Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Calchas, the Achaean seer who had read the bird-omens at Aulis and served Agamemnon through the Trojan War, learned that he was fated to die when he met a seer greater than himself. After the war he wandered to Claros (or to the land of Mallos / the Cilician coast) and there challenged Mopsus, son of Manto and Apollo (or Rhacius), in divination. Two famous tests are told. Calchas asked how many figs grew on a certain wild fig tree; Mopsus answered with the exact number (and, in fuller tellings, the measure of the bushels they would fill). Then Mopsus asked how many piglets a pregnant sow carried, and of what sex; Calchas failed or erred, while Mopsus named the number and that the young were male (or mixed, with precision). Defeated, Calchas died of grief—or of the fulfillment of the oracle that a better prophet would end him. The contest transplants Trojan mantic authority into the Clarian–Cilician sphere and crowns Mopsus. Catalogue it as the death of Calchas by rivalry, distinct from his wartime prophecies.