Now, as a white petty-bourgeois, my encounters with The Man have all been fairly comfortable--heck, my summer was spent working for The Man. It's not that I like him much, but he's been relatively benign to me; he seems more like The Guy. Of course, I know better. For those of you in the dark (as I was a mere few months ago), The Man is the personified combination of all that is authoritarian, oppressive, and prejudiced in the status quo. This is nice, you may say, but what's its relation to Homer? Well, I was walking home from my favourite tree-park (walking on the boulevard to stick it to him-as-industrialism) when a horrific question stopped me dead in my tracks: is Agamemnon The Man? My automatic reaction was to balk. No, he couldn't be. But then I began to think.
Here's the case against him. I detest recognising Elizabeth Cook's Agamemnon-defamatory book, but she was close to the truth when she wrote that he likes throwing his weight around. The more I read, the more I realised that his actions most attributable to a sinister motive are, in reality, done from sheer caprice. At the beginning, we discover that he has recently captured the daughter of an important priest, Chryses. When the priest comes to file a formal complaint, Agamemnon thumbs his nose and loudly claims that Chryseis (the daughter) is "busying herself with her loom and visiting [his] couch." (Book I) However, when Agamemnon gives her back under divine pressure, he swears that he hasn't actually slept with her. After this, he demands Briseis as compensation for his loss. Again, we discover later that he hasn't touched her. Agamemnon seems to be motivated by sheer love of power. Aw, crap, I thought hopelessly. He is so The Man.
Or is he sticking it TO The Man? I know: if it's true, he certainly has a strange way of showing it. But think... the two girls aren't actually mistreated by him (although Agamemnon's seige is responsible for Chryseis' status as a P.O.W.), and each abduction seems specifically designed to annoy rich, powerful people. It's obvious that he has nothing against the 'Seis lassies, as he confesses that he has a weak spot for Chreseis, whom he loves "better even than [his] own wife Clytemnestra"--though that's no feat, given he admits to hating the missus--and extolls her "understanding and accomplishments." And it's obvious that he gets a huge kick out of seeing the likes of Achilles foaming at the mouth after having been deprived of their "property."
Still, of all the characters in The Iliad, he is by far the most militant. The characters' militancy quotient is not to be confused with their violence quotient, by the way (Achilles wins the VQ prize by miles). Shockingly enough, Agamemnon is Homer's the third least violent male after loverboy Paris and the retired Nestor--in fact, Achilles teases him about his reluctance to actually kill people:
But the son of Peleus again began railing at the son of Atreus, for he was still in a rage. "Wine-bibber," he cried, "with the face of a dog and the heart of a hind, you never dare to go out with the host in fight, nor yet with our chosen men in ambuscade. You shun this as you do death itself."
This is not to say that Agamemnon refuses to fight when it's demanded of him; no one could call him a pacifist. His Day Of Glory comes in Book XI, and compared to the DOGs of the other heroes, it's pretty short and sweet. He quits the field when his arm is run through right below the elbow with a spear (more on this later when I review The Firebrand). However, the point is that Agamemnon is militant, not violent--something he has in common with The Man. Worse, recall the Iphigenia incident. (For those of you who's memory needs refreshing, go here.) At first glance, that seems pretty condemning. He was going to sacrifice his daughter to achieve a military goal--how much more militant and authoritarian can you get?
Unless. Who says Agamemnon's goal was military? I know that if I believed that unless I killed a young girl more than 60,000 people would die that I would serve the greater good. Actually, the fact that he was even willing to give up his own daughter to save others is distinctly UNlike The Man. Even taking into account his normal militancy, his is a regime which is far from dispassionate or detatched. He feels passionately about the lives of his troops. One of my favourite parts of the Iliad is when the King of Kings cries over the fate of his soldiers:
Now the other princes of the Achaeans slept soundly the whole night through, but Agamemnon son of Atreus was troubled, so that he could get no rest. As when fair Juno's lord flashes his lightning in token of great rain or hail or snow when the snow-flakes whiten the ground, or again as a sign that he will open the wide jaws of hungry war, even so did Agamemnon heave many a heavy sigh, for his soul trembled within him. When he looked upon the plain of Troy he marvelled at the many watchfires burning in front of Ilius, and at the sound of pipes and flutes and of the hum of men, but when presently he turned towards the ships and hosts of the Achaeans, he tore his hair by handfuls before Jove on high, and groaned aloud for the very disquietness of his soul.
To tell the truth, that's the quote that made me fall in love with the son of Atreus. He's very human, and his emotions run deep within him. Oppressive institution doesn't wail because oppressive institution doesn't care. Lowly footsoldiers are simply tools to The Man. Finally, I was reassured. Agamemnon is authoritarian, yes, but he also enjoys yanking the rug from under authority, including his own. He understands what he's doing, not only in relation to how it benefits himself, but in terms of the whole, even under immense pressure to do otherwise. In short, he can be easily vindicated of the accusation that he's The Man.
Upon reasoning thus, I felt a great relief sweep over me. With my King of Kings secure in the ranks of my favour, I ran the rest of the way home.