Calchas

The seer of the Greek host at Troy, best of the bird-interpreters, who knew what was, what would be, and what had been before (*Iliad* 1.69-72). At Aulis it was he who read the omen of the snake and the nine sparrows, prophesying nine years of fruitless siege and victory in the tenth (*Iliad* 2.303-332); it was he too who revealed that Apollo's plague on the camp was payment for Agamemnon's refusal to give back Chryseis to her priestly father, and who later advised the sacrifice of Iphigenia at the same windless shore.

Associated Places