon refuses.
At Chryses' behest Apollo sends a plague on the Achaians.

Achilleus calls an assembly of the army, and the soothsayer
Kalchas explains the anger of the god. He says that to appease
Apollo, Agamemnon must return Chryseis to her father. A violent
quarrel ensues, and Agamemnon says if he is forced to give up
his prize he will take someone else's to replace her. When
Achilleus expresses outrage at this demand, Agamemnon takes
Briseis from him.

Furious at the public insult, Achilleus vows to refrain from
fighting until he feels he is once again properly valued. To
effect this, he prays to his mother, Thetis, to plead his case
before Zeus so that the Trojans will have victories, showing how
sorely Achilleus is missed. Zeus assents to the plan.

All the Achaian army is marshaled before us in its splendor,
but to little avail. Things go badly for them in battle. A
long day of fighting seesaws between the Trojans and the
Argives. Hektor returns briefly to Troy and speaks to Helen and
Paris, to his mother Hekabe, and to his wife Andromache, who
brings along their child, Astyanax.

After more inconclusive fighting a truce is proposed, during
which time the Achaians build up their defenses with a large
ditch and a fortified wall.