Then the king Agamemnon answered thus:⁠— “Nay, use no craft, all valiant as thou art, Godlike Achilles; thou hast not the power To circumvent nor to persuade me thus. Think’st thou that, while thou keepest safe thy prize, I shall sit idly down, deprived of mine? Thou bid’st me give the maiden back. ’Tis well, If to my hands the noble Greeks shall bring The worth of what I lose, and in a shape That pleases me. Else will I come myself, And seize and bear away thy prize, or that Of Ajax or Ulysses, leaving him From whom I take his share with cause for rage. Another time we will confer of this. Now come, and forth into the great salt sea Launch a black ship, and muster on the deck Men skilled to row, and put a hecatomb On board, and let the fair-cheeked maid embark, Chryseis. Send a prince to bear command⁠— Ajax, Idomeneus, or the divine Ulysses;⁠—or thyself, Pelides, thou Most terrible of men, that with due rites Thou soothe the anger of the archer-god.”