In trying to persuade Achilleus to rejoin the fighting, who makes the most compelling arguments? Odysseus? Phoinix? Aias?
             The messengers found Achilleus in his camp, playing a lyre and singing about man's fame. It's important that Homer showed Achilleus as a musician who sings a little epic song within a big epic that is Iliad. As the messengers arrived they received a warm welcome from Peleus' son who said to them "Welcome. You are my friends who have come, and greatly I need you, who even to this my anger are the dearest of all the Achaians." (Il.2.197-199).
             After the supper Odysseus first makes a speech to Achilleus. First he tries to pity Achilleus by telling him the current situation on the battlefield: how Achaians started loosing their battles after Achilleus left Agamemnon' camp. "The Trojans in their pride... [they] have set up on encampment close by the ships and the rampart, and lit many fires along their army, and think no longer of being held, but rather to drive in upon the black ships."(Il.9.232-235).
             Then Odysseus reminds Achilleus of his father Peleus' advice to "control your passion, though, and your proud heart, for courtesy is a better thing" (Il.2.312-13). Odysseus brings up Achilleus' father into his speech because most of the people pick their parents as role models. And to make his argument sound even better, Odysseus gives Achilleus a list presents that Agamemnon offered to Achilleus as a compensation for dishonoring him.
             Achilles' s reply is the most powerful speech in the Iliad. He refuses reconciliation outright: "Give in to Agamemnon? I think not" (Il.2.385). To this point he has been a simple hero, embodying the qualities of the heroic age: the heroic code in which men treated their lives as of less significance than their honor. The reason that Achilleus embodies the heroic code is that a brave warrior like him, when awarded wit...