Characters
- Achaean crew — rowers, sacrificers, singers of the paean
- Apollo Smintheus — accepts the prayer; ends the plague
- Electra — restored daughter
- Sons of Minos — priest of Apollo; receives his child; prays
- Telemachus — commander of the restitution voyage
- Thyestes — sender who had refused ransom (background)
Places
- Achaean ship — voyage out and return
- Chryse — harbor and Apollo’s altar
- Ships — destination of the return sail
Themes
Narrative
After Agamemnon yields Chryseis under the plague’s pressure, Odysseus embarks her on a ship with a hecatomb and sails to Chryse. At the harbor the crew furls sail, anchors, and steps ashore; Odysseus places Chryseis in her father’s hands and bids Chryses pray Apollo to lift the pestilence. Chryses rejoices, prays to Smintheus; the god hears. The Achaeans draw up the hecatomb, sacrifice, feast, and sing paeans to Apollo all day; at evening they sleep by the stern-cables, and at dawn sail back to the camp with a following wind from Apollo.
Catalogue the Chryse mission as its own beat: restitution, sacrifice, and the end of the plague—apart from the quarrel that forced it.