Achilles: the Father of Democracy

[All-American]

Achilles gets a bad rap from modern scholars. He's thought of as a man who throws a tantrum and has to have his way, and, though strong, is easily provoked. This is very close to the way that Heracles is depicted in literature-- Heracles also happens to be quite the party animal, and when he gets mad, his rampages are epic. Given the number of similarities between the two, it's little surprise that further comparisons are made. This casts an undeserved shadow upon Achilles, in whom we see some of the first seeds of democracy made manifest.

The subject of the Iliad, following the tradition of epic poetry, is given in its first words: μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος (sing, oh muse, of the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus). This wrath is provoked when Agamemnon is forced to release the spoils of war, the daughter of the priest of Apollo to appease the god, and takes in her stead the prize that had been given to Achilles, the maiden Bryseis. Achilles is understandably upset, not just because he is being deprived of his spoils, but because Bryseis was dear to him-- and apparently, the feeling was mutual, as she left "unwilling." Bryseis was much less a slave and much more a wife to Achilles; perhaps he was plenty justified in being a little peeved.

But his anger is not merely the anger of man. μῆνις is not to be thought of as an unrestrained tantrum, as we typically think of anger, but rather, according to Leonard Charles Muellner, as "a sanction meant to guarantee and maintain the integrity of the world order" (Muellner, The Anger of Achilles, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996). The key to understanding the nature of the wrath of Achilles is also in the first lines: Διὸς δ' ετελειετο βουλή (nevertheless, the will of Zeus was accomplished). μῆνις is divine wrath, made manifest through an agent of the will of Zeus, Achilles. (As a side note, the embodiment of the will of Zeus in Achilles makes for an interesting comparison with He whom Christians consider to be the λόγος made flesh).

Throughout the history of Monarchy, deity has been depicted as siding with the king, creating the complex temple-palace relationship manifest from Ancient Egypt down to the "Divine Right of Kings." In the Iliad, Agamemnon defaults to this defense in response to Achilles' anger, twice citing the well-known fact that the heavenly king Zeus sides with the earthly king:

"I have others around to honour me,
especially all-wise Zeus himself.
Of all the kings Zeus cherishes, it's you
I hate the most."

Nevertheless, Zeus does not side with Agamemnon in this dispute, but with Achilles, and for a variety of reasons. Among the more boring ones are that Achilles is a descendant of Zeus, and Thetis, Achilles' mother, has a particularly strong influence over Zeus. Even more intriguing is the fact that Zeus refuses to side with a king who demonstrates his hubris and abuses his power. Agamemnon is the archetypical tyrant viewed with suspicion and disdain by Greek literature for centuries after, and Achilles seems to represent not only the will of Zeus, but the people who refuse to bow to such a tyrant. Even the name of Achilles suggests this. Some believe his name is a combination of ἄχος (grief) and λαός (people, tribe, nation, etc.), and thus his anger is really the anger of an entire nation. The transition from an a-grade to an e-grade seems unlikely (from achillaos to achilleos). More likely is that the alpha is a collective prefix, the "eus" denotes one acting as an agent, and "chilios", thousand, are combined in "achilleus," "he who acts as a thousand men." This would not only reflect his tremendous fighting ability, but also preserve the idea that he acts as an agent of a larger group of people.

As Homer's works constituted the founding myths of the panhellenic society of 800 to 400 BC, it seems altogether probable that the seeds of one of Greece's most unique institutions, democracy, should be found in them; and here we seem to have it.