王の罪 : クリュセス・エピソードが表わす『イリアス』の倫理観

Abstract

Agamemnon rejects the supplication of Chryses to return his daughter and by thus insulting him incurs the anger of Apollo. The god sends a plague to the Achaean camp. This episode represents the belief that if a king offends a god or transgresses a divine law, the god punishes the whole community that he rules. There are five examples of this in the Iliad : Pandaros violates the law of Zeus Horkios by breaking the truce and causes the destruction of Troy : Agamemnon incurs Artemis' wrath by boasting of his hunting skill in Aulis. The goddess sends a storm and keeps the Achaean fleet from sailing ; Aias, son of Oileus, provokes the anger of Athena by his violence toward Cassandra. The goddess wrecks the Achaean fleet ; Laomedon cheats Poseidon and Apollo of their reward for building the walls. To punish this deception Poseidon sends a monster to the Trojans ; Paris transgresses the law of Zeus Xenios with his abduction of Helen. The god decides upon the fall of Troy. This belief has its religious background in the supposition that the pollution incurred by the transgression of an individual is transferred to the whole community of which he is a member. Should that individual happen to be the king, the community is in greater danger. The Chryses episode's location at the beginning of the poem is indicative that the belief it exemplifies is the ethical creed which governs the Iliad. For the story of Chryseis is meant to be parallel with that of Helen. Both are captured, and after their captors have invited disaster upon their own peoples, both women are returned. In this sense the plague of the Achaeans foretells the fall of Troy. As the ethical view of the Odyssey is declared at the council of the gods, where Zeus states that a man's downfall is caused by his own impious acts, so the Chryses episode functions as an example of people's disaster caused by an impious king.