The Ant People

Re-reading yesterday the Illiad, I tried to understand the discord between Achilleus, the leader of the Myrmidons, the Ant People, and the rest of the Acheans, led by the Mykonos's people (Cretans). Achilleus seems to have been something of a professional contractor working for the Cretan gang. He describes himself:

"Like a bird that brings back to her unfledged chicks every morsel she can find, and has to go without herself, so it has been with me."

As an experienced labor leader, he choose the most critical moment (in the middle of a difficult raid) to renegotiate his contract. So he went into a strike and waited for the boss to make an offer. In the end of his "position paper" delivered to the company negotiators led by Odysseus son of Laertes, Achilleus or the poet also mentions the injustice of having been "robbed" from his prize girl, as another - but not the main justification of his breaking the work contract and blackmailing his employer.

"I am the only Achean he has robbed", he says. Isn't Achilleus insinuating that Agamemnon is - generally - a just boss and that - under better contract terms - he would be ready to resume working for him?

The meaning of Myrmidons (or Myrmidones; Greek: Μυρμιδόνες) is the Ant People and they seem to have been an elite formation. Who were they? Ill.: Brad Pitt as Achilleus.