Characters
- Ajax — speaker; tutor warning Achilles
- Althaea — wrathful withdrawer who returns too late for gifts
- Oeneus — father who begs him to fight
- People of Calydon — warring sides at Calydon
Places
- Argos — city under Curete assault
- Greek camp at Troy — rhetorical present of the Embassy
Themes
Narrative
In the Embassy, Phoenix warns Achilles through the tale of Meleager. After the Calydonian boar hunt, strife rose between Aetolians and Curetes over the spoils; Meleager, angry at his mother Althaea (who cursed him for killing her brother), withdrew from battle and lay beside his wife Cleopatra while the Curetes pressed Calydon’s gates. Elders offered gifts; his father Oeneus, sisters, and mother begged him; he refused until Cleopatra, naming the horrors of a sacked city, persuaded him. He saved the city—but too late to receive the promised gifts.
Phoenix’s point: do not wait until the ships burn to accept Agamemnon’s offers. Catalogue this as the Iliadic Meleager *paradeigma*, distinct from Apollodorus’s brand-and-Fates death of Meleager.