Book 1- Why did Akhilleus come to fight the Trojans--and why did he refuse to fight them any more?

Question

PLEASE HELP ME JUST THIS ONE PLEASE!

Answer 1

He refused to fight because Agamemnon stole his sex slave. I forgot why he went to fight in the first place. Because Paris stole Helen? That was the reason why the Greeks went there, but I don't know if Achilles had some personal reason of his own.

Answer 2

Akhilleus -- I guess that's the updated translation of Achilles -- was one of the Greek leaders who journeyed to Sparta to compete for princess Helen's hand. Helen's father, no stranger to her charms and the potential of the other suitors to gang up on him no matter who Helen chose as her husband, made the assembled Greeks swear an oath that whoever Helen chose would have claim on their service in defending her, whatever happened.

They agreed, and when Paris abducted Helen from Menelaus' side (or she went willingly, depending on the source), the other Greeks marhsalled their forces and set to siege Troy, Paris' home city. But some Greeks had to be compelled to live up to their oath; Odysseus only went after pretending to be insane but breaking "out of character" when his infant son was set in front of his plow and he turned away to avoid killing him, and Achilles had dressed as a woman but began to finger "unwomanly" spears and swords when Odysseus disguised as a trader displayed market goods of all kinds. He was found out, so he went.

Flash forward nine years later, where the action of the Iliad is set. The overall commander Agamemnon, more or less first among equals, pulled rank and took one of the slave girls, Briseis, assigned to him as a spoil of war. In the society of that day, that was the equivalent of violating a "NO TRESPASSING" sign, putting one's mark on another person's property. It seems like sheer ego on Achilles' part to withdraw his forces from the battle just for that, but the mission to retrieve Helen was a point of honor, and Achilles saw what Agamemnon did as a violation of that.

Achilles does come back to the fight, though . . . but you only want to know about Book I, don't you? Hope this helps.