by Stephen Fry
In Salamis, Ajax the Mighty obeyed the summons along with his half-brother Teucer, the great bowman. Just to complicate matters, a second significant Ajax answered the call too – Ajax, King of the Locrians of central Greece. He is traditionally known as Ajax the Lesser, which is not to disparage his very considerable valour and military zeal, but to distinguish him from Telamonian Ajax, the Great, whose size and strength were more formidable than those of any man alive, second only to the now immortal Heracles. We shall use the original Greek spelling for the Locrian Ajax and refer to him as AIAS to avoid confusion.
Another of the highly important kings to join the alliance was Diomedes of Argos,fn82 a fierce and gifted warrior and athlete in his own right, beloved of the goddess Athena, trusted by Agamemnon (not, as we shall see, an easy trust to win) and a close friend of Odysseus of Ithaca, whose idea, of course, the lottery and the oath had been. Idomeneus, King of Crete, grandson of the great Minos, arrived with eighty ships – as many as Diomedes’ Argive contribution. Only NESTOR of Pylos and Agamemnon himself, with ninety and a hundred ships respectively, provided more.
As the weeks passed and more and more allies arrived at Aulis, Odysseus became more and more conspicuous by his absence.
‘Damn it,’ grumbled Agamemnon. ‘You would think he’d be the first to arrive.’
‘I’m sure he will be here soon,’ said Diomedes loyally.
But of Odysseus there was no sign. At last, word came through that the worst possible fate had befallen the Ithacan king. He had lost his wits.
‘It is true, King of Men,’ said a messenger, bowing low before Agamemnon. ‘Stark mad, they say.’
‘Well, now you see, this is a lesson to us all,’ said Agamemnon to his brother and the assembled courtiers. ‘Haven’t I always said that intelligence can be more of a curse than a blessing? A brain like that, always whirring and churning, scheming and dreaming, plotting and planning – bound to come to grief in the end. Sad thing. Sad thing.’
‘And his wife Penelope has just presented him with a baby son too,’ said Menelaus, shaking his head in sorrow.
Their cousin PALAMEDES pursed his lips. ‘You can never be sure with Odysseus.’
‘Yes, crafty bugger, no question about that,’ said Agamemnon.
‘How do we know that he’s truly out of his mind?’
‘Might be play-acting, you mean?’
‘I wouldn’t put anything past him,’ said Palamedes.
‘No harm in making sure,’ said Agamemnon. ‘I can ill afford to do without a brain like his on my staff. Go over to Ithaca, Palamedes. See what’s what, what?’
SOWING SALT
Palamedes had always disliked Odysseus. The craft and guile that others admired he distrusted. In his opinion the man was as twisted as a pig’s tail. And as shitty. If there were two ways to approach a problem, one straight, the other crooked, Odysseus would always choose the crooked. Agamemnon, Menelaus, Diomedes, Ajax and the others fell for his surface charm and encouraged the plotting and scheming. They seemed to find it amusing, like parents who show off their child’s skill at dancing or mimicry. Palamedes was aware that Odysseus was descended from Autolycus and Sisyphus, two of the most devious cheats and double-dealers the world had ever seen. Which made the god Hermes an ancestor too. But that was nothing: on his father’s side Palamedes was a grandson of Poseidon and on his mother’s a great-grandson of King Minos of Crete, and therefore a great-great-grandson of Zeus himself. He was no more impressed by Odysseus’s pedigree than he was by his trickery.
But when Palamedes and his retinue disembarked on Ithaca they found the entire population grief-stricken and distressed. Their beloved young king really had, it seemed, lost his mind. Penelope and the court were distraught, Palamedes was told. They directed him to the southern shore of the island where they assured him he could see the poor lunatic Odysseus and judge for himself.
Palamedes arrived there to find Ithaca’s king at the plough. His entirely naked body was caked in mud. His beard was untrimmed and his hair was stuck through with what looked like straw. He was singing a song in a high, tuneless voice. The words were in no language Palamedes had ever heard before. But that was not the strangest part. His plough was being pulled by an ox and a donkey. Their different speeds, sizes and strengths were causing the plough to veer wildly as it cut a haphazard and wayward groove through the sand and shingle. Odysseus had an open sack hung around his neck by a halter. He took from it handfuls of salt, which he scattered into the furrow as he ploughed, singing his wild song all the while.
‘Poor man,’ said Palamedes’ second-in-command. ‘Sowing salt into the sand. He really is gone, isn’t he?’
Palamedes frowned, wondering. Then he called out Odysseus’s name. Once, twice, three times, with increasing volume. Odysseus paid no attention. He just sang and sowed his salt as if oblivious to everything else in the world.
Odysseus’s parents Laertes and Anticlea looked on, a small group of courtiers at their side. His wife Penelope stood apart from them, a look of tragic suffering on her face. There was a basket at her feet.
A young dog, scarcely out of puppyhood, ran up and down the beach barking furiously as Odysseus turned his mismatched team around and began to plough a return furrow, quite as mad and crooked as the one before.
Without a word of warning Palamedes darted towards Penelope, snatched up the basket and – to the astonishment of his own followers and the horror of Penelope and her retinue – ran out and placed it straight in the path of the ox and donkey.
Palamedes rejoined his companions, panting slightly, but looking very pleased with himself.
‘What’s in it?’ his lieutenant asked.
In reply, Palamedes smiled and pointed.
A baby’s head came up from the basket. Penelope screamed. The ox and donkey were heading straight towards it. The baby gurgled quite contentedly, its fists waving in the air.
Odysseus suddenly stopped singing. His back straightened, he called out crisp commands to the straining ox and donkey and steered them away. The churning ploughshare missed the basket by a finger’s breadth. Odysseus dropped the plough’s handles, ran round and lifted the baby up.
‘TELEMACHUS, Telemachus,’ he whispered, covering him in kisses.
‘So,’ said Palamedes, approaching. ‘Not so mad after all, I think.’
‘Ah,’ said Odysseus. He turned to face Palamedes and gave a rueful smile. ‘Well, it was worth a try …’
The young dog that had run up and down the beach barking so loudly now leapt up at Palamedes, snarling and snapping its jaws.
‘Down, ARGOS, down!’ said Odysseus, noting Palamedes’ discomfort with some amusement. ‘I’m afraid my dog doesn’t seem to like you very much.’
Palamedes nodded stiffly and went over to present his compliments to Penelope.
Odysseus watched him go. ‘And we don’t like him very much either, do we, Telemachus?’ he added under his breath to his baby son. ‘And we won’t forget what he did, will we? Ever.’
Penelope grasped Palamedes by the hand. ‘Promise me that you will not let King Agamemnon believe that my husband is a coward.’
‘Well, you must admit –’
‘But this was all at my insistence! An oracle has prophesied that if Odysseus leaves Ithaca to fight in a war, he will not return for twenty years.’
‘Twenty years? But that’s absurd. You can’t have believed such a thing, surely?’
‘It was very clear.’
‘Oracles are never clear. Must have meant twenty months. Or maybe it meant that twenty of his men would be lost. Or that he would return with twenty captives. Something like that. But fear not, I shall pass on your message to my cousin Agamemnon. I depart at once. Ask your husband to make his preparations and join us at Aulis as soon as he can, yes?’
Palamedes left Ithaca delighted to have outfoxed the fox.
But the fox was not one ever to forget or forgive. He vowed that the day would come when Palamedes wo
uld pay for what he had done.
For now, there was much to do. His feigned madness abandoned, Odysseus threw himself into the preparations for war with zeal. Two hundred and twenty-eight of Ithaca’s fittest and finest volunteered to sail with him and fight under his banner, and within a few short weeks twelve sleek penteconters, freshly painted and fully provisioned, were lined up in the harbour ready to sail for Aulis.
Odysseus gave the signal and his fleet set sail. Looking back from the stern of his command vessel, he took in a last sight of Ithaca, a last sight of his wife Penelope and a last sight of his son Telemachus in her arms.
From her position on the harbour wall Penelope watched the line of twelve ships grow darker and smaller against the huge white of the sky. Argos barked out at the sea, outraged at being left behind. The barking turned to inconsolable howling as his master and the fleet were slowly swallowed up by the haze of the horizon.
On the way to join Agamemnon, Odysseus stopped off at Cyprus to secure the alliance of King CINYRAS, who had promised to provide a fleet of fifty. It was something of a disappointment when his son MYGDALION arrived at Aulis with only the single vessel that he commanded.
‘Fifty were promised!’ thundered an enraged Agamemnon.
‘And fifty there are,’ said Mygdalion, launching forty-nine miniature model ships of Cypriot clay, each filled with little ceramic figures representing warriors.
It was a stunt that Odysseus and Diomedes were inclined to shrug off, but if Agamemnon had one defining weakness it was self-importance. To his prickly nature the smallest slights and expressions of disrespect were as sparks to dry straw. We all know people like that. He cursed Cinyras and forbade his name ever to be mentioned again. He was brought round by Cinyras’s gift to him of a magnificent breastplate.fn83
While the fleet at Aulis awaited more and more vessels arriving from further kingdoms and provinces, Agamemnon was prevailed upon by his oldest and wisest counsellor, Nestor of Pylos, to consider a diplomatic solution to the problem of Helen’s abduction.
Accordingly, messages were sent across the Aegean to the court of King Priam, in turns cajoling, insistent and threatening. Helen must be returned.
Priam responded to the first wave of demands by pointing to precedent. Abduction was clearly not the crime that Agamemnon seemed to imagine. Had not Zeus himself abducted Europa and Io?fn84 In the mortal sphere had not great Jason taken Medea from her native Colchis and brought her to mainland Greece?fn85 And surely King Agamemnon could not have forgotten that the so very noble Heracles had snatched Priam’s own sister Hesione from Troy to be the forced bride of his friend Telamon? On that occasion Priam had sent delegations with offers of treasure to Salamis, entreating her return, but they had all been dismissed with haughty contempt. Helen was happy in Troy with Paris. Agamemnon and his brother should accept it. The further, more aggressive messages he ignored.
‘So be it,’ said Agamemnon. ‘Let it be war.’
A more serious blow to the morale of the gathering Greek forces came when Calchas – the priest of Apollo retained as royal seer by the court of Agamemnon and respected especially for his ability to read the future from the flight, behaviour and cries of birdsfn86 – witnessed one day a snake invading a sparrow’s nest and eating the eight chicks and their mother.
‘Behold!’ said Calchas. ‘Apollo sends a sign. The snake has consumed nine birds. This is a sign that for nine years we will besiege Troy, winning only in the tenth.’
Agamemnon valued Calchas highly but, like most powerful people, he found ways either to ignore or to exploit unpleasant prophecies.
‘How do you know it doesn’t mean the tenth week, or the tenth month?’ he demanded.
Calchas knew what was good for him. ‘Other readings are indeed possible, my lord king.’
‘Good. Well, don’t go round making depressing forecasts like that again.’
‘No, indeed, sire,’ said Calchas, bowing his head. But he too had his pride and could not refrain from adding, ‘There is one truth of which I am absolutely certain, however …’
‘Oh yes?’
‘There is no possibility of victory against the Trojans unless the greatest warrior alive can be numbered in the Greek ranks.’
‘Well, I am in the Greek ranks. More than that, I’m the commander of the Greek ranks.’
‘With the greatest respect, sire, there is a warrior greater even than you.’
‘Oh,’ said Agamemnon icily. ‘And who might that be?’
‘Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis.’
‘He is just a child, surely?’
‘No, no, he is fully an ephebe now, I believe.’fn87
‘But unproven. He may be fast in the stadium and know how to throw a pretty javelin, but –’
Calchas drew himself up. ‘Majesty, it is as clear as anything I have ever seen that Prince Achilles will prove the greatest fighter in our armies, and that without him we cannot hope to prevail.’
‘All right, all right, damn you,’ said Agamemnon. ‘Send for this prodigy.’
There was a problem, however. Achilles was missing. No one knew where he was.
The men at Aulis soon heard about Calchas’s prophecy concerning Achilles’ indispensable place in their ranks, and although Agamemnon was now minded to sail for Troy without him, they were superstitious enough, or respectful of Calchas enough, to insist to the point of outright mutiny that Achilles be found and enlisted. But where was he? Agamemnon summoned Odysseus and Diomedes.
‘Find Achilles,’ he commanded. ‘Take as many men with you as you need, but don’t you bloody well dare to return without him.’
THE LOVELY PYRRHA
A few years earlier Peleus had been more than a little surprised when Thetis came to see him in his palace in Phthia. The appalling image of her holding the infant Achilles over the flames had never left his mind.
She approached him meekly now, throwing herself down before him, grasping his knees and waving her long hair over his feet in an act of weeping supplication that would have been excessive in a peasant or slave, but from an immortal was without precedent.
‘Please,’ said an embarrassed Peleus, raising her up. ‘There is no need.’
‘I have long owed you an explanation,’ said Thetis. ‘You were too angry to listen to me, but now you must hear me out.’
When at last he understood how and why his first six sons had been burned and lost, it was his turn to weep.
‘How much better it would have been, Thetis, if you had trusted me and told me at the very beginning.’
‘I know!’ said Thetis. ‘Not a day has passed without my regretting my silence. But now, Peleus, I will share everything with you. All the world knows of the prophecy first made by Prometheus –’
‘That any son of yours would rise to be greater than his father? Of course, and you know I have never minded it. And it has been shown to be true. You should see Achilles in the stadium. No other boy matches him in any –’
‘You think I don’t know?’ said Thetis. ‘I come here often, in many forms, to marvel at his speed and power, his skill and his grace. But there is another prophecy of which you have no knowledge, a vision only I have seen.’
‘What vision?’
‘It has been revealed to me that Achilles has two futures. One is a life of serene happiness, a long life blessed with children, pleasure and tranquillity. But a life lived in obscurity. His name will die with him.’
‘And the other future?’
‘The other life is a blaze of glory such as the world has not seen. A life of heroism, valour and achievement that outshines Heracles, Theseus, Jason, Atalanta, Bellerophon, Perseus … every hero that ever lived. Eternal fame and honour. A life sung by poets and bards for eternity. But a short life, Peleus, so short …’ Tears filled her eyes again. ‘Naturally, even the first life, the long life of obscurity will be short to me. Ninety winters and summers pass in a flash to an immortal. But the second future …’ She shuddered. ‘Les
s than an eye-blink. We cannot allow it.’
‘Surely we must give him the chance to choose?’
‘He is fourteen years old …’
‘Even so the choice should be his …’
‘And there is a war coming.’
‘War?’ Peleus stared. ‘But the world has never been more at peace. There are no threats to peace from any quarter.’
‘Nonetheless, war is coming. I feel it. I know it. A war such as the world has never known. And they will come for our son. You must let me take him and hide him.’
‘Where will you take him?’
‘It is best that you do not know, that no one knows. Only then will he be safe.’
Achilles embraced his friend Patroclus. ‘I’m leaving you in charge of the Myrmidons,’ he said.
‘They won’t obey anyone but you,’ said Patroclus. ‘You know that.’
It was true that, despite Achilles’ young age, the Phthian army were more loyal to him than they were even to his father, their king.
‘Nonsense, I’m just a mascot,’ said Achilles. ‘Besides, I’ll be back before you know it.’
‘I still don’t understand why you have to leave.’
‘My mother is not one to be refused,’ said Achilles with a rueful smile. ‘She has a strange bee buzzing in her ear. She is convinced there is a war coming and that if I fight in it I will be killed.’
‘Then she is right to take you away!’
‘I’m not afraid of dying!’
‘No,’ said Patroclus, ‘but you are afraid of your mother.’
Achilles grinned and punched his friend on the arm. ‘Not as afraid as you are.’