Book I

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Achilles received the heralds respectfully. He had no blame for them, since they were but messengers. Nor did he refuse to obey the command of the king. He delivered Briseis to the heralds, and they conducted her to the tent of Agamemnon. Thus was committed the deed which brought countless woes upon the Greeks, for Achilles, in deep grief and anger, vowed that he would no more lead his Myrmidons to battle for a king who had so dishonored and insulted him.

"Let these heralds," said he, "be the witnesses before gods and men of the insult offered to me by this tyrant king, and when there shall be need of me again to save the Greeks from destruction, appeal to me shall be in vain."

Such was the origin of the wrath of Achilles, which is the subject of Homer's Iliad. The Iliad is not a complete story of the Trojan War, but an account of the disasters which happened to the Greeks through the anger of Achilles. The poem, indeed, relates the events of only fifty-eight days, but they were events of the highest interest and they were very numerous. It is remarked by Pope that the subject of the Iliad is the shortest and most single ever chosen by any poet. Yet Homer has supplied a vaster variety of incidents, a greater number of councils, speeches, battles, and events of all kinds, than are to be found in any other poem.

The Iliad begins with the wrath of Achilles, which in the first line of the first book is announced as the poet's theme:

Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing! That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain; Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore, Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore: Since great Achilles and Atrides strove, Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!

POPE, _Iliad_,