the principal commanders and their men assembled outside the town in a hollow where a thick-girthed plane tree, sacred to Hera, had stood for centuries. An altar had been raised in the shade of the tree beside a nearby spring. The priests invoked the almighty power of Sky-Father Zeus, and Calchas prayed for the wisdom and guidance of Apollo. Then Agamemnon offered the sacrifice.
He had just raised the knife from the kill when all the men standing in the hollow were amazed to see a huge snake slither out from under the altar. Agamemnon stepped back in shock, gazing down at the scarlet markings streaked along the mottled black scales of the creature’s back. With astonishing speed, the snake writhed its long body towards the trunk of the plane tree and began to climb.
Calchas moved quickly from where he had been standing a little behind Agamemnon to observe the behaviour of the snake. He watched it make its way along a high bough to where a sparrow had made its nest. Though the mother-bird rose, fluttering her wings in alarm, she was quite powerless against the muscular strike of the great snake. Eight times it dipped its jaws into the nest, snatching out a fledgling sparrow at each strike. Then it raised its head upright, swayed for a time, watching the flight of the panic-stricken mother-bird. A last swift strike caught the sparrow by the wing and swallowed it whole. A moment later the snake stretched itself out along the bough and lay there so stiff and rigid that men later swore that it had been turned to stone.
A murmur of wonder and alarm ran through the assembled men.
Agamemnon stood with the sacrificial knife still dripping in his hand, looking to Calchas who threw the flat of his right hand to his forehead, cried out, ‘We accept the oracle,’ and stood with his eyes closed.
Silence settled across the glade. Not a man moved. Only the plane tree stirred a little in the breeze off the sea. Then Calchas lowered his hand, opened his eyes and smiled at the hundreds of men gazing at him with rapt attention. ‘Argives,’ he cried, ‘the mighty intelligence of Zeus himself sends you this portent. We have waited long for it, and will have to wait long for its fulfilment, but the glory promised here will never die.’
Still dismayed by the shock, Agamemnon took encouragement from his words. ‘Tell us, Calchas,’ he said, ‘how do you read the omen?’
‘Does a serpent not renew its skin each year?’ said Calchas. ‘And are the leaves of the plane tree not reborn with every year that passes? Eight was the number of the fledglings in the nest. Their mother sparrow made the ninth, and the death of each bird speaks of the passing of a year. The sparrow is one of Aphrodite’s creatures and Aphrodite fights for Troy. So for nine years you must fight to take Troy, but in the tenth year her broad streets will be yours.’
The priest’s voice was exultant. He threw open his arms, gazed skywards, and then stood with his eyes closed as though in silent prayer. Around him the assembled men waited in silence, each locked in his own thoughts.
Agamemnon saw at once that more was needed. ‘It is the will of Zeus,’ he shouted. ‘The god has spoken. Victory will be ours.’ Then Menelaus and Ajax were quickly at his side taking up the shout, urging others on. Soon the hollow was loud with the cry of ‘Victory will be ours’. It rose from the throng again and again, but as he joined the shouting, Palamedes, the prince of Euboea, became uncomfortably aware that only a few yards away across the glade, Odysseus of Ithaca was studying him with a cold, ironical regard.
The next day, to the accompaniment of a peal of thunder which was generally interpreted as a sign of encouragement from Zeus, the fleet set sail for Troy.
Two generations have passed since that day and many men have told the stories of the war many times. But memories grow confused with the passing of the years, so not all of the stories are reliable, and some chroniclers, for reasons that serve their own doubtful ends, have been known to tell downright lies. My own authority is the word of Odysseus, which I have found to be trustworthy in almost all respects, and he was quick to dismiss as nonsense the story put about by some that the fleet got lost almost immediately and made landfall in Mysia, where they launched a major assault, thinking that they had reached the coast of Troy.
Those who believe this fable offer divine intervention in explanation of the error. They claim that Aphrodite confused the navigators in order to stave off the attack on the city. But as Odysseus pointed out, Agamemnon was well-furnished with charts, Menelaus himself had already made a voyage to Troy without difficulty, and some of the most experienced rovers of the Ionian, Cretan and Aegean seas were among the captains of the Argive fleet. Odysseus was not the only prince who supplemented his wealth by piracy, and among his many other pursuits, Palamedes took a particular interest in the problems of navigation. So the story is most charitably understood as a muddled memory of a war that lasted for many years and involved many different campaigns not all of which took place beneath the walls of Troy.
It is true that when Agamemnon first conceived of attacking Troy, he had hoped to emulate the swift, devastating raid by which Telamon and Heracles had once breached the weakest stretch of the city’s walls. But King Priam had strengthened his defences since then. He had also commissioned a new fleet of warships and had been engaged in serious, and successful, diplomatic activity to ready his many allies for the coming conflict around the western coast of Asia. The High King of Troy might have fewer ships at his command than the High King of Argos but he was not faced with the problem of transporting a hundred thousand men across the Aegean, and his fleet was quite large enough to guard the mouth of the Hellespont and offer support to his allies.
And his allies were many. As intelligence reports came into Mycenae from Agamemnon’s spies, they proved ever more daunting. Of all Troy’s friends, only the Dardanians had decided to stay out of the war. Having tried and failed to persuade Priam that Helen should be returned immediately to Sparta, King Anchises had declared that he would not embroil his people in a military conflict that had begun with Paris’ perfidy and might end with the ravaging of all the lands around the Idaean Mountains. But neither would he lend support to the invaders, and all the other coastal kingdoms, from Paeonia and the Thracian Chersonese in the north to the Lycians in the south had swiftly rallied to King Priam’s aid. The Phrygians, the Mysians, the Carians and the Pelasgians out of Larissa were raising armies, and Priam was also given promises of support from countries further east should the need arise. The Amazons, the Paphlagonians and even the distant Halizonians all stood ready to send forces to the defence of Troy.
In the face of such concerted opposition, Odysseus advised that a cautious war of attrition would be the wisest course of action. Troy might be more easily taken if they first wore down her allies through a campaign of naval blockades and raids on the weaker fronts. Until that ominous day at Aulis, no one except Odysseus had reckoned that the campaign might drag on for as long as ten years. But if such was the will of Zeus, he argued, then the princes of Argos must resign themselves to it, fortified by the knowledge that they would win in the end.
Agamemnon listened to this argument but his was not a patient temperament. He still nursed a hope that the sheer size of the force he had mustered would shock the Trojans into surrender and prove the reading of the omen wrong. When he expressed this view the council divided round him along the usual lines, with the thinkers among them – Nestor and Palamedes – supporting Odysseus. The rest argued for an immediate attack on Troy.
When he saw that he was outnumbered, Odysseus came up with an alternative plan. Very well, he suggested, rather than risk everything on a single throw while Troy was at her strongest, it would be wise to establish a secure bridgehead as close as possible to the city. The small island of Tenedos, rising from the sea off the Trojan coast, was perfect for their needs. From there they could either mount a direct assault on Priam’s capital if it seemed likely to succeed, or they could blockade the mouth of the Hellespont and launch raids against Thrace to the north and southwards against the coastal strongholds of his other allies.
Everyone saw the sense of this and the plan was agreed.
By the time the fleet arrived near Tenedos, Agamemnon had decided to position most of his ships where they could hold an advance of the Trojan warships while the island was taken by a smaller force. He called a council aboard his flagship and was about to announce his decision to put Diomedes in command of the