Calchas

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Calchas Thestorides
Κάλχας θεστορίδης
Trojan War character
A peristyle fresco from Pompeii showing Calchas presiding over the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigeneia, as the divine price for winds to carry the fleet to Troy.
Calchas presides at the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon, as the divine price of the winds required to carry the fleet to Troy, in a peristyle fresco from Pompeii.
First appearance
  • "Iliad"
  • Epic poetry
Created byHomer and his school
Based onCharacter from a traditional story of the Trojan War
Adapted byGreek oral poets presenting the story in poetry contests at festivals
In-universe information
TitleGuide
OccupationSeer, Greek Mantis, in the sense of one who knows the divine will.[1]
AffiliationAchaean army
OriginArgos in the Peloponnesus
NationalityAchaean

Calchas (/ˈkælkəs/; Ancient Greek: Κάλχας Kalkhas is an Argive mantis, or "seer," dated to the Age of Legend, which is an aspect of Greek mythology. Some myths are patently fictional, but others, such as the main characters of the Iliad, are widely believed to have had some basis in fact. Calchas appears in the opening scenes of the Iliad, which is believed to have been based on a war conducted by the Achaeans against the powerful city of Troy in the Late Bronze Age.

A seer in the service of the army before Troy, Calchas is portrayed as a skilled augur, Greek oionopolos (“bird-savant”):[2]

"as an augur, Calchas had no rival in the camp".[3]

He received knowledge of the past, present, and future from the god, Apollo. He had other mantic skills as well: interpreting the entrails of the enemy during the tide of battle.[4] His mantosune, as it is called in the Iliad, is the hereditary occupation of his family, which accounts for the most credible etymology of his name: “the dark one” in the sense of “ponderer,” based on the resemblance of pondering to melancholy, or being “blue.”[5] Calchas has a long literary history after Homer. His appearance in the Iliad is no sort of “first” except for the chronological sequence of literature. In the legendary time of the Iliad, seers and divination are already long-standing.

In the Iliad Calchas is cast as the apostle of divine truth. His most powerful skeptic is Agamemnon himself, who has had to give up his daughter to human sacrifice and his prize to ransoming, both because of the prophecying of Calchas. He calls Calchas “prophet of evil.” As kings may do as they please, Calchas finds it necessary to lean on the support of a champion, the hero Achilles, who opposes Agamemnon in assembly. Agamemnon refuses to accept the edict of Apollo that he should give up his prize, but bypasses it by taking Achilles’ prize. There follows "the wrath of Achilles," which is righteous anger on behalf of the divine will. With the help of the gods, Achilles struggles to restore righteousness.

Family[edit]

Calchas was the son of Thestor, son of the seer Idmon, by Polymele.[6] He was the brother of Leucippe, Theonoe and Theoclymenus[7]

Career[edit]

It was Calchas who prophesied that in order to gain a favourable wind to deploy the Greek ships mustered in Aulis on their way to Troy, Agamemnon would need to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigeneia, to appease Artemis, whom Agamemnon had offended. The episode was related at length in the lost Cypria, of the Epic Cycle. He also states that Troy will be sacked on the tenth year of the war.[8]

In the Iliad, Calchas tells the Greeks that the captive Chryseis must be returned to her father Chryses in order to get Apollo to stop the plague he has sent as a punishment: this triggered the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon, the main theme of the Iliad. Later in the story, Poseidon assumes the form of Calchas in order to rouse and empower the Greek forces while Zeus is not observing the battle.

In Sophocles' Ajax, Calchas delivers a prophecy to Teucer suggesting that the protagonist will die if he leaves his tent before the day is out.

Calchas also plays a role in Quintus of Smyrna's Posthomerica. Calchas said that if they were brief, they could convince Achilles to fight. It is he rather than Helenus (as suggested in Sophocles' Philoctetes) that predicts that Troy will only fall once the Argives are able to recruit Philoctetes.[9] It is by his advice that they halt the battle, even though Neoptolemus is slaughtering the Trojans. He also tells the Argives that the city is more easily taken by strategy than by force. He endorses Odysseus' suggestion that the Trojan Horse will effectively infiltrate the Trojans. He also foresees that Aeneas will survive the battle and found the city, and tells the Argives that they will not kill him. He did not join the Argives when they boarded the ships, as he foresaw the impending doom of the Kapherean Rocks.[10]

Death[edit]

Calchas died of shame at Colophon in Asia Minor shortly after the Trojan War (as told in the Cyclic Nostoi and Melampodia): the prophet Mopsus beat him in a contest of soothsaying, although Strabo[11] placed an oracle of Calchas on Monte Gargano in Magna Graecia. It is also said that Calchas died of laughter when he thought another seer had incorrectly predicted his death. This seer had foretold Calchas would never drink from the wine produced from vines he had planted himself; Calchas made the wine, but holding the cup he died of laughter, before he could inform them they had drunk it the previous night.[12]

In medieval and later versions of the myth, Calchas is portrayed as a Trojan defector and the father of Chryseis, now called Cressida.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Same root as English "mind:" "Appendix I: Indo-European Roots". *men-1. The American Heritage Dictionary (Fourth ed.). Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.
  2. ^ The English word “augur,” based on a Roman official of that name, is used to mean a person of any culture engaged in ornithomancy. There were no Romans at Troy, as Rome had not yet been founded.
  3. ^ Homer, Iliad, Book I, Lines 68-72 (E.V. Rieu translation).
  4. ^ Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica, Book IX (Alan James translation). The art is based on the Roman word for it. They inherited it from the Etruscans, but in English it means of any culture. There were no Romans or Etruscans at Troy.
  5. ^ Henry George Liddell; Robert Scott. "κάλχας (Calchas)". A Greek-English Lexicon. Perseus Digital Library.. Liddell and Scott, following the tradition of J.B. Hoffman, relate the name to κάλχη (kalkhe), the purple murex, exactly in the sense of the English mood word “blue.” As there is no clear path to an Indo-European root, some suggest a loan word. Hoffman and some others also relate it to Old English gealg or gealh, from an East Germanic *galgaz, “grim,” but there is no Indo-European root for that, either. In the most speculative suggestion, the darkness is not blueness but is the color of corroded bronze (kalkhos). Excluded is Old English gealga, “melancholy” from “gallows,” with an Indo-European root “branch.”
  6. ^ Tzetzes, Homeric Allegories, Prologue, 639
  7. ^ Hyginus, Fabulae, 190
  8. ^ Quintus of Smyrna. Posthomerica, Book VIII (Alan James translation).
  9. ^ Quintus of Smyrna. Posthomerica, Book IX (Alan James translation).
  10. ^ Quintus of Smyrna. Posthomerica, Book XIV (Alan James translation).
  11. ^ Strabo. Geography, 6.3.9.
  12. ^ Maurus Servius Honoratus, Commentary on the Eclogues of Vergil 6.72