Women Aren't Property

• Even in ancient times, the Greeks viewed women as powerful beings, bewitchingly so at times. Note that their deity of wisdom was a woman (Athene), and the women in Greek drama are strong characters. By dragging a woman back home from war as spoils, Agamemnon showed her disrespect. He also showed scorn to his wife, Clytemnestra: he even says that Chryseis is more beautiful than Clytemnestra. Returning Chryseis is the proper thing to do.
  
  

Pride Is Corrosive

• Agamemnon hasn't learned his lesson yet, though. He seizes Briseis from the warrior Achilles as compensation for losing Chryseis. As a result, Achilles refuses to fight in the war, although he is required to go along, and no one is powerful enough to make him. This makes the Trojan War last much longer, leading to needless deaths on both sides -- including the young Patroklos, whom Achilles loved and whose death draws him into the battle. All of this happened because of Agamemnon's pride.
  
  

Fate Can Be Cruel

• Agamemnon did not catch the disease that swept through his armies; the only people who died as a result of his seizure of Chryseis were soldiers who not only had nothing to do with the seizure but who would have had scant opportunity to enjoy the fruits of the plunder like their king did.
  
  

Karma Wins Out

• When the Greeks finally return from Troy, Agamemnon finally gets his just deserts. His wife, Clytemnestra, had carried on an affair with Aegisthus while the king was away. Now, when he returns, his wife -- not only angered about the Chryseis affair but outraged by Agamemnon's sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia, to get favorable winds, and again betrayed by the new concubine, Cassandra, whom Agamemnon brings home with him -- slays him in the bathtub.