Day 32: Prizes for a Dogface

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ἀλλὰ σοί, ὦ μέγ' ἀναιδές, ἅμ' ἑσπόμεθ', ὄφρα συ χαίρῃς,
τιμὴν ἀρνύμενοι Μενελάῳ σοί τε, κυνῶπα,
πρὸς Τρώων. τῶν οὔ τι μετατρέπῃ οὐδ' ἀλεγίζεις·
καὶ δή μοι γέρας αὐτὸς ἀφαιρήσεσθαι ἀπειλεῖς,
ᾧ ἔπι πολλὰ μόγησα δόσαν δέ μοι υἷες Ἀχαιῶν.
οὐ μέν σοί ποτε ἶσον ἔχω γέρας ὁπποτ' Ἀχαιοὶ
Τρώων ἐκπέρσως' ἐὺ ναιόμενον πτολίεθρον·

But for you, O shameless one, we followed together,
So that you might rejoice, striving to win honor and recompense
For Menelaus and for you, dogface, from the Trojans.
This you neither consider nor heed; And you yourself now
Threaten to take my prize, for which I have greatly toiled,
And that the sons of the Achaeans gave to me.
For that I never have a prize equal to yours,
Whenever the Achaeans should sack some
Well placed Trojan city.


Achilles continues his assault on Agamemnon's character, even calling him a dogface, which is a dangerous thing to say to a king. On a side note: this entire scene puts to rest any idea that some have made that the Iliad is an actual memory of some grand expedition from mainland Greece at the end of the Bronze Age under a Mycenean great king named Agamemnon. There is another theory I think more plausible: that of the Iliad and Odyssey being distant, shadowy recollections of the Sea Peoples who exploded from the ruins of the Mycenean kingdoms in Greece to collapse several Bronze Age empires through their vast and widespread sea raiding. Does this entire quarrel not sound more like an argument between pirates than a dispute between a sovereign and his subject?