Nine years of war and battles leads two wise Achaians to temporarily lose their sense of rationality in Homer’s The Iliad. The cost of their lapse in judgment is epic for both the Achaians and the Trojans. It completely changes the outcome of the long struggle between the Achaians and the Trojans. It is easy to devalue the problem between Agamemnon and Achilleus if one does not know where they both are coming from, the true heart of the matter. Agamemnon and Achilleus dishonor each other or those around them because of their backgrounds, responsibilities, and their relationships to the gods.
In order to understand why there is conflict between Agamemnon and Achilleus, one needs to be aware of what brought them there, their background. Both Agamemnon and Achilleus have an enormous amount of pressure due to their jobs and responsibilities. Agamemnon is the lord of lords; he is in charge of all. Not only is he responsible for the well being of so many, but he also has been systematically taking over the surrounding cities of Troy for the past seven years. That type of stress eventually takes a toll on him, causing him to “snap”, similar to the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When he is asked to give Chryseis up, his own reward, he feels cheated. He is the one out of all his people who should have a prize, not be prize less. Naturally, he needs to reestablish his role of most powerful by taking the reward of his prized warrior, Achilleus, to compensate the loss of his own personal loss. He even asks Achilleus, “‘What do you want? To you’re your own prize and have me sit here/lacking one?’” as if to make sure that Achilleus understands the ludicrousness that he is asking of Agamemnon (1.133). To Agamemnon, it just makes sense that is the one who has the prize, he is not being selfish, he just does what he believes is right. Achilleus, too, has been under much pressure. He is the one who leads the army to victorious conquests, making him in charge of...