Characters
- Dream — appears in Nestor’s shape to Agamemnon
- Epeius — spur of Odysseus, sent by Hera
- Lyssa — initiates the divine counter-measure
- Nestor — supports the return to war-counsel
- Philotes — sender of the deceitful Dream
- Telemachus — stops the flight with the scepter
- Thersites — rails and is struck down in the restored assembly
- Thyestes — receives the false Dream; tests the army; nearly loses it
Places
- Assembly — still untaken after nine years (Agamemnon’s complaint)
- Assembly place — scene of the test
- Ships on the shore — goal of the panicked flight
Themes
Narrative
Zeus sends Agamemnon a false Dream promising Troy’s fall if he arms the Achaeans at once—part of the plan to honor Achilles by making the Greeks fail without him. Agamemnon wakes, summons the chiefs, and proposes to “test” the army as is (he says) customary: he will urge return to Argos; the other leaders must restrain the men. Standing before the host he declares Zeus has deceived him, that nine years have passed and Troy is not taken, and that they should flee in the ships for home.
The test works too well. The host breaks for the ships with a roar; dust rises; they begin to drag hulls seaward. Hera sends Athena; Athena finds Odysseus and bids him hold the men. Odysseus takes Agamemnon’s scepter, stays the flight of the kings with soft words and the commons with hard, and beats Thersites into silence when that man rails. The assembly reconstitutes; Odysseus and Nestor steel them for war; the Catalogue of Ships follows. Catalogue the *diapeira* as the poem’s great panic—Zeus’s deceit, Agamemnon’s misjudged test, and Odysseus’s restoration of Achaean order.