The Chryses and Agamemnon Quarrel as a Supplication

Supplication appears in the Iliad quite frequently and, unfortunately, does not always go as it should.  Typically, military scenes depict supplication, but many scenes in the epic, although not militant in nature, lend themselves to being read as a supplication.  One such scene is present upon the opening of the book, in which Chryses begs Agamemnon to return Chryseis, the priest’s daughter, back to her father.  In this case, Chryses acts as the suppliant and Agamemnon, the supplicant.  As is natural for a supplication, reason to supplicate is given, but the reason is not the usual incentive; rather, Chryses offers Agamemnon freedom from Apollo’s wrath of arrows and disease.  Agamemnon, however, is notoriously tactless when supplication is involved, and he claims that Chryseis is better than his wife, Clytemnestra, so he will keep the priest’s daughter and take her home.  Because supplication is considered a pious act, Agamemnon denying supplication is acting against the gods, and this is only made worse by him denying a priest.  As he did not supplicate the priest, the entire Greek army receives punishment for his mistake in the form of an awful plague, and only then does Agamemnon realize he has done something wrong.  Upon this realization that not supplicating is something that should be avoided, he finally returns Chryseis to her father, but not without claiming a replacement and further dooming his army.  After this “supplication” scene, however, it is still not possible to claim that Agamemnon has learned his lesson, as he wrongs Adrestus via Menelaus later.