Seer and Prophet Calchas

Homer's oral energy illusive in reading the poem as literature merely
Rage of Achilles  is equivalent to the rage of the core of the soul -metaphysical rage we cannot comprehend through our modern lens of reference -we cannot see the world magically or mythically as we have a very faint connection to other and higher worlds that the pagans of antiquity as well as the ancient Christians had for  a short while.We do not have the second sight, the immediacy of that sight i the sense the ancients had second sight as Homer maintains of Calchas,the seer.

Reading the play Iphigenia at Aulis will further enlighten us as to the central role of Calchas in this epic notwithstanding the paucity of space reserved for him.

Definition: Calchas, son of Thestor, was a seer from a family of seers. Agamemnon employed the services of Calchas in the Trojan War.

Calchas predicted that it would take the Greeks 10 years to defeat Troy.

Calchas was the seer who told Agamemnon that if he wished to be able to set sail from Aulis, he would have to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis. He also knew that Agamemnon was to blame for the pestilence Apollo sent the Greeks.

Calchas advised the Greeks they needed the bow of Hercules to win the Trojan War.

Calchas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Calchas presides at the sacrifice ofIphigeneia in a peristyle fresco fromPompeii.

In Greek mythology, Calchas (/ˈkælkəs/; Ancient Greek: Κάλχας, possibly meaning "bronze-man"), son of Thestor, was an Argive seer, with a gift for interpreting the flight of birds that he received of Apollo: "as an augur, Calchas had no rival in the camp".^[1] He also interpreted the entrails of the enemy during the tide of battle.^[2]

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 lostCypria, of the Epic Cycle. He also states that Troy will be sacked on the tenth year of the war.^[3]

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.

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.^[4] 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 endorsesOdysseus' 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.^[5]

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^[6] placed an oracle of Calchas on Monte Garganoin Magna Graecia. It is also said that Calchas died of laughter when the day that was to be his death day arrived and the prediction didn't seem to materialize.

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