Hesitation of Achilles

This came up in another thread, and I thought I'd make it the subject of a new thread. Hopefully other lit-net members will join in because I'm pretty sure Klaus Peter is tired of hearing from me!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Klaus Peter

One problem I´m trying to solve at this moment is when Achilles wants to kill Agamemnon, but "his heart was divided in counsel, whether he should draw his sharp sword from his side and break up the assembly and kill Agamemnon, or whether he should check his wrath and curb his spirit". Achilles is not the dubious, undecided Hamlet type, but a rather impetuous warrior. Why the sudden doubts? What is the message the author is trying to convey?
What is your opinion? Please leave the gods are out of the problem.

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The quote is from Book 1, around line 190 of the Iliad. Even though Klaus Peter has stated his preference for leaving the gods out of the problem, I think the gods are an important enough part of the Iliad that it should be fair game to talk about them.

Here are some of my thoughts to start things off:

I think this episode is consistent with Achilles' character. We see other examples of him backing off of intentions formed in excessive anger in Book 9 and in Book 24. In Book 9, he angrily makes up his mind to leave for home the next morning in response to Odysseus' speech, but that determination is relaxed first, after the speech of Phoenix, to deciding the next morning whether or not to leave, and finally, after the remarks of Ajax, to staying put but refraining from fighting until his own ships are threatened. In Book 24, Achilles relents and allows Priam to ransom the body of Hector, even though he originally meant to disgrace Hector's corpse by exposing it to scavengers.

I think the remarkable thing isn't that Achilles hesitated, but rather that he was so bold and so angry as to seriously consider murdering Agamemnon. Achilles' angry and vague threat that Agamemnon will be sorry was enough to provoke Nestor to chastise him (Achilles) for not giving Agamemnon his due respect. In fact, I can't think of any instance in the Iliad of a Greek warrior killing another Greek warrior.

As for the author's purpose, besides providing a heightened moment of tension and highlighting the magnitude of the offense that Achilles felt, it gives a glimpse of a part of Achilles' character which, as I said, will manifest itself in crucial ways later in the poem. This part of Achilles' behavior can even be seen as the Iliad in a nutshell: the Greeks come close to destruction because of the wrath of Achilles, but this wrath is quenched and the Greeks escape destruction.

I understand the notion of wanting to leave the gods out of it, but here you have an example of how the gods can be integrated in the logic of the narrative: the hesitation of Achilles is caused by his intelligence, which is Pallas.