The suppliant
Chryses comes to the Achaean ships with a staff of gold and the wreaths of Apollo, offering a generous ransom for his daughter. He asks the army to reverence the god, and the soldiers shout assent. Agamemnon refuses him harshly and threatens him, and the old man leaves in fear.
The scene is a textbook supplication, and the poem uses it to define Agamemnon’s character. The king’s refusal violates both the ritual of supplication and the practical logic of return. The consequences are immediate and divine.
The prayer
When Chryses is alone by the shore, he prays to Apollo to make the Danaans pay for his tears. The god hears him, descends from Olympus, and shoots his arrows into the camp. The plague lasts nine days, and the pyres burn constantly.
Chryses does not appear again after his daughter is returned. His function is complete once the plague has done its work. He is the poem’s first demonstration that the gods listen to the wronged, and that their answer can be terrible.
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