3. A Tragicomic Demise From Laughing Too Hard at a Rival Soothsayer’s Failed Prediction
To compensate himself for having lost Chryseis, Agamemnon seized from Achilles, a princess whom the Greek hero had captured as a war prize, Briseis. That led to a feud between king and hero that drove much of the Iliad. Calchas also endorsed Odysseus’ Trojan Horse stratagem, predicting that it would succeed in infiltrating the besieged city. Centuries later, the Romans glommed on to Calchas’ reputation and ascribed to him a prophecy foretelling that the Trojan prince Aeneas would survive the fall of Troy, then go on to lay the foundations of Rome.
The soothsayer reportedly met a tragicomic end in Magna Graecia, laughing himself to death at what he believed to be a rival soothsayer’s false prediction. Calchas had planted some grapevines, but his rival prophesied that Calchas would never drink wine produced from those grapes. The grapes ripened, however, and were made into wine. Calchas then invited the other soothsayer to the first tasting, and lifting a cup of wine made from the grapes in question, he started laughing at his rival’s failed prophecy. He ended up laughing so hard that he choked and perished by asphyxiation before he got to drink from his vines.
