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most valuable warrior. In Zeus’ judgment, Agamemnon and his delusions were the most effective instrument to turn the course of war against his own army. In fact, Agamemnon’s every word and action in these first, important, stage-setting episodes of the epic has been disastrous. The trial scene is simply one more example—starker and uncomplicated by any other agency—of Agamemnon’s unfitness to command. Is this not the point? 20
    The political world the poem purports to evoke is, of course, Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece, when strong rulers controlled centralized bases of wealth and power from palace-citadels such as Mycenae; but the end of the poetic tradition, in Homer’s time, occurred in the late eighth century B.C., on the threshold of an age of extraordinary social innovation that included the establishment of citizen-ruled city-states and of colonies abroad by enterprising individuals and clans. Already, in the last phase of the Iliad ’s evolution, questions concerning the nature of authority and power, of individual rights and duties had to have been in the air. 21 Those men who, like Achilles, found themselves constrained by the unreasonable authority of lesser men over them or disaffected rabble rousers like Thersites would have been prime candidates to pick up their tent pegs and start their own colony elsewhere.
    There is no way of knowing how an audience of Homer’s time viewed this pointed portrayal of a traditional king who is unworthy of command, but it is unlikely that they had no memory of a real-life analogy to color the portrait, for the realization that a god-sent leader may not be up to the job cycles through many ages of many people, up to the present time; undoubtedly the last wave of Tommies to head dutifully over the top at the Somme had realized that the authority of king and country did not equate with military acumen. The articulated awareness that the authority above may be inferior to the individual soldier below is the beginning of a dangerous wisdom. Achilles’ contempt for Agamemnon is expressed in the words of the highborn hero; Thersites’ in the words of the people, the men in the trenches. Dangerously, both views coincide.
    Behind the straightforward narration of events, from Agamemnon’s first appearance through to the conclusion of his failed trial—the third crisis of his manufacture—is a warning rumble of a not-so-distant political storm. The undisguised ineptness of the king, a shrill but eloquent rabble-rouser in the person of Thersites, a demoralized army, and a charismatic warrior whose outstanding strength and prowess are matched by a dangerous, unconventional independent-mindedness—in the cluster of these disjointed elements lurks the specter of a coup.
    That Agamemnon is threatened by Achilles is manifest from his first reactions in their confrontation. What the king does not know, however, is that the usurpation he fears has in effect already taken place: Achilles controls the army’s fate and will continue to do so, present or absent, as Achilles controls the epic. In the rebellion of Achilles, two powerful thematic lines have converged, one historical, one mythic: the historic reas- sessment of an individual’s unquestioned duty to his ruler and the playing out of Achilles’ inherently subversive destiny.
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    Using the traditional set piece of éris between heroes, the Iliad deliberately probes the consequences of unexamined leadership; the kind of prosaic narrative line hinted at in the summaries of the quarrels of the other, lost epics that fell by the wayside has thus been elevated to cosmic heights. When the Iliad opens, the son of Thetis, who was almost lord of heaven, is taking orders from an ineffectual king. Agamemnon, for whom rank and power, authority and honor are equated with a careful calibration of wealth and prizes, can have no idea of the monstrous scale of real, absolute power,