In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, Calchas (Κάλχας, possibly meaning "bronze-man"), son of Thestor, was an Argive seer, with a gift for interpreting the flight of birds that he received of Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

: "as an augur

Augur

The augur was a priest and official in the classical world, especially ancient Rome and Etruria. His main role was to interpret the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds: whether they are flying in groups/alone, what noises they make as they fly, direction of flight and what kind of...

, Calchas had no rival in the camp". He also interprets the entrails of the enemy during the tide of battle.

It was Calchas who prophesied that in order to gain a favourable wind to deploy the Greek ships mustered in Aulis

Avlida

Avlida or Aulis is a former municipality in Euboea regional unit, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Chalcis, of which it is a municipal unit. The population was 8,300 inhabitants at the 2001 census, and the land area is 122.235 km². The seat of the...

 on their way to Troy, Agamemnon

Agamemnon

In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Electra and Orestes. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area...

 would need to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigeneia

Iphigeneia

Iphigenia is a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology. In Attic accounts, her name means "strong-born", "born to strength", or "she who causes the birth of strong offspring."-Post-Homeric Greek myth:...

, to appease Artemis

Artemis

Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...

, whom Agamemnon had offended; the episode was related at length in the lost Cypria, of the Epic Cycle. He also states that Troy will be sacked on the tenth year of the war.

In the Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

, Calchas tells the Greeks that the captive Chryseis

Chryseis

In Greek mythology, Chryseis was a Trojan woman, the daughter of Chryses. Chryseis, her apparent name in the Iliad, means simply "Chryses' daughter"; later writers give her real name as Astynome ....

 must be returned to her father Chryses

Chryses

In Greek mythology, Chryses was a priest of Apollo at Chryse, near the city of Troy.According to a tradition mentioned by Eustathius of Thessalonica, Chryses and Briseus were brothers, sons of a man named Ardys .During the Trojan War ,...

 in order to get Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

 to stop the plague he has sent as a punishment: this triggered the quarrel of Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

 and Agamemnon, the main theme of the Iliad.

Calchas also plays a role in Quintus of Smyrna' Posthomerica

Posthomerica

The Posthomerica is an epic poem by Quintus of Smyrna, probably written in the latter half of the 4th century, and telling the story of the Trojan War, between the death of Hector and the fall of Ilium....

. Calchas said that if they were brief, they could convince Achilles to fight. It is he rather than Helenus (as suggested in Sophocles' "Philoctetes

Philoctetes (Sophocles)

Philoctetes is a play by Sophocles . The play was written during the Peloponnesian War. It was first performed at the Festival of Dionysus in 409 BC, where it won first prize. The story takes place during the Trojan War...

") that predicts that Troy will only fall once the Argives are able to recruit Philoctetes. It is by his advice that they halt the battle, even though Neoptolemus

Neoptolemus

Neoptolemus was the son of the warrior Achilles and the princess Deidamia in Greek mythology. Achilles' mother foretold many years before Achilles' birth that there would be a great war. She saw that her only son was to die if he fought in the war...

 is slaughtering the Trojans. He also tells the Argives that the city is more easily taken by strategy than by force. He endorses Odysseus' suggestion that the Trojan Horse

Trojan Horse

The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the stratagem that allowed the Greeks finally to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside...

 will effectively infiltrate the Trojans. He also foresees that Aeneas will survive the battle and found the city, and tells the Argives that they will not kill him. He did not join the Argives when they boarded the ships, as he foresaw the impending doom of the Kapherean Rocks.

Calchas died of shame at Colophon in Asia Minor shortly after the Trojan War (told in the Cyclic Nostoi

Nostoi

The Nostoi , also known as Returns or Returns of the Greeks, was a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse...

and Melampodia): the prophet Mopsus

Mopsus

Mopsus or Mopsos was the name of two famous seers in Greek mythology. A historical/legendary Mopsus was the founder of a house in power at widespread sites in the coastal plains of Pamphylia and Cilicia during the early Iron Age.-Son of Manto and Rhacius or Apollo:Mopsus, a celebrated seer and...

 beat him in a contest of soothsaying, although Strabo

Strabo

Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

 placed an oracle of Calchas on Monte Gargano

Monte Gargano

Gargano is a historical and geographical Italian sub-region situated in Apulia, consisting of a wide isolated mountain massif made of highland and several peaks and forming the backbone of the Gargano Promontory projecting into the Adriatic Sea. The high point is Monte Calvo at . Most of the upland...

 in Magna Graecia

Magna Graecia

Magna Græcia is the name of the coastal areas of Southern Italy on the Tarentine Gulf that were extensively colonized by Greek settlers; particularly the Achaean colonies of Tarentum, Crotone, and Sybaris, but also, more loosely, the cities of Cumae and Neapolis to the north...

. It is also said that Calchas died of laughter when the day that was to be his death day arrived and the prediction didn't seem to materialize.

In medieval and later versions of the myth, Calchas is portrayed as a Trojan defector and the father of Chryseis, now called Cressida

Cressida

Cressida is a character who appears in many Medieval and Renaissance retellings of the story of the Trojan War. She is a Trojan woman, the daughter of Calchas a priestly defector to the Greeks...

.