Achilles was in many ways the original Greek ideal of youth and manhood, a beautiful man with a divine aura, born of a sea goddess and a mortal king. Real conquerors and rulers including Alcibiades, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon took inspiration from him. And yet his primary passion was rage. The rage of Achilles is what sets Homer's great epic, the Iliad, into motion, a rage born of competition with his overlord, the older Agamemnon, which eventually left thousands of Greeks and Trojans dead in steaming heaps on the blood-soaked field before the great city.

The feud between the younger man and his elder is over who should rightfully be given the captive Trojan woman Briseis as a trophy of war. Achilles believes she is his by right because he has been by far the bravest warrior on the Greek side. But Agamemnon claims her for his own because he is not merely a king, but the King of Kings, the commander of the entire Greek force including Achilles. The mixture of erotic jealousy over the possession of the unfortunate woman and their resentment for each other over their status and prestige – Achilles thinks Agamemnon is a coward and a lightweight gaining glory through what are really his own achievements, while Agamemnon finds Achilles insufferably arrogant and insubordinate – boils over in their accusations of each other. You can fairly hear the words spitting through clenched teeth of these two kings clashing: