emnon, as commander-in-chief, received as his share of the
spoil the beautiful Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, the priest of Apollo;
whilst to Achilles was allotted another captive, the fair Briseis. The
following day Chryses, anxious to ransom his daughter, repaired to the
Greek camp; but Agamemnon refused to accede to his proposal, and with rude
and insulting words drove the old man away. Full of grief at the loss of
his child Chryses called upon Apollo for vengeance on her captor. His
prayer was heard, and the god sent a dreadful pestilence which raged for
ten days in the camp of the Greeks. Achilles at length called together a
council, and inquired of Calchas the soothsayer how to arrest this terrible
visitation of the gods. The seer replied that Apollo, incensed at the
insult offered to his priest, had sent the plague, and that only by the
surrender of Chryseis could his anger be appeased.

On hearing this Agamemnon agreed to resign the maiden; but being already
embittered against Calchas for his prediction with regard to his own
daughter Iphigenia, he now heaped insults upon the soothsayer and accused
him of plotting against his interests. Achilles espoused the cause of
Calchas, and a violent dispute arose, in which the son of Thetis would have
killed his chief but for the timely interference of Pallas-Athene, who
suddenly appeared beside him, unseen by the rest, and recalled him to a
sense of the duty he owed to his commander. Agamemnon revenged himself on
Achilles by depriving him of his beautiful captive, the fair Briseis, who
had become so attached to her kind and noble captor that she wept bitterly
on being removed from his charge. Achilles, now fairly disgusted with the
ungenerous conduct of his chief, withdrew himself to his tent, and
obstinately declined to take further part in the war.

Heart-sore and dejected he repaired to the sea-shore, and there invoked the
presence of his divine mother. In answer to his prayer Thetis emerged from
beneath {293} the waves, and comforted her gallant son with the assurance
that she would entreat the mighty Zeus to avenge his wrongs by giving
victory to the Trojans, so that the Greeks might learn to realize the great
loss which they had sustained by his withdrawal from the army. The Trojans
being informed by one of their spies of the defection of Achilles, became
emboldened by the absence of this brave and intrepid leader, whom they
feared above all the other Greek heroes;