The Prize and Honor
From Iliad Book I
Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces, and Achilles, their greatest warrior, are arguing. And boy howdy, is it a doozy!
Agamemnon has been very rude to a priest of Apollo. This did not have to be a matter of honor but by the end of this book, he will have made it one. And a matter of honor between him and Achilles, specifically.
Part of the booty from a raid on a town allied to the Trojans was the daughter of the priest, Chryseis. Her father has come to ransom her, and the Illiad makes clear that it is a very rich and suitable ransom. But Agamemnon sends him packing, with insults. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t seem, to me, to be insulting or dishonoring the girl herself. 1
To my surprise, this did not seem to be a case of being driven mad by irresistible beauty [like Helen] or irresistible desire [eros]. And he does seem to value her for more than sex. He compares her favorably to a wife and does not use the term that unambiguously means concubine, although I think it could be used that way. At this point, to me, he simply looks greedy.
Bad idea to insult a priest of Apollo. The priest complains, and Apollo sends a plague on the Greeks.
Achilles sends for the Greek seer, Calchas, who tells them that Apollo is mad because Agamemnon didn’t take the ransom for the girl. So now, to fix things, he has to give up the girl for no ransom at all, plus make sacrifices to Apollo.
Agamemnon gets rude again, this time to Calchas, and I can’t completely blame him. The guy does seem to have a knack for sticking it to Agamemnon. Last time, he had to sacrifice his own daughter. But he does, reluctantly, agree. But there’s a problem. No ransom means he has to give a prize without recompense, which is starting to be a matter of honor. If he’s the only one to give up his prize, he loses rank. This is a problem.
And now, we see an interesting escalation.
At this point, he’s not asking for Chryseis to be replaced specifically by another woman, but by a prize that is just as good. Achilles calls him greedy [which he is, but it doesn’t look like tact is one of Achilles’s virtues] and asks him how they’re supposed to do that. He advises patience, and promises they’ll make it up to him two and three times over, when they sack Troy. I wonder if there is some history here between Agamemnon and Achilles.
Uh oh. This just makes Agamemnon more angry. Now it doesn’t just have to be a suitable prize, it has to be a woman. And not just any woman – it has to be a woman taken from one of the top leaders: Ajax, Ulysses, or Achilles.
You can see where this is going. Achilles gets more insulting and now, the only thing that Agamemnon will accept is Achilles’s own war prize woman, Briseis. This makes it clear that it is not the irresistible beauty of, or love for, the woman that is at issue. Agamemnon feels disrespected by Achilles, and Achilles just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper.
It would have come to bloodshed, except Athena stays Achilles’s hand, and tells him to be content with verbal fighting. Which ends with Achilles’s famous refusal to fight, after reluctantly giving up Briseis, who is “loathe to go”, and asking his nymph-goddess mother to petition Zeus for revenge.
So what’s going on here with Achilles and Briseis? Is she just a “geras” [prize] who has gotten escalated to a question of honor? In “Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis,” Casey Dué2 makes the case that there were wider stories about Briseis that the listener to the Illiad would have thought of when references to her came up. [This may be somewhat like when you reference “Paul Bunyon” in folklore, you don’t necessarily have to mention that “Babe” is specifically a giant blue ox, or how she became his companion.] Meanwhile, the stories and even writings related to Briseis have been largely lost. However, there are versions of the story where Achilles and Briseis did fall in love, and where she even opened her town gates to the Greeks out of love for him. It is even possible that Briseis would have been seen as Achilles’s legitimate or betrothed wife to some people, at certain dates.
The primary story between Achilles and Agamemnon is, I think, about honor, not love, and what a leader owes those who follow him. But that doesn’t detract from what so far looks like a love story embedded in the tale. And I think that is what it would look like to my first century Romans.
There are some parallels between the relationship of Achilles with Briseis in the Illiad, and that of Procerus with Sophie in my novella, Cloak and Stola. And no, I wasn’t thinking of that when I wrote it – I’m just now reading the Illiad.
Procerus was part of the army that killed Sophie’s family, just as Achilles was to Briseis, and they started out as master and slave, like Achilles and Briseis. And no, Procerus and Sophie don’t actually talk like this in my novella. I imagine their feelings on hearing this part of the Illiad, not the words they would use to describe them.
I Was No Achilles
Procerus: I was no Achilles When my legion took your town; God-forged not my shield. Did my sword hand kill your kin? Sophie: I was no Briseis When you bought me, slaver sold; Noble not my line. And from labor hard my hands. Procerus: Nor I Agamemnon; At my home no waiting wife. Father was I not, With no son or daughters dear. I am no Achilles, But I could feel his wrath, Sundered from my wife, My woman led away. Sophie: I am no Briseis, But could feel her despair, Torn from every port, From master to master.
The Leaders of Warrior Wednesday/Sword & Saturday:
- The Brothers Krynn’s Newsletter;
- Tales of Calamity and Triumph
Champions of Fantasystack:
- Shadows and Space;
- A Literary Eye;
- Crann na Beatha;
- Falden’s Forge;
- Senchas Claideb;
- Kathrine’s Substack;
- Dan’s Deliberations;
- Redd Oscar Writes;
;
- Fragments and Pieces;
- Work in Progress;
- Words and Sounds/The Suspension of This Belief;
- Treats of Writing
Wednesday Warriors/Saturday Swordsmen & Sorceresses:
Donn Harper The Apocaloptimist
Carl F Northwood: Weird Worlds
To the priest, her father, he says:
Give up the girl? I swear she will grow old at home in Argos, far from her own country, working my loom and visiting my bed.
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald
“Working my loom and visiting my bed” are not servile descriptions, as far as I can see. The Greek words used [and I could easily be wrong here] look to me like the same words that could be used of a wife. It was not servile for a woman to weave. Andromache did it, Penelope did it, there are various references to noble women doing this. A slave woman could, of course, also weave, but weaving was not a sign of servitude, anymore than blacksmithing was, just because slaves could also be blacksmiths.
I've always understood the argument between Achilles and Agamemnon to be that Agamemnon didn't insult one but two priests. Then, to compound the insult, he threatened to withhold the treasures from those who had voluntarily joined him in battle. When that didn't work, he threatened to take back what he had already given.
From what I remember, Achilles was angry because while he was fighting every day, Agamemnon sat on his ass and didn't lift a hand.
Thank you for the shoutout.