Calchas
Calchas Thestorides Κάλχας Θεστορίδης | |
---|---|
Trojan War character | |
First appearance |
|
Created by | Homer and his school |
Based on | Character from a traditional story of the Trojan War |
Adapted by | Greek oral poets presenting the story in poetry contests at festivals |
In-universe information | |
Title | Guide |
Occupation | Seer, Greek Mantis, in the sense of one who knows the divine will.[1] |
Affiliation | Achaean army |
Origin | Argos in the Peloponnesus |
Nationality | Achaean |
Calchas (
Calchas, a seer in the service of the army before Troy, is portrayed as a skilled augur, Greek ionópolos ('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,
Description
Calchas was described by the chronicler Malalas in his account of the Chronography as "short, white, all grey, including the beard, hairy, a very fine seer and omen-reader".[6]
Family
Calchas was the son of
Career
It was Calchas who
In Sophocles'
Iliad
In the Iliad, Calchas is cast as the apostle of divine truth. His most powerful skeptic is Agamemnon himself. Before the events of the Iliad, at the beginning of the expedition, Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to receive favorable sailing winds. At the beginning of the Iliad Calchas delivers another blow to him.
In open assembly, Calchas prophesied that the captive
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.
Posthomerica
Calchas also plays a role in
Death
Calchas died of shame at
It is also said that Calchas
In medieval and later versions of the myth, Calchas is portrayed as a Trojan defector and the father of Chryseis, now called Cressida.
Calchas is a character in William Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida.
References
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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.
- E.V. Rieutranslation).
- ^ Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 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.
- ^ 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".
- ^ Malalas, Chronography 5.105
- Tzetzes, Homeric Allegories, Prologue, 639
- Hyginus, Fabulae, 190
- ^ Quintus of Smyrna. Posthomerica, Book VIII (Alan James translation).
- ^ Quintus of Smyrna. Posthomerica, Book IX (Alan James translation).
- ^ Quintus of Smyrna. Posthomerica, Book XIV (Alan James translation).
- ^ Strabo. Geography, 6.3.9.
- Maurus Servius Honoratus, Commentary on the Eclogues of Vergil 6.72