Understanding the Wrath of Achilles

                                                      Understanding the Wrath of Achilles

Let wrath be your song O Goddess! Sing of the accursed rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, which brought untold woes to the Achaeans and banished to Hades many stalwart souls of heroes, turning them into carrion for dogs and birds of prey, thereby bringing to final fulfillment the plan of Zeus. Begin your song, O Muse, at that first sign of strife between the son of Atreus, lord of men, and the divine Achilles.

            Homer made it very clear from the start what this story was all about, namely the terrible anger that Achilles bore and the impact that his rage had on those around him. But what we witness of Achilles’ anger in the Iliad seems to range through a broad swath of emotions. We see him responding with fits of pique and petulance at times, and on other occasions lashing out with angry words, and still at other times raging around in a fury like a madman totally out of control. Were these all individual and separate expressions of that same wrath, and if so, can they all be explained within the framework of the central storyline that Homer offers as his main subject? How do we gain a true and complete understanding of the wrath of Achilles?

            The subject of anger has been widely studied by psychologists and others and scores of anger management strategies have been developed to assist people in coping with their troubled feelings. Those strategies will depend on the type of anger with which one is dealing and it is important to note that the intensity of a person’s anger can vary greatly. If one were to develop a scale to measure the degree of anger that someone could display, the range could vary from mild irritation at the minimum level to uncontrolled rage at the highest. Marcia Reynolds Psy.D. created the chart 50 Shades of Anger in a 2018 article in Psychology Today in an article entitled, Where Are You on the Anger Scale?  She listed 50 different words describing anger at various levels ranging from disappointed to vicious, and in studying her chart we can see Achilles and his actions at several points, confirming for us the fact that the hero experienced a variety of forms of anger and wrath throughout the story.

                Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics: “Anybody can become angry; that is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” It is safe to say that Achilles was not very good at anger management, no matter what type of anger he happened to be displaying at the moment.

            Achilles was not the only one who was filled with rage. Other than his mother Thetis, his two biggest proponents and firm Achaean supporters on Olympus were Athena and Hera. Homer tells us that they were both consumed with rage. Athena was quiet and did not say anything but was highly incensed at her father Zeus and bitter rage consumed her. On the other hand, wild fury possessed Hera’s heart and she burst forth in anger. Zeus told the two of them, if ever I wish do destroy any city where the men you love are living, do not get in the way of my rage. Perhaps we are wrong in our desire to condemn Achilles for his wrath, for it seems that he was just acting like the gods. They seemed to be angry all the time and his actions mirrored theirs.

            There were times when the wrath of Achilles was on the lower end of the anger scale. For example, when Agamemnon seized his war prize Briseis, he got sulky and petulant and withdrew from the fighting. Achilles the son of fair-haired Thetis does not fight in battle but rather sits and broods over his wrath near his ships. He felt that he had been embarrassed in public and slighted and he just wasn’t going to put up with it any longer. He acted like a spoiled child and cried to his mommy that the big boy took his toy, that he never got his fair share, and that he was going to take his stuff and go home. But his anger started to escalate quickly. He began by attacking Agamemnon verbally and calling him names and was on the point of drawing his sword to physically attack the king, when his mother intervened and stopped him, before he could act out his wrath.

            An embassy was sent to Achilles in an attempt to convince him to give up his anger and to return to the fighting. Many great and wonderful gifts were offered to him but to no avail. The gods can be convinced this way, but not Achilles. Men can turn the hearts of the gods from wrath with devout prayers, poured out libations and the savour of burnt offerings whenever they step out of line and transgress. Achilles made it very clear to those who had been sent to him that he was not to be appeased nor would his anger dissipate.

Then in answer to him spoke the swift-footed Achilles. “Ajax, Zeus-born son of Telamon and leader of the people, you speak much that resonates with me but I have such wrath welling up in my spirit when I am reminded of how much disgrace the son of Atreus has brought upon me in front of the Argives, like I was nothing more than a despised migrant.”

Achilles indicated very plainly that the root of his anger lay in the fact that he had been deeply humiliated and shamed in front of his companions. His reaction was first of all to lash out and then secondly to withdraw, seething with anger and coping with depression. He knew that he could do little to stand up to the all-powerful king to get his way, so the next best thing was to take a course of action that would teach everyone a lesson, regardless of the dire consequences on all concerned. Not even the potential destruction of their ships that would give them a way home could dissuade him.

The first to ask anything was Agamemnon the leader of men. “Tell me now praiseworthy Odysseus and great glory of the Achaeans, is he willing to ward off destructive battle fire from the ships or does he refuse and great wrath still consume his soul?”

Then the much-enduring godlike Odysseus answered him. “Son of Atreus most noble Agamemnon leader of men, that man is not willing to quench his anger and he is filled with wrath and wants nothing to do with you or your gifts.

Achilles’ irrationality triumphed over his reason and it would take a catalyst of the highest order to sway him from his chosen course. That catalyst turned out to be the death of Patroclus, an event that caught Achilles completely by surprise.

Achilles knew nothing of the death of Patroclus for far away from the swift ships were they fighting under the Trojan walls. It never came to the mind of Achilles that he was dead, but rather that he would return alive after reaching the double gates, nor did he believe that Patroclus would sack the city without him, nor with him for that matter. For his mother had brought him such messages from afar many times, tidings about the plans of great Zeus. But his mother did not advise him how great an evil had happened, that his dearly beloved companion had perished.

It was Antilochus, the son of Nestor, who brought Achilles the news of the death of his beloved companion.

While he turned this over in his heart and mind, there came up near to him the noble son of Nestor crying hot tears and proclaiming to him the grief-causing news. “Woe is me, son of wise-hearted Peleus, for I bring distressing news of something that I wish had never happened. Patroclus lies low and his naked corpse is being fought over and your armour has been seized by Hector with the flashing helmet.”

His grief was so great that those around him feared that he might even commit suicide.

Thus he spoke and a black cloud of distress descended on Achilles and with both his hands he gathered up the dark dust and threw it on his head and made ugly his fine countenance and the black soot fell on his fragrantly scented tunic. He stretched himself out in the dust, overpowered in his mightiness and with his own dear hands he tore at and dishevelled his hair. And the female slaves that Achilles and Patroclus had seized and carried off as war prizes, mourned greatly in their hearts and uttered loud cries of grief. They ran to the wise-hearted Achilles and beat their breasts with their hands and the limbs of one of them collapsed beneath her. On the other side of them, Antilochus cried and shed tears and held the hands of Achilles who was moaning in sorrow deep in his heart, for fear that he might cut his own throat with a blade.

            The death of Patroclus was indeed all that was needed to send Achilles back into the fray of battle. He was motivated by grief over the demise of his friend, as well as by vengeance against Hector for his killing of Patroclus and for the theft of his armour. Achilles reconciled with Agamemnon and received a new set of glorious armour that had been commissioned by his mother Thetis and fashioned by the god Hephaestus.

Suitably clad and fueled by his wrath, Achilles launched his vicious assault and rampage against the Trojans. He single-handedly took on the Trojan army and slaughtered so many enemy warriors that the Scamander River god became angry that his waters had been clogged. In a fit of fury, Achilles battled the river itself and defeated it with the assistance of the gods. Once he had finished with the Trojan warriors, Achilles took after Hector himself. In his rage he chased the Trojan prince three times around the walls of Troy and then finally killed him with the help of Athena. Then we witnessed Achilles as he reached the very heights of the anger scale. In a display of extreme rage and disrespect, abandoning all the principles by which a hero was expected to behave, he stripped the armour from Hector’s body, tied his naked corpse to the back of his chariot and dragged it around the walls of Troy for several days. His fierce reaction was that of a deranged madman who was completely out of control. When Homer invoked the Muse to sing of the wrath of Achilles, we could not for a moment contemplate that this would be a scene that we would witness. The highest degree of anger is called rage and is sometimes called fury or frenzy. This overwhelming state of blind rage and wrath is characterized by a complete loss of control and the survival centre of the brain takes over and overrides all rational thought. Achilles, at this state of wrath, was a far different creature than the pouting youngster whom we witnessed sulking in his tent and complaining to his mother. How can one recover from such a state?

But remarkably, Achilles did recover from the destructive impact of his pride and anger, and he accomplished this without recourse to anger management techniques, medication, or in seeking professional assistance. His rage ultimately subsided when King Priam of Troy, the father of the slain Hector, came to the tent of Achilles under the cover of darkness and begged for the return of his son’s body. Achilles was greatly moved by Priam’s request and the love that he bore for his son, and his visit served to remind him of his own father and the grief that he would bear knowing that his son would never return to Pythia. In a moment of shared grief and compassion, Achilles was once more able to demonstrate his humanity. His desecration of Hector’s body had been inhuman, to say the least, but he was brought back to his own humanity through the compassion that he felt for Priam and the shared sense of loss that they had over the loss of a dearly loved one.

Homer told us that the Iliad was the story of the wrath of Achilles and much of the narrative centres around that wrath and its implications. The hero’s anger, whether viewed as mild in the beginning or totally out of control near the end of the story, was the backdrop for most of the action in the Iliad and drove the plot. Anger has extreme consequences, whether it is the anger of a mortal like Achilles, or the terrible wrath and fury displayed constantly by the gods of Olympus. The Iliad is indeed a story about rage – it starts that way but it does not finish in the same vein. The Iliad ends with the wrath of Achilles having been dissipated and resolved through empathy. The funeral of Hector draws the curtain on the story and the message is that vengeance is limited and that goodness will win out over war. Demonstrating to us that basic and decent humanity will ultimately triumph of over rage and strife is just one more way that Homer makes the point that war is evil. I refuse to budge from my long-held position that the Iliad is an anti-war poem.