ACHAEANS: Although he never won an election...

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2024

...Agamemnon was the elect: Agamemnon, lord of men, never won an election. As far as we know, there were no elections, as we know them, during the late Bronze Age. 

 Agamemnon, lord of men, never won an election. Clearly, though, Agamemnon was the elect.

In the following passage, the leading authority on the fictional figure explains the source of his status:

Sceptre

A sceptre (or scepter in American English) is a staff or wand held in the hand by a ruling monarch as an item of royal or imperial insignia, signifying sovereign authority.

[...]

Among the early Greeks, the sceptre was a long staff, such as Agamemnon wielded (Iliad, i) or was used by respected elders, and came to be used by judges, military leaders, priests, and others in authority. It is represented on painted vases as a long staff tipped with a metal ornament. When the sceptre is borne by Zeus or Hades, it is headed by a bird. 

It was this symbol of Zeus, the king of the gods and ruler of Olympus, that gave their inviolable status to the kerykes, the heralds, who were thus protected by the precursor of modern diplomatic immunity. When, in the Iliad, Agamemnon sends Odysseus to parley with the leaders of the Achaeans, he lends him his sceptre.

We're puzzled by several parts of that account. That includes its description of Agamemnon wielding a scepter in Book One of the Iliad. 

In Book One, it's actually the enraged Achilles who "swears a mighty oath" upon a "scepter studded bright with golden nails." After swearing his mighty oath, he then "dashes it to the ground." 

Within the Robert Fagles translation, Agamemnon isn't shown wielding a scepter until we reach Book Two. In Book One, it's Achilles who is wielding a scepter during a furious meeting of Argive chieftains. 

Argive chieftains weren't reluctant to state their views during these nighttime councils. In an end note regarding that passage in question, Fagles distinguishes between two different types of scepter:

1.273 This scepter. The scepter [held by Achilles] is passed by the heralds to anyone in the assembly who wishes to speak—while he holds it, he has the floor. It is a symbol of royal and divine authority, and also stands for the rule of law and due process in the community. 

It is not the same as Agamemnon's own royal scepter (2.118-26), which has come down to him from Zeus through several generations of Argive kings.

According to Professor Fagles, Achilles was wielding the type of scepter which allowed a chieftain to speak during an Argive assembly. 

As noted, Achilles is savaging Agamemnon, lord of men, during this part of the meeting. By the norms of the day, Agamemnon's exalted status doesn't exempt him from the most remarkable types of criticism, even within the tribe.

As for Agamemnon, he wielded a different type of scepter; he wielded a royal scepter. Agememnon's scepter has come down to him through several generations of kings, but it originated with Zeus himself.

In this way, Agamemnon was seen to stand in a line of authority stretching directly back to the most powerful of the Olympian gods. Early in Book Two, the poem describes Agamemnon (AKA "Atrides") rousing himself from a dream, then striding forward to exercise his authority:

But rousing himself from sleep, the divine voice
swirling round him, Atrides sat up, bolt awake,
pulled on a soft tunic, linen never worn,
and over it threw his flaring battle-cape,
under his smooth feet he fastened supple sandals,
across his shoulder slung his silver-studded sword.
Then he seized the royal scepter of his fathers—
its power can never die—and grasping it tightly
off he strode to the ships of Argives armed in bronze.

The power of Agamemnon's royal scepter could never die. Later in Book Two, the line of descent of the royal scepter is explicitly described:

King Agamemnon
rose to his feet, raising high in hand the scepter
Hephaestus made with all his strength and skill.
Hephaestus gave it to Cronus' son, Father Zeus
and Zeus gave it to Hermes, the giant-killing Guide
and Hermes gave it to Pelops. that fine charioteer,
Pelops gave it to Atreus, marshal of fighting men,
who died and passed it on to Thyestes rich in flocks
and he in turn bestowed it on Agamemnon, to bear on high
as he ruled his many islands and lorded mainland Argos.
Now, leaning his weight upon that kingly scepter
Atrides declared his will to all Achaea's armies...

The scepter had been fashioned by Hephaestus, one of the Olympian gods. Hephaestus had given it to Zeus. Eventually, the scepter had been handed down to Agamemnon himself.

As Agamemnon declares his will in this instance, he is having one of his various breakdowns. Later, in Book Nine, as Agamemnon melts down again, a trusted elder reassures the lord of men about his state of election:

Nestor was first to speak—from the early days
his plans and tactics always seemed the best.
With good will to the chiefs he rose and spoke,
"Great marshal Atrides, lord of men Agamemnon—
with you I will end, my King, with you I will begin,
since you hold sway over many warriors, vast armies,
and Zeus has placed in your hands the royal scepter
and time-honored laws, so you will advise them well."

As we've noted in the past, madness was constantly gripping Agamemnon. Nestor, offering sound advice, reminds him of the role assigned to him by Zeus. 

In essence, this is the divine right of kings, built upon the deference shown to those whose authority came to them from the gods. 

In theory, we regard such thinking as silly today. That said, dating back to the dawn of the west, it has been the norm for us the humans to bow to the divine right of kings. 

This kind of deference is bred in the born. It adopts various forms.

In our modern political context, we citizens of Bue America are inclined to ridicule members of Red America for building a cult around Candidate Trump—for deferring to him as if he carried divine authority. 

In fairness, this pattern is deeply bred in the bone—and obvious elements of this impulse are observable within our own Blue America, though elements of our own behavior may be invisible to us. 

In our current two Americas, we Blues tend to mock voters in Red America for deferring to the divine right of Trump. But we Blues segregate ourselves within our own tribal circles, and the Achaeans were ready to challenge Agamemnon n a way which never occurs when "our favorite reporters and friends" gather on our corporate "cable news" channel to tell us the stories we like to hear and to mock the cult which we can see—the cult which is operating Over There, among the Others.

At present, leadership cadres of Red America are routinely an undisguised, astonishing mess. That said, those of us in Blue America tend to fall in line behind our own leadership cadres in ways which make the Argive leaders seem like free-thinking iconoclasts.

We repeat the embellished claims our leadership cadres invent. We talk about locking the other guy up—and as we'll note this afternoon, we often seem to care about little or nothing else.

The leadership cadres of Red America are routinely (not always) an undisguised mess. But those of us in Blue America may not always see ourselves as we actually are. Is it possible that we can learn to see ourselves more clearly through a trip back in time to the western world's first poem of war?

Consider our current embarrassing state:

We want to send the other guy to jail because he allegedly hid the fact that he allegedly had (fully consensual) sex on one occasion with a woman who wasn't his wife! And yet we love our own Dear Jack—we continue to love him so dearly!

When a population loses its way that badly, it might be time to journey back to the dawn of the west and make an effort to figure out how we reached this embarrassing point.

Will a look at the Iliad help us see ourselves more clearly? The odds of that are very slight. But what else is left to try?

Agamemnon never won an election! It seems to us that we should be embarrassed, chastened in a good-natured way, by the way we the Blues are now approaching ours.

Tomorrow: Then and now, sources of rage

This afternoon: Hannah Dreier's Pulitzer prize