Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

After Briseis was taken, Achilles called on his mother Thetis. She rose from the sea, heard his grief, and promised to ask Zeus—once the gods returned from the feast among the Aethiopians—to honor her son by letting the Trojans press the Achaeans until they paid for the insult. On the twelfth day she clasped Zeus’s knees on Olympus; he nodded irrevocable assent, though Hera saw and quarreled. Hephaestus calmed the divine feast; Thetis departed with the promise secured. That night Zeus sent a destructive Dream in the likeness of Nestor to Agamemnon, bidding him arm the host at once because Troy would fall that day. Agamemnon woke believing it, yet tested the army by proposing return home. The men rushed for the ships; only Odysseus, primed by Athena, checked the flight—rebuking kings with the sceptre and striking Thersites when the commoner railed at Agamemnon. Nestor and Agamemnon then ordered a real muster for battle. Omens and sacrifice followed; the Achaeans armed while Iris and Helen’s teichoscopia (and the great Catalogue) mark the scale of both hosts—material kept here only as the renewed field after Achilles’ withdrawal, not inventoried name by name. Zeus’s nod now governs the war’s tilt: Achaean confidence from the false dream is a trap; the plan is Trojan success until Achilles is properly honored.