{"id":614,"date":"2026-10-28T01:14:38","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T01:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/?p=614"},"modified":"2026-10-19T01:17:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T01:17:24","slug":"the-rejection-of-the-heroic-compact-a-commentary-on-iliad-book-ix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/blog\/the-rejection-of-the-heroic-compact-a-commentary-on-iliad-book-ix\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rejection of the Heroic Compact: A Commentary on Iliad Book IX"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Rejection of the Heroic Compact: A Commentary on Iliad Book IX\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/tube.leshley.ca\/videos\/embed\/eSqqqw6HFN7oxQpnkZLcCu\" allow=\"fullscreen\" sandbox=\"allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-forms\" style=\"border: 0px;\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>Book IX is the philosophical heart of the Iliad. Everything before it has been building toward this confrontation, and everything after it will be shaped by its failure. It is a book composed almost entirely of speeches \u2014 six major addresses delivered across a single night \u2014 and yet it carries more dramatic weight than most of the battle scenes combined. What is at stake is not whether Achilles will fight. What is at stake is whether the entire value system that makes fighting meaningful can survive being examined honestly by the man who embodies it most completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Architecture of Failure: Agamemnon&#8217;s Confession<br>The book opens in despair. The Achaeans are broken; Agamemnon weeps &#8220;as it were a running stream or cataract on the side of some sheer cliff.&#8221; The simile is deliberate \u2014 a waterfall is not controlled grief but a force of nature, overwhelming and ungovernable. Agamemnon is not displaying sorrow; he is being dissolved by it. His speech to the assembly is a surrender: Jove has played him false, the war is lost, let us go home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the second time Agamemnon has proposed retreat (the first was the disastrous &#8220;test&#8221; in Book II), and the pattern reveals something essential about him: his response to crisis is to abandon the enterprise entirely. He does not regroup; he does not rethink. He collapses. The man who insisted on his supremacy over Achilles in Book I cannot bear the weight of the consequences that supremacy has produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Diomedes&#8217; rebuke is the sharpest any mortal delivers to Agamemnon in the poem: &#8220;The son of scheming Saturn endowed you by halves only. He gave you honour as the chief ruler over us, but valour, which is the highest both right and might he did not give you.&#8221; This is not merely an insult \u2014 it is a structural diagnosis. Agamemnon has sceptre but not bi\u0113 (might). He has the office of kingship without the substance of heroic excellence that legitimizes it. The heroic compact requires both; Agamemnon possesses only one. This is the same critique Nestor implicitly made in Book I when he urged reconciliation \u2014 but Diomedes makes it explicit, and publicly, and without diplomatic softening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What saves the situation is not Agamemnon&#8217;s leadership but Nestor&#8217;s. The old man&#8217;s reorganization \u2014 sentinels, dinner, council \u2014 restores functional order. And then, in private council, Nestor does what no one else has been willing to do: he confronts Agamemnon with his original sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;No man will be of a truer mind than that which has been mine from the hour when you, sir, angered Achilles by taking the girl Briseis from his tent against my judgment.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is Book I revisited \u2014 the same warning, now costing infinitely more. And Agamemnon&#8217;s response is the book&#8217;s first great surprise: &#8220;I was wrong. I own it.&#8221; These five words (in Butler&#8217;s English) carry more weight than almost anything else Agamemnon says in the entire poem. In Book I, acknowledging fault was unthinkable. In Book II, he admitted culpability in a subordinate clause, buried and immediately abandoned. Here, he confesses openly, in front of his council, with apparent sincerity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Homer is careful with this confession. Agamemnon does not say &#8220;I was unjust&#8221; or &#8220;I wronged a good man.&#8221; He says: &#8220;One whom heaven befriends is in himself a host, and Jove has shown that he befriends this man by destroying much people of the Achaeans.&#8221; Agamemnon recognizes Achilles&#8217; importance not because Achilles deserves respect but because the consequences of the quarrel have proven cosmically costly. Even in contrition, Agamemnon thinks in terms of outcomes, not principles. He is sorry because it didn&#8217;t work, not because it was wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Catalogue of Compensation<br>What follows is the most elaborate gift-list in the Iliad, and Homer recites it twice \u2014 once from Agamemnon&#8217;s mouth and again from Odysseus&#8217;s \u2014 which is itself a structural signal that we should attend to its content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Seven tripods untouched by fire. Ten talents of gold. Twenty cauldrons of iron. Twelve prize-winning horses. Seven Lesbian women of surpassing beauty. Briseis herself, returned untouched. Future spoils from Troy: gold, bronze, twenty Trojan women. A daughter chosen from three \u2014 Chrysothemis, Laodice, Iphianassa \u2014 without bride-price, with a dowry of seven cities. Honor equal to Orestes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The sheer scale is staggering. Agamemnon is not making a gesture; he is attempting to purchase absolution with the entire material vocabulary of the heroic world. Every category of value the culture recognizes \u2014 precious metal, livestock, skilled women, military prizes, marriage alliance, territorial dominion, dynastic prestige \u2014 is piled upon the pile. The catalogue is meant to be overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it is precisely this that makes it so grotesque. What Agamemnon is offering is a transaction. The injury to Achilles was existential \u2014 his honour was stripped in public, his identity as a hero was nullified by the man he served. Agamemnon responds with a shopping list. He is treating a wound to the soul as a debt that can be settled with goods. The mismatch between the nature of the injury and the nature of the compensation is the first crack in the embassy&#8217;s foundation, and Achilles will drive a wedge into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The oath that Briseis is untouched is important. Agamemnon is establishing that he did not sexually violate Achilles&#8217; prize \u2014 that the dishonor was social and political, not sexual. He is being honest, or at least Homer presents him as honest. But the oath reveals something else: Agamemnon assumes that the issue is whether Briseis&#8217;s body was used. Achilles&#8217; grief, as we will learn, is not about Briseis&#8217;s body. It is about the public demonstration that Agamemnon can take whatever he wants from whomever he wants. The oath misses the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Embassy: Three Voices, Three Failures<br>Nestor selects the envoys with precision: Phoenix, Ajax, and Odysseus, accompanied by two heralds. The choice of these three is not random \u2014 they represent three fundamentally different modes of persuasion, three relationships to Achilles, and three arguments. Homer&#8217;s genius is to show that each is eloquent, each is sincere, and each fails for a different reason that reveals something essential about Achilles&#8217; state of mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Arrival: Achilles at the Lyre<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before any speech is made, Homer gives us one of the poem&#8217;s most carefully constructed images: Achilles playing a lyre, singing &#8220;the feats of heroes,&#8221; with Patroclus sitting silently opposite him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is not a casual domestic detail. Achilles is performing the heroic tradition \u2014 singing the klea andr\u014dn, the glories of men \u2014 at the very moment when he has withdrawn from heroic action. He is preserving the tradition in art while refusing to participate in it. The lyre itself is spoils from the sack of Eetion&#8217;s city \u2014 a war trophy turned into a musical instrument, violence transmuted into song. There is something prophetic in the image: Achilles, the greatest warrior of his generation, has become its storyteller. He has stepped out of the epic and is watching it from a distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The hospitality that follows is exquisitely rendered. Achilles butchers the meat himself \u2014 he is no longer a commander delegating labor; he is a host, performing domestic roles. Patroclus serves as his second in peace as in war. The meal is shared; the wine is mixed. Everything about the scene enacts the values of xenia that the war itself was fought to defend. These men are enemies of no one in this tent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is crucial. Homer ensures that the embassy arrives in a space of warmth, generosity, and ritual correctness \u2014 and then has Achilles reject everything they ask. The rejection is not a product of hostility or poor treatment. It happens in the most generous, hospitable setting imaginable. Which means it is considered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Odysseus: The Strategic Argument<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Odysseus speaks first and longest, and his speech is a masterpiece of rhetorical construction \u2014 but it is a masterpiece that fails because it is a masterpiece. Odysseus argues like a diplomat: he opens with the military crisis, recites Agamemnon&#8217;s offer verbatim, adds Peleus&#8217;s parting advice (&#8220;check your high temper, for the better part is in goodwill&#8221;), and closes with an appeal to pity for the Achaeans and the promise of killing Hector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every element is well-chosen. Every move is the correct one within the diplomatic playbook. And that is precisely the problem. Odysseus&#8217;s speech is strategic \u2014 it is constructed to achieve a result \u2014 and Achilles can detect this. The man who &#8220;hates as the gates of hell&#8221; anyone who says one thing while hiding another in his heart recognizes Odysseus&#8217;s instrumental intelligence, even as he respects it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Odysseus omits two things from Agamemnon&#8217;s speech. He drops Agamemnon&#8217;s line: &#8220;Moreover I am older and more royal than himself. Therefore, let him now obey me.&#8221; This is telling. Odysseus recognized that the hierarchizing language \u2014 the insistence that Agamemnon&#8217;s rank gives him the right to command Achilles&#8217;s acceptance \u2014 would enrage Achilles, so he edited it out. But Achilles will supply its absence himself. He knows Agamemnon, and he knows what was said even if it wasn&#8217;t repeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second omission is subtler. Odysseus adds something Agamemnon did not say: &#8220;You might even kill Hector.&#8221; This is Odysseus planting the hook of kleos \u2014 the promise of supreme glory. It is clever, because it is the one thing that might genuinely move Achilles. But it is also manipulative, and Achilles&#8217;s response will show that the offer of glory has lost its power over him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Achilles&#8217; Response: The Dissolution of the Heroic World<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Achilles&#8217; reply to Odysseus is the most important speech in the Iliad \u2014 arguably in all of Greek literature. It is not a refusal of terms. It is a refusal of the entire system within which terms can be negotiated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He begins with a declaration of honesty: &#8220;I will say what I mean.&#8221; He will not be Odysseus. He will not employ rhetoric. What follows is a systematic dismantlement of every assumption the heroic world operates on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First: the equivalence of effort and reward has been destroyed. &#8220;He that fights fares no better than he that does not; coward and hero are held in equal honour, and death deals like measure to him who works and him who is idle.&#8221; This is not a complaint about a specific injustice. It is an ontological claim: the heroic value system is a lie. The entire structure of differential honour \u2014 which assigns greater glory to greater risk \u2014 does not, in Achilles&#8217; experience, function. The tim\u0113 system Agamemnon claims to uphold is fraudulent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Second: the metaphor of the bird. &#8220;As a bird when she has found a morsel takes it to her nestlings, and herself fares hardly, even so many a long night have I been wakeful, and many a bloody battle have I waged.&#8221; This is not a warrior&#8217;s self-description. It is a worker&#8217;s. Achilles is casting himself not as a hero seeking glory but as a provider whose labour is exploited. He does the work; Agamemnon collects the profit. The image strips heroism down to its economic substrate and finds it indistinguishable from servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Third: the question of motivation itself. &#8220;Why, pray, must the Argives needs fight the Trojans? What made the son of Atreus gather the host and bring them? Was it not for the sake of Helen? Are the sons of Atreus the only men in the world who love their wives?&#8221; This is devastating. Achilles interrogates the founding premise of the war and finds it arbitrary. Men are dying by the thousands because one man&#8217;s wife was taken, and the man who took her is sleeping in Troy while the men who came to retrieve her are being slaughtered. The cause is just, perhaps \u2014 but its prosecution has been so corrupted by Agamemnon&#8217;s greed and pride that the justice is no longer recoverable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fourth: &#8220;Any man of common right feeling will love and cherish her who is his own, as I this woman, with my whole heart, though she was but a fruitling of my spear.&#8221; This line needs careful reading. Achilles is not saying he loves Briseis romantically. He is saying that his attachment to her is rooted in something more honest than the political marriages Agamemnon proposes \u2014 the union with his daughter, the dowry of seven cities. Briseis is a war prize, yes. But she became his. The relationship, however unequal its origin, contains genuine human attachment. Agamemnon&#8217;s offers \u2014 daughters he has never met, cities he has never visited \u2014 are abstractions. Briseis is real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fifth and most importantly: the Two Fates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Choice: Kleos vs. Nostos<br>&#8220;My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end. If I stay here and fight, I shall not return alive but my name will live for ever: whereas if I go home my name will die, but it will be long ere death shall take me.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the central existential proposition of the Iliad, and it is stated here with absolute clarity. Achilles can choose a short, glorious life of imperishable fame, or a long, obscure life of domestic contentment. The entire heroic system \u2014 every death on the plain of Troy, every speech about honour and shame, every prayer for kleos \u2014 exists to make the first choice seem obvious. Die young, be remembered forever. This is what heroes do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Achilles is choosing the second option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is not cowardice. This is not fatigue. This is a philosophical position arrived at through sustained reflection on the corruption of the system that makes the first choice worthwhile. Why die young for glory when glory is distributed by men like Agamemnon, who reward the brave and the idle equally, who steal from their best warrior to demonstrate power, who confuse possession with worth? The fame Achilles would die for is administered by the very people who have demonstrated they do not understand what it means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bird simile and the Two Fates together constitute Achilles&#8217; argument: the heroic economy exploits the worker and pays in a currency (fame) whose value is set by those who benefit from the exploitation. Withdrawal is not a tantrum. It is a strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Homer is too honest to let this position stand unchallenged. Achilles is right about the corruption. He is also \u2014 as the poem will demonstrate \u2014 wrong about the possibility of escaping the system. His withdrawal will not produce a long, peaceful life. It will produce the death of Patroclus, which will force him back into the war anyway, and he will kill Hector and die young and his name will live forever. The Two Fates are not as separable as they appear. The attempt to choose obscurity is itself woven into the tapestry of glory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Phoenix: The Narrative Mirror<br>Phoenix&#8217;s speech is the longest in the book, and it operates on a completely different register from Odysseus&#8217;s strategic appeal. Where Odysseus argued from consequence \u2014 fight, or the ships burn \u2014 Phoenix argues from analogy. He tells a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But first, he establishes his personal claim. Phoenix is not a diplomat; he is Achilles&#8217; surrogate father. The autobiography of his exile \u2014 the curse of his father Amyntor, the concubine, the plot to kill, the flight through Greece to Phthia \u2014 establishes Phoenix as a man who understands what it means to leave home, to be estranged from a father, to start over. When he says &#8220;I loved you with all my heart&#8221; and describes feeding baby Achilles from his own lap, wiping wine from the child&#8217;s helpless mouth onto his own shirt, the intimacy is overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This matters because Phoenix is the one person in the embassy who can speak to Achilles not as a supplicant but as a parent. His appeal is not to honour or duty or patriotism. It is to the bond between a father-figure and the child he raised. &#8220;I made a son of you, Achilles, that in my hour of need you might protect me.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Allegory of Prayers and Sin<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before the Meleager story, Phoenix delivers one of the poem&#8217;s most extraordinary allegorical passages. He describes Prayers (Litai) as daughters of Zeus who follow behind Sin (At\u0113) \u2014 Sin being swift and fierce, running ahead, while the Prayers come &#8220;hobbling and healing&#8221; after. If a man receives the Prayers when they arrive, they bless him. If he refuses them, they return to Zeus and ask that Sin be sent to punish him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a theologically radical argument. Phoenix is telling Achilles that refusing to be reconciled is not merely stubbornness \u2014 it is a cosmic posture with divine consequences. The allegory is also a compressed portrait of the embassy itself: Agamemnon&#8217;s sin (swift, destructive, already far ahead) and the embassy (three old and respected men, arriving late, asking to be received). Achilles is being warned: you can refuse, but the refusal itself has a moral cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Achilles&#8217; response to this \u2014 &#8220;I have honour from Jove himself, which will abide with me at my ships while I have breath in my body&#8221; \u2014 sidesteps the allegory entirely. He does not engage with the theology of Prayers and Sin. He asserts his own direct relationship with Zeus that bypasses the entire human-mediated system of supplication and reconciliation. It is not that he disbelieves Phoenix. It is that he considers himself exempt from the framework Phoenix is describing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Meleager Parallel: What the Story Does and Doesn&#8217;t Do<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Meleager story is a paradeigma \u2014 an exemplary tale used to persuade. It is one of the most structurally important inset narratives in the Iliad. Phoenix tells of Meleager, who withdrew from battle in anger, was offered escalating rewards to return, refused them all, and finally re-entered the fight only when his wife described the horrors of a sacked city \u2014 by which point the rewards had been withdrawn and he saved the city for nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The parallel is obvious. Meleager = Achilles. The Curetes = the Trojans. Cleopatra = the woman who will eventually move him. The gifts refused = Agamemnon&#8217;s catalogue. The lesson seems clear: return now, while the gifts are still on the table; don&#8217;t wait until the cost of re-entry has erased the benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Homer has built a crucial difference into the parallel that Phoenix either does not see or does not mention. Meleager&#8217;s withdrawal was caused by anger at his mother (who cursed him after he killed her brother). Achilles&#8217; withdrawal is caused by anger at his commander \u2014 at the system itself, not at a family member. Meleager&#8217;s anger is domestic; Achilles&#8217; is political. Meleager&#8217;s re-entry is prompted by his wife&#8217;s description of what happens when a city falls; Achilles&#8217; eventual re-entry will be prompted by the death of Patroclus. The forces that move each hero are fundamentally different in kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even more importantly: Meleager, when he finally fights, wins. He saves Calydon. But he gets nothing for it. Phoenix&#8217;s conclusion \u2014 &#8220;Be not then, my son, thus minded&#8221; \u2014 is pragmatic advice: take the gifts while they&#8217;re offered, because fighting without reward is the worst outcome. Achilles&#8217; reply reveals the gulf between them: &#8220;I have no need of such honour.&#8221; He does not want Agamemnon&#8217;s gifts because he does not recognize Agamemnon&#8217;s right to define what honour is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Meleager story, in other words, is a perfect parallel that fails to persuade precisely because it is a parallel. It describes a world in which the heroic compact still functions \u2014 anger, withdrawal, negotiation, return, glory. Achilles has moved beyond that world. He is not refusing the terms; he is questioning the framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ajax: The Argument That Almost Works<br>Ajax&#8217;s speech is the shortest of the three embassies \u2014 brief, blunt, and uncomfortable. It does not recite Agamemnon&#8217;s gifts. It does not invoke gods or allegories or exemplary tales. It makes a single, devastating argument from ordinary human decency:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;If a man&#8217;s brother or son has been slain he will accept a fine by way of amends from him that killed him, and the wrong-doer having paid in full remains in peace among his own people; but as for you, Achilles, the gods have put a wicked unforgiving spirit in your heart, and this, all about one single girl, whereas we now offer you the seven best we have, and much else into the bargain.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the argument that lands closest. Achilles&#8217; response to Ajax is notably softer than his response to Odysseus. He does not rail. He does not dismantle Ajax&#8217;s logic. He acknowledges Ajax has spoken &#8220;much to my liking.&#8221; He even makes a concession \u2014 he will not fight until Hector reaches his own ships. This is the narrowest opening any envoy receives, and it goes to the man who made the simplest, most human appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why does Ajax succeed where Odysseus fails? Because Ajax does not try to be clever. He does not construct a strategic argument. He invokes the most basic social norm in the heroic world \u2014 that even murder can be compensated \u2014 and points out that Achilles is rejecting a standard that everyone else, including the families of murdered men, accepts. The appeal is not to glory, not to theology, not to destiny. It is to common practice. And Achilles, who has spent the evening rejecting every elevated principle of the heroic system, finds himself unable to reject the most humble one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But even Ajax&#8217;s argument fails to bring Achilles back. The concession \u2014 fighting only when his own ships are threatened \u2014 is not reconciliation. It is self-defense. Achilles will fight for himself. He will not fight for Agamemnon&#8217;s cause, for the Achaeans&#8217; survival, or for the heroic compact. The most Ajax achieves is a narrowing of the refusal, not its reversal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What Achilles Does Not Say<br>The most important moment in the book may be the silence. When Achilles declares his intention to sail home, he tells the envoys to &#8220;tell him in public that the Achaeans may hate him and beware of him should he think that he can yet dupe others.&#8221; He wants Agamemnon exposed. He wants the army to know that their leader is duplicitous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Achilles does not say what he wants instead. He does not propose an alternative structure of leadership. He does not call for Agamemnon&#8217;s removal. He does not suggest that Odysseus or Diomedes should command. His rejection is purely negative \u2014 a tearing down without a building up. This is, I think, the deepest truth Homer gives us about rage: it is clarifying about what is wrong, and incoherent about what should replace it. Achilles can see the corruption of the heroic system with absolute precision. He cannot imagine what would be better. His rage is luminous and sterile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Diomedes&#8217; Final Word: The Alternative to Achilles<br>The book closes with the envoys returning, Odysseus delivering the bleak report, and the assembly sitting in stunned silence. And then Diomedes speaks again \u2014 the same Diomedes who opened the book by telling Agamemnon he was wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His closing speech is brief and practical: let Achilles go. Don&#8217;t beg him. Rest tonight. Fight tomorrow. Fight in the front rank yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is not resignation. It is a reorientation. Diomedes is saying: the heroic compact does not depend on Achilles. It depends on each man doing what he can, where he is, with what he has. If the best warrior will not fight, then the rest must fight harder. If the king has failed, then the king must fight himself. The system survives not because it is just but because the alternative \u2014 Trojan victory, the destruction of the fleet, death or enslavement \u2014 is worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Diomedes, who in Book V was lifted to divine heights by Minerva and then brought back to earth by Zeus&#8217;s thunderbolt, has learned what Achilles has not yet learned: that divine favor is transient, that glory is distributed unfairly, that the system is corrupt \u2014 and that you fight anyway. Not because the system deserves your loyalty. Because the people beside you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book ends with sleep. The chieftains retire to their tents. Tomorrow there will be more battle, more death, more of the same grinding machinery. But Homer has given us, in this single night of speeches, the poem&#8217;s most penetrating examination of what it means to be a hero: to serve a system you know is broken, to fight for values you have seen corrupted, to choose between a long life you can&#8217;t quite want and a short one you can&#8217;t quite endorse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Achilles has not yet chosen. He thinks he has. He has not. The death of Patroclus will choose for him, and the Two Fates will collapse into one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Book IX is the philosophical heart of the Iliad. Everything before it has been building toward this confrontation, and everything after it will be shaped by its failure. It is a book composed almost entirely of speeches \u2014 six major addresses delivered across a single night \u2014 and yet it carries more dramatic weight than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[235,39,40],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-commentary","tag-homer","tag-illiad"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615,"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leshley.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}