Kalchas
( Fresco from the House of the Poet , Pompeii , Naples National Archaeological Museum )
Kalchas ( ancient Greek Κάλχας Kálchas , Latin Calchas ), son of Thestor , was the official seer of the Greeks during the Trojan War .
statement
His statements concerned the duration of the Trojan War, the need for the presence of Achilles and the Arch of Philoctetes to conquer Troy , the reason for the wrath of Artemis in Aulis on Agamemnon , the sacrifice of Iphigenies , the injustice that was perpetrated on Chryseis as Reason for Apollo's anger and the plague in the Greek army and the construction of a wooden horse to outsmart the Trojans (see Trojan horse ).
Life
Kalchas, who received the gift of interpreting the flight of birds from Apollo, foresaw that he would die if he met a seer who was better than himself. This was Mopsus , the grandson of Teiresias , whom he met near the city of Colophon . After the end of the Trojan War, Mopsos went from ship to ship and warned the Greeks not to board their ships because the gods had destined the fleet to sink.
The two seers held a competition to see who was better. They saw a very pregnant sow and discussed how many piglets she would give. Kalchas named eight, Mopsos, however, nine. After some delay, the ninth piglet was born. When Kalchas saw himself defeated in the seer contest, he died out of shame at the defeat.
Others
Kalchas is the name of an asteroid discovered in 1973 .
literature
- Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll , Otto Immisch : Kalchas . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.1, Leipzig 1894, Col. 921-924 ( digitized version ).
- Josef Heckenbach : Kalchas . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume X, 2, Stuttgart 1919, Sp. 1552-1555.
Web links
- Kalchas in Greek Myth Index