Laughing Too Much Isn’t Good for You
To compensate himself for the loss of Chryseis, Agamemnon seized from Achilles a princess whom the Greek hero had captured as a war prize. That led to a feud between monarch and hero that drove much of the Iliad. Calchas also endorsed Odysseus’ Trojan Horse stratagem, and predicted that it would allow the Greeks to successfully infiltrate the besieged city. Centuries later, the Romans glommed on to Calchas’ reputation for their own purposes. They ascribed to him a prophecy that foretold that the Trojan prince Aeneas would survive the fall of Troy, then go on to lay the foundations of Rome.
Calchas met a tragicomic end in Magna Graecia. He reportedly laughed himself to death at what he believed to be a rival soothsayer’s false prediction. Calchas had planted some grape vines, 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. As he lifted a cup of wine made from the grapes in question, Calchas began to laugh at his rival’s failed prophecy. He laughed so hard that he choked and perished by asphyxiation before he got to drink of his vines.
