VI. THE DREAM OF AGAMEMNON.
Very soon great evils came upon the Greeks because of the strife between the chiefs. When Chryseis was restored to her father, Apollo stopped the plague; but the wrong done to Achilles provoked the anger of another deity. This was Thetis, who, having much power with Jupiter, was able to persuade him to take up the cause of her injured son.
For as soon as the heralds departed from his tent, leading away the fair-cheeked Briseis, Achilles withdrew from his friends, retired to the seashore, and sitting there alone he bitterly wept, and with outstretched hands prayed to his mother, Thetis. The goddess heard his voice, and ascending from the depths of the ocean, where she dwelt in the palace of her aged father, Nereus, she sat down beside the hero, and soothing him with her hand, she inquired the cause of his distress. "Why do you weep, my son? What grief has come upon thy mind?"
Then Achilles related to his mother what Agamemnon had done, and he begged her to go to Mount Olympus and entreat Jupiter to punish the insult that had been offered to her son. He spoke of the service she had done for Jupiter long before, when Juno, Neptune, and Minerva had made a plot to bind him, and cast him from the throne of heaven. They might have succeeded in doing this if Thetis had not called Briʹa-reus up from Pluto's kingdom to help Jupiter. Briareus was a mighty giant who had a hundred hands, and his appearance in Olympus so terrified the conspirators that they did not attempt to carry out their wicked plot.
"Now," said Achilles to his mother, "remind Jupiter of this, and beg him to aid the Trojans and give them victory in battle, so that Agamemnon may feel the effects of his folly in dishonoring me."
"Ascend to heaven and bring thy prayer to Jove,
If e'er by word or act thou gav'st him aid.
For I remember, in my father's halls
I often heard thee, glorying, tell how thou,
Alone of all the gods, didst interpose
To save the cloud-compeller, Saturn's son,
From shameful overthrow, when all the rest
Who dwell upon Olympus had conspired
To bind him,—Juno, Neptune, and with them
Pallas Athene. Thou didst come and loose
His bonds, and call up to the Olympian heights
The hundred-handed, whom the immortal gods
Have named Briareus."
Bryant, Iliad, Book I.
Thetis readily consented to do as her son desired.
"Not now, however!" said she, "for yesterday Jupiter went to E-thi-oʹpi-a to a banquet, and all the gods went with him. But in twelve days he will return. Then I will go to Olympus and tell your words to thunder-delighting Jove, and I think I shall be able to persuade him to grant your request."