Orus tells me that Agamemnon agreed just minutes ago to give back the slave girl, Chryseis—“I rank her higher and like her better than Clytaemnestra, my own wife,” Atreus’ son, Agamemnon, had shouted—but then the king had demanded recompense in the form of an equally beautiful captive girl. According to Orus, who is three sheets to the wind, Achilles had shouted—“Wait a minute, Agamemnon, you most grasping man alive”—pointed out that the Argives, still another name for the Achaeans, the Danaans, the damned Greeks with so many names, were in no position to hand over more booty to their leader now. Someday, should the tide of battle turn back their direction, promised the man-killer Achilles, Agamemnon would get his girl. In the meantime, he told Agamemnon to give Chryseis back to her father and to shut up.

“At that point Lord Agamemnon, Atreus’ son, began shitting whole goats,” laughs Orus, speaking loudly enough that several captains turn to frown at us.

I nod and look at the inner circles. Agamemnon, as always, is in the center of things. Atreus’ son looks every inch the supreme commander—tall, beard rolled in classic curls, a demigod’s brow and piercing eyes, muscles oiled, dressed in the finest gear and garb. Directly opposite him in the open bull’s-eye of the circle stands Achilles. Stronger, younger, even more beautiful than Agamemnon, Achilles almost defies description. When I first saw him at the Catalogue of the Ships more than nine years ago, I thought that Achilles had to be the most godlike human walking among these many godlike men, so imposing was the man’s physical and command presence. Since then I’ve realized that for all his beauty and power, Achilles is relatively stupid—a sort of infinitely more handsome Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Around this inner circle are the heroes I spent decades teaching about in my other life.