Odysseus stood with the scepter, and Athena in herald’s likeness quieted the people. He told the Achaeans that they were about to make Agamemnon the most disgraced of men by failing the promise they had made when they came from Argos: to sack strong-walled Ilios and go home.
He did not deny the weariness. Even one month away in a ship can trouble a man longing for his wife; they had waited nine years. But it was shameful to wait so long and go home empty. He told them to endure until they knew whether Calchas’s sign at Aulis had been true.
He recalled the sacrifice under the plane tree at Aulis, the spring flowing beside it, and the blood-red snake Zeus sent into the light. The snake ate eight young sparrows and then the mother, nine in all, before Zeus turned it to stone. Calchas had read the sign: nine years fighting, and in the tenth the Achaeans would take the broad-streeted city.
The Argives shouted approval until the ships rang. Nestor rose and said their oaths, libations, and handclasps must not become smoke. He urged Agamemnon to keep command, sort the army by tribes and clans, and find out which leaders and peoples were brave and which were worthless.