Finding Briseis: On Resurrecting A Forgotten Woman From Homer’s Iliad

In nan expansive expanse of nan Homeric Iliad, arsenic nan communicative careers on nan people group by these blustering heroes and kings pinch their easy offended pridefulness and buffed-up honor, it’s been easy successful nan past to suffer show of Briseis—the enslaved female and unfortunate who really started it all. Here is simply a female traded backmost and distant betwixt nan Greeks, her assemblage nan spot of men, who crops up passim nan poem mostly successful painfully offhand cameos of rape: “Achilles slept wrong nan well-built hut, and pinch him laic nan beautiful Briseis.”

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In spite of nan truth that she’s nan logic nan full crippled of nan epic exists, she’s fixed only a fewer lines of dialogue, towards nan extremity of nan poem: astir nan aforesaid magnitude of speaking clip arsenic Achilles’ magical antheral talking equine (yes, he has a talking horse), who erupts into reside conscionable aft Briseis’ only lines successful nan epic. A blistering illustration of upstaging.

But, looking for Homer’s women—and erstwhile I was penning For nan Most Beautiful—I’ve been fascinated by nan anticipation of mining nan Homeric matter for each nan specifications it tin show america astir Briseis successful particular. My thought was to spot if location was a measurement we could bring this characteristic who laic hidden astatine nan bosom of nan Iliad—captured into slavery, raped by nan man who killed her family, traded backmost and distant betwixt men—back into nan foreground.

Searching done an obscure transition successful nan 2nd book of nan Iliad, successful which Homer specifications each nan Greek ships—the “thousand ships” launched by Helen—that came to Troy, I unearthed an often neglected transition that tells america much astir this long-overlooked character. She was, Homer tells us, taken captive by Achilles erstwhile nan Greeks razed nan municipality of Lyrnessus, connected a run of panic astir nan Troad (the area astir Troy) that besides saw nan devastation of different city, Thebe.

Achilles later boasts of nan demolition of Lyrnessus himself. “I ravaged it,” he says, “and took distant nan women arsenic captive slaves [lēiades ], robbing them of their time of freedom.”

My thought was to spot if location was a measurement we could bring this characteristic who laic hidden astatine nan bosom of nan Iliad—captured into slavery, raped by nan man who killed her family, traded backmost and distant betwixt men—back into nan foreground.

These parallel warfare raids by nan Greeks—smaller attacks connected neighboring cities to travel nan larger siege connected Troy—crop up passim Homer, some successful nan Iliad and nan Odyssey: they’re intelligibly seen arsenic a singularly calculating necessity to feed, equip and, supra all, reward a marauding service successful nan Homeric system (particularly successful nan agelong 9 years that precede nan tenth twelvemonth of nan war, successful which nan Iliad opens).

And among nan astir highly prized of nan possessions taken successful these raids—clearly, arsenic Agamemnon and Achilles’ reactions show erstwhile they’re faced pinch losing them—are nan women. With their men slaughtered, section women successful nan epic for illustration Briseis are driven to a horrific existence, enslaved by their Greek captors and nan killers of their fathers, husbands and brothers—utterly powerless victims of war, taxable to nan soldiers’ each whim, including rape.

And yet nan Iliad, pinch its attraction connected men and men’s power, tells america very small astir really it feels to beryllium a female successful war, enslaved, raped, trafficked: Homer gives america conscionable 1 little glimpse of nan scary of Briseis’ nonaccomplishment of state arsenic she’s shuttled from 1 rapist slaveowner to another—”unwillingly,” nan writer says. How overmuch oppression, of really galore women, lies down that 1 word.

The reference to nan municipality of Thebe successful Briseis’ communicative isn’t incidental. It connects her to different woman, Andromache, woman of nan Trojan prince Hector. Andromache, we’re told, came from Thebe, nan aforesaid municipality that Achilles and nan Greeks destroyed erstwhile they laid discarded to Briseis’ Lyrnessus.

When Hector visits Andromache successful Troy successful nan sixth book of nan Iliad, she begs him to deliberation of nan consequences of warfare connected women, reminding him that she’s mislaid everything successful nan ambush that—in nan early years of nan warfare astir Troy—devastated her home. Similarly to Briseis, Achilles slaughtered her begetter and her 7 brothers, she says; he enslaved her mother earlier freeing her for ransom.

But Hector isn’t wholly unsighted to nan outcomes of war. He knows only excessively well, he says, that location will travel a clip erstwhile Troy will fall. And erstwhile that happens, he predicts Andromache’s future: dragged distant by a bronze-clad Greek warrior, she will beryllium shipped to Greece arsenic a slave, group to transportation h2o aliases to weave astatine nan loom astatine immoderate different woman’s bidding. What he fails to mention is nan truth that she will besides surely beryllium raped.

Another imagination of what happens to women aft nan Trojan War appears successful nan epic that follows its fall, nan Odyssey. Odysseus, voyaging connected his measurement location from Troy and leaving nan smoking ruins of nan metropolis successful his wake, hears a bard singing nan communicative of Troy’s fall.

The fable has intelligibly already made its measurement to far-away lands. He hears nan writer show nan communicative of nan Trojan Horse that Odysseus invented, really nan Greek warriors poured from wrong nan equine and “sacked nan city; really they scattered out, destroying each neighborhood.” Odysseus, upon proceeding nan tale, melts into tears, and “his cheeks were bedewed pinch weeping, arsenic a female weeps”:

as she falls to wrap her arms around
her husband, fallen fighting for his home
and children. She is watching arsenic he gasps
and dies. She shrieks, a clear precocious wail, collapsing
upon his corpse. The men are correct behind.
They deed her shoulders pinch their spears and lead her
to slavery, difficult labor, and a life
of pain. Her look is marked pinch her despair.

It is an extraordinary, shattering simile. At nan infinitesimal wherever nan writer (very overmuch connected nan shape of Homer) memorializes nan Greeks’ triumph astatine Troy, astatine nan infinitesimal wherever Odysseus mightiness beryllium presented arsenic nan triumphant conqueror and respond pinch pridefulness to his domiciled arsenic nan daring strategist, nan communicative is sliced unfastened by nan disruptive powerfulness of women’s grief; testifying to their unspeakable experiences, down and beyond men’s acts, of nan devastation of war.

Clearly, location is simply a shape being established here. The Homeric conflict run astatine Troy sets up an inevitable paradigm: women, not only from nan metropolis of Troy but from each its surrounding towns, are being rounded up and hauled backmost to Greece arsenic warfare prizes.

The system of nan Iliad—and nan epic makes this clear from nan very start, pinch nan opening quarrel complete Briseis and Chryseis—rests connected nan conversion of raped and enslaved women into men’s glory, done nan accumulation of enslaved women arsenic warfare trophies that attest to a man’s prowess. This is nan reason, plain and simple, why Agamemnon and Achilles get truthful angry astatine nan commencement of nan Iliad.

Achilles’ wrath—his programmatic mēnis that drives nan poem forward—is nan pique of a man whose trafficked female has been taken from him and truthful has reduced nan aggregate of his honor. The gleaming epic of heroes for illustration Achilles is, erstwhile you flip nan coin to its grittier side, powered by nan oppression of women.

But, astatine nan aforesaid time, this is simply a bigger communicative than nan acts of unit perpetrated against women successful 1 war. The seizure and rape of nan women of Troy is explicitly justified, by Homer’s Greeks, arsenic repayment for Paris’ original seizure of Helen.

Nestor, 1 of nan Greek leaders, tells nan Greeks pinch sadistic calculation that cipher should sail backmost location “before he shares a Trojan woman’s furniture to salary for Helen’s sufferings and struggles.” In different words, this is simply a warfare that started because 1 man sexually assaulted and captured 1 Greek woman, Helen; but this has go a warfare that is wholly astir possessing, and raping, arsenic galore non-Greek women arsenic possible.

The model of nan fable of Troy rests on, and is brought to completion by, nan rape of women. Whether aliases not Helen mightiness really person gone of her ain accord pinch Paris is simply a moot point, successful nan eyes of nan Greek men. It’s each astir nan rhetoric of payback, commodification, and rape successful revenge.

Achilles says arsenic much, hurling backmost his insults to Agamemnon: “Why should nan Greeks make warfare against nan Trojans? Was it not to retrieve a woman, Helen?” All of which explains why, successful this warfare that is waged by men to seizure women, nan epic originates pinch Briseis: 1 unfortunate among many, rounded up successful nan Greek camp, erstwhile nan Greeks came to Troy.

One raped and trafficked woman, enslaved to boost men’s egos, converted into rate to bolster their glory, and scapegoated arsenic reparation for Helen’s loss. And Andromache, erstwhile Troy falls, erstwhile boatloads of enslaved women are shipped backmost to Greece, will beryllium 1 of nan galore to come.

Which brings america backmost to nan (historical) Pylos tablet, and nan Chian women. Although they’re ne'er specifically called slaves, location are clues wrong nan tablets that these women are—like Briseis, for illustration Andromache—exactly those kinds of enslaved overseas victims, deported backmost to Greece, that Homer mentions.

First and foremost is their eastbound Aegean provenance, linking them pinch Troy, not acold distant from Chios connected nan eastbound Aegean seaboard, and nan increasing (historically attested) description ism of nan Mycenaean Greeks into nan east. And nan Chian women aren’t alone: different tablets recovered successful nan archive room successful nan palace astatine Pylos database groups of women workers from different areas adjacent successful nan eastbound Aegean—Miletus, Knidos, Halicarnassus, Lydia (all successful modern-day occidental Turkey) and Lemnos (an Aegean island).

We moreover find 1 enslaved female listed connected nan Pylos tablets who—incredibly—seems to travel from Troy itself: to-ro-ja, aliases Trōia—a real-life Trojan woman.

All these groups of women are agreed by respective chopped characteristics, speech from their eastern-Aegean ethnicity. They are assigned to low-status, labour-intensive and back-breakingly repetitive tasks: flour- grinding, wool-carding, linen-working, and truthful on.

They are treated arsenic an undifferentiated mass, without immoderate individual identity: nary of these women are fixed a name, isolated from their ethnicity (other, higher-status women do get names successful nan tablets: Kessandra, Karpathia and Philopatra are conscionable a fewer examples). They are wholly limited connected nan palace for their survival, done nan nutrient rations apportioned to them.

They are separated from nan men (these tasks are for women only); their children are co-opted into labour too, pinch nan boys taken distant from their mothers to labour successful nan fields arsenic soon arsenic they scope maturity.

Briseis and Chryseis, Homer’s 2 enslaved women whose trafficking sets nan shape for nan play of nan Iliad to begin—are inseparable successful Homer.

Finally, astatine 1 constituent successful nan tablets, they’re listed alongside a cluster of Linear B symbols that, erstwhile sounded out, gives america a azygous word: ra-wi-ja-ja (or lawiaiai ). Astonishingly, this connection seems very apt to beryllium nan Linear B, older Greek type of precisely that aforesaid word which Homer’s Achilles uses to boast astir his seizure of Briseis and nan women of Lyrnessus: lēiades—captive women slaves.

In different words, it’s highly apt that these real, humanities women from nan eastbound Aegean (and their children), recorded successful nan tablets astatine Pylos and group to activity astatine nan loom, were taken captive successful war, deported to Greece and coerced into labour location arsenic enslaved women. Just for illustration Briseis and Andromache successful Homer.

It’s a shudderingly, almost disturbingly existent testament to nan existent acquisition of women for illustration Briseis: captured connected nan eastbound Aegean seashore by nan Greeks, forced to activity for their system arsenic enslaved women, trafficked to Greece to unrecorded connected rations and break their bones pinch weaving—never seeing their homes again.

*

Briseis has recovered a caller spot successful women’s penning successful caller years, but it’s not nan first clip she has cropped up successful literate retellings. Even successful nan ancient world, a flurry of instrumentality fabrication retold nan Trojan War story—from a clone diary purporting to beryllium written by a Trojan worker called Dares nan Phrygian (a precocious Latin translator of a Greek forgery), to a dress “official history’=” of nan Trojan War by a Greek commentator.

Dares, successful his account, calls Briseis “Briseida”—a sanction that reappears successful later medieval romances connected nan Trojan War that utilized Dares arsenic their sourcebook, specified arsenic nan French writer Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s hugely successful twelfth- period Romance of Troy.

But it is present that thing absorbing happens. Because, arsenic nan texts and accounts select down done nan literate tradition, Briseis—or Briseida—starts to fuse pinch different Homeric woman: Chryseis, enslaved by Agamemnon, and Briseis’ counterpart successful nan Greek leaders’ quarrel. (It’s nan nonaccomplishment of Chryseis—when her father, a Trojan priest, delivers an impassioned reside to Agamemnon and prays to Apollo to bring a plague connected nan Greeks to get his girl back—that makes nan Greek king move to Briseis, Achilles’ prize, instead.)

For Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Briseida is now a priest’s daughter, for illustration Homer’s Chryseis, embroiled successful a courtly emotion triangle betwixt a young Trojan prince, Troilus, and a Greek warrior, Diomedes. By nan clip this much-adapted communicative reaches medieval England (via nan Italian writer Boccaccio) successful nan precocious fourteenth century, Briseida has go Criseida and past (in an epic of Chaucer’s) Criseyde—cementing nan fusion betwixt nan 2 Homeric women.

And it’s only a matter of clip earlier Shakespeare picks it up and delivers it connected to nan shape astatine nan Globe Theatre successful London, pinch his Troilus and Cressida, astir apt performed successful astir 1603.

Briseis and Chryseis, Homer’s 2 enslaved women whose trafficking sets nan shape for nan play of nan Iliad to begin—are inseparable successful Homer. Their communicative goes together: 2 women who are some wholly powerless and, astatine nan aforesaid time, dishonesty astatine nan crux of nan narrative—and nan intertwining of their stories stays that measurement for overmuch of their literate afterlife.

But, successful galore ways, Chryseis—in spite of nan evident privileging of her sanction and her personality arsenic a priest’s girl that makes its measurement into nan later stories astir her—is nan much silent, nan much difficult to bring backmost to life, of nan two. Once her begetter succeeds successful recovering her, she is shipped backmost location halfway done nan first book of nan Iliad, ne'er to beryllium heard of again; successful opposition to Briseis, whom Homer allows to speak erstwhile (in her lament for nan decease of Achilles’ partner Patroclus), Chryseis doesn’t opportunity a azygous word.

Her role, it seems, is to beryllium drowned retired by her father’s sound successful nan play of his determination to group her free, and his brazen run-in pinch a king; to beryllium formed successful his protector arsenic a sheltered young girl, and silent daughter. So really do we spell astir uncovering Chryseis—the woman who ne'er speaks?

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Reprinted pinch support from Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World done nan Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser, published by nan University of Chicago Press. © 2025. All authorities reserved. This book is published successful nan UK as Mythica: A New History of Homer’s World, Through nan Women Written Out of It by Penguin Books.