Easterling has pointed out, Sophocles seems more interested than either of his great rivals in the dynamics of heroic behavior and, in the construction of his dramas, he was much influenced by the Homeric epics. 4 Only when we consider the reasons underlying the successes of Heracles and Nestor, I think, can we appreciate what is lacking in the embassy to Achilles in Iliad 9.Īs P.

Heracles manages to persuade the disaffected Philoctetes to change his mind and participate in the Trojan War by employing a rhetorical technique well exemplified by Nestor's speeches in the books preceding and following the embassy to Achilles in Iliad 9 Heracles uses the details of his own life in order to provide a paradigm for heroic emulation, a mythos, the most persuasive rhetorical weapon in the heroic armory. 3 Using evidence drawn from the Philoctetes of Sophocles and also from Books 7 and 11 of the Iliad, I interpret the failure of the ambassadors in Book 9 in light of more successful examples of heroic persuasion carried out by Heracles in Sophocles' play and by Nestor in the Iliad itself. The resources of the culture are defined, as it were, by their exhaustion.' 2 I wish to suggest, on the contrary, that the heroic culture of the Iliad offers resources for persuasion that the ambassadors tragically fail to exploit. White has claimed: 'Everything that can be said in this world on such an occasion is said everything that can be done is done. In one of the most eloquent statements of this position, J. Some scholars have claimed that the embassy fails despite the fact that the ambassadors employ the full range of arguments likely to be persuasive in the heroic culture of the Iliad. The embassy moves the disaffected hero but, still, it fails to persuade him to return. Ajax, for his part, speaks of the claims of friendship (, 9.630, 642) and of the moral obligations imposed upon a host by the presence of guests beneath his roof (9.640–42). Phoenix, portraying himself as a surrogate father to Achilles, appeals to a hero's normal regard for the values of the oikos or household (9.434–95).

Among these, Odysseus promises the hero glory (, 9.303) and lists the many gifts that Achilles will win if only he relents (9.262–99).

1 They employ a variety of arguments both moral and prudential in form.

In Book 9 of the Iliad, Agamemnon's emissaries, Odysseus, Phoenix, and Ajax attempt to persuade Achilles to return to battle.

The illiad book 9