Calchas

In the Greek Mythology, Calchas (in Greek old Κάλχας / Kálkhas ), is a Greek soothsayer which appears in the accounts of the Trojan War, in particular in Iliade . Wire of Thestor, it is described in this epopee like “much the best of the soothsayers, who knows the future, the present, the past” (song I, v. 69-70). It holds its gift of vision of Apollon.

Before the departure of Greek forwarding, he predicts that Achille would be necessary to the Greeks and that the war would last ten years. During the voyage towards Troy, it indicates to Agamemnon why Artémis immobilized the Greek ships in Aulide, and how to alleviate it by sacrificing his/her daughter Iphigénie. When Apollon decimates the Greek rows in front of Troy, he explains why it is because Agamemnon refused to return Chryséis, girl of the Trojan priest of Apollo. Lastly, it is him which contributes to the stratagem of the Trojan horse.

While returning of the war, Calchas meets the soothsayer Mopsos, grandson of Tirésias and, after having lost against him in a contest of divinatory art, he dies of spite.

Its name comes from καλχαίνω / kalkhaínô which wants to say “to return crimson”, by extension, “to obscure, disturb”. Agamemnon shows it, in fact, to be a “prophet of misfortune”: “on any occasion, your heart finds its joy to predict misfortune

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