The Iliad

Son of Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis, prince of Phthia, leader of the Myrmidons — the greatest warrior the world has ever known, and a man who chose glory over life

Your mother Thetis, the sea goddess, told you the choice before you ever boarded a ship: stay home in Phthia and live a long quiet life that no one will remember, or sail to Troy and die young in a blaze of glory that will never be forgotten. You chose Troy. You chose glory. And for nine years you have been the terror of the Trojan plain — swift-footed Achilles, breaker of men, the warrior that Hector himself will not face alone. But Agamemnon, the king of kings, has insulted you. He took Briseis, your war prize, to demonstrate that his authority outranks your excellence. So you have withdrawn. You sit in your tent while the Greeks die, and the satisfaction of watching Agamemnon fail is real but not enough, because Patroclus watches the slaughter and cannot hide his grief, and you know — you have always known — that your story does not end in a tent.

For nine years the Greeks have besieged Troy, the great walled city on the Anatolian coast, and for nine years Troy has held. The war began with an insult — Paris of Troy stole Helen from Menelaus of Sparta — and a thousand ships crossed the sea to bring her back. Now the ships are beached, the Greek camp sprawls along the shore, and the Trojan walls remain unbreached. The plain between camp and city is the killing ground: a flat expanse of dust and grass where chariots race, spears fly, and the greatest warriors of the age meet in single combat while gods take sides above them. Zeus sits on Olympus and weighs the fates of men in golden scales. Athena fights for the Greeks. Apollo fights for the Trojans. And Achilles — the best of the Achaeans, the man whose mother dipped him in the river Styx and made him nearly invulnerable — has withdrawn from the fighting because Agamemnon, king of kings, took his war prize Briseis to humiliate him. Without Achilles, the Greeks are losing. The Trojans press closer to the ships. And in his tent by the sea, the greatest warrior alive plays his lyre and sings of the glory he has chosen over a long life, and waits for the world to beg him to return.