HELLO LOVELIES, I'VE FINALLY UPDATED MY WEBSITE! You all can find the written summary of Iliad book 19 via this link :) I hope these help xx www.moaninc.co.uk/homers-iliad/book-19-summary
3.25 Achilles saying he wishes Briseis had been killed by an arrow so that Achilles and Agamemnon might not have fallen out over 'a girl' is quite a shock. Although at one point (I think it's Book 9) Achilles says he hates the man who says one thing and means another, Achilles says contradictory things about his feelings for Briseis at different points, depending on whom he wants to convince of what, and possibly also his own mood, as Achilles is an emotional character. Hence earlier statements as to how much Briseis means to him are presumably exaggerated to emphasize how much his pride has been hurt by Agamemnon taking Briseis away from him, and to justify withdrawing from the war. Could it be that his dismissive comments about Briseis and having fallen out with Agamemnon over 'a [mere] girl' are exaggerated the other way and likewise not necessarily to be taken at face value? At this point Achilles wants to reconcile with Agamemnon so he can resume fighting on the Greek side and take a bloody revenge on the Trojans for Patroclus. Consequently, it is now in Achilles' interest to play down the importance of Briseis 'What were we doing falling out just over that girl? Let's forget that and be friends again.' So I don't know that we ever get to know what the real relationship between Achilles and Briseis is and what it really means to either of them, but evidently Briseis never meant anywhere near as much to Achilles as Patroclus did. I may get round to posting another Comment about my thoughts on Briseis and her reactions recounted around 10.00 mins into this video. In the meantime, I note: -Late in this poem, when King Priam of Troy surprisingly spends a night at Achilles' hut, I think it's early Book 24, I am not sure if Erica has time to mention it in her summary but Homer says in his description of the sleeping arrangements that Briseis, now of course restored to Achilles, spends the night sleeping beside him. How she feels about this we are not told. -In the Odyssey, where Odysseus is miraculously able to visit the Underworld and the spirits of the dead, he meets the ghost of Achilles there. Patroclus' ghost is mentioned as being present with Achilles, although Patroclus is not recorded as speaking. However, Achilles asks Odysseus for news of what has happened to his father Peleus and his son Pyrrhus/Neoptolamus, but he does not apparently care enough about Briseis to ask what has become of her.
To be fair, Agamemnon might have been truly scared that if he did sleep with Briseis that it might just be the thing that pushed Achilles over the edge. Our boy was just sitting there sulking in his tent just waiting for an excuse. So while Agamemnon is arrogant and his pride & hubris knows no bounds, his desire for power & wealth is even greater. His pride most likely made him keep her in his tent, just to infuriate Achilles. But then again, it is Agamemnon, and his behavior towards, and regarding women in the poem is poor to say the least. (I still can’t get over that he had the nerve to publicly disrespect Clytemnestra like that at the beginning. Not just his wife, but the Queen of Mycenae, and by extension, High Queen of the Greek alliance. The person keeping it all together back home & mother of his children. There’s still weather, natural disasters, disease, pirates, barbarians, all kinds of crazy crap that doesn’t stop just because people decide to go to war. Made even worse because most of the brightest and most talented of the Greeks are on the beaches of Troy rather than doing whatever it is they do at home. And she’s been an amazing administrator to keep everything from going to crap for 9 years. Plus she’s Helen’s sister, I imagine she’s quite attractive also).
9.57 - 11.07 Briseis speech mourning for Patroclus: -This is the only time Briseis herself speaks in the Iliad, as opposed to the men arguing or negotiating over who should own her, which of course seems harsh and unfair to us, although presumably not to the average Ancient Greek. -As she is mourning for Patroclus, she does not directly tell us about her feelings for Achilles, which we are never clearly told, except that early in the Iliad she was seen to be reluctant to be transferred from Achilles to Agamemnon. (We don't know if that is because she has come to care for Achilles, despite the traumatic, violent beginning to their relationship, dislike of Agamemnon, or because she has formed attachments to other members of Achilles' household like Patroclus. Perhaps the captured women in Achilles' household emotionally supported each other in their shared loss.) -Acting as a mourner, Briseis is able to speak publicly, perhaps the only time she would be allowed to do so, and although she is from an enemy nation and a captive in the Greek camp, and may not therefore dare to say everything she feels, her speech seems heartfelt and she feels able to refer in front of the Greeks to the fact that the Greeks killed much of her family, causing her grief, and that she 'loved' Patroclus, not Achilles, 'the best'. (This seems to me to leave open the possibility that her feelings for Achilles are anywhere between mild affection to dislike. Can we assume it was not utter hatred, or she would not have hoped to be promoted from his slave concubine to his wife, nor have been so openly reluctant to be transferred from Achilles to Agamemnon earlier? -10.37 'Patroclus was the really nice one of the pair. When her family were being killed by Achilles like in front of her...Patroclus was the one who would not let her feel any sorrow' I think this quite closely follows Briseis' speech in the Iliad. But how could Briseis not feel any sorrow if much of her family have just been killed??? And is Patroclus really being kind in not letting Briseis weep for them?? In another internet forum, when this was discussed, someone suggested that Homer, as a man, is insensitive here to what a woman would actually feel in a situation like this. -Don't know what to make of Briseis telling us Patroclus had promised to persuade Achilles to marry her. Achilles never mentions this even as an option he was considering, either in the arguments over who should have Briseis or when in Book 9 Agamemnon offers Achilles his daughter's hand in marriage and Achilles rejects this, saying his family would find a suitable bride for him back in that part of Greece we can't pronounce. So was Patroclus making a promise to Briseis that he knew he could not deliver, to fob her off and stop her crying? Anyone who reads this who has any thoughts about any of these questions is of course very welcome to comment.
This make it so much easier to read the book for school! I would usually just watch one of these videos on the book I’m reading in class and just annotate and skim! Without it would take about 3 hours to read and analyze but with MoAn Inc. it takes just 1 and half hours!! Thank you ❤
So, again, really enjoying these recaps with your flair and perspective! Two quick (unasked for but helps your engagement 😊 ) perspectives. (1) The talking horses - In the Hebrew scriptures, Numbers 22 (specifically 28 but the verses around that), we have the story of Balaam and his talking donkey. In it, we have this guy, savagely beating his donkey and then the donkey literally tells him off. Nothing weird about that! (I guess, right after, “the Lord’s messenger” talks to him … so I guess a talking donkey wasn’t the strangest thing to happen to him that day.) When reading it, it doesn't even add anything to the story (unlike this example) ... It is just so casual the conversation. Basically the rider is saying "you suck" and the donkey says "yeah, well you suck too" and then the story continues. (Could be missing something, I suppose) (2) As a modern, obvious “hip” woman, I have been grateful for your perspective on these books. There has been some pretty misogynistic stuff before this, but this book was a great example of our male hero’s first blaming a woman (who, herself was captured, right?) and then a female god for their issues. I wonder what goes down in the Woman Classicists Lounge when you discuss these?
I once read the take that wether or not its true, Agamemnon swearing that he never slept with the slaves serves two purposes. One, it preserves their worth, both to Achilles (if he does what Patroclus asks and marries Briseis) and to Criseis' father, who will want to marry her off too. This is only possible if they are "officially" virgins. Also, probs more important to Achilles, it emasculates Agamemnon in front of his men. Its humiliating, because yeah. What was he doing with them? Is he not "man enough" to r*pe them like he is supposed to? That, I think, is the main point here. Thank you for another great video on the Iliad! You are doing a great job :)
11.40 'Way worse than if his dad had died ... which is why lots of people think that there was more than just a friendship between them because Achilles' grief [for Patroclus] is - Heavy' In asking what the 'real' relationship between Achilles and Patroclus was, strictly, there was no 'real' relationship, as we are basically talking about fictional characters as imagined by Homer, not real people. Even if there had, probably a few centuries before, been a real Trojan War that gave rise to the legends, and even if there had been real people involved in it called Achilles and Patroclus, whose names were still remembered in Homer's time and incorporated in his poem, they were probably not exactly like the way they are portrayed in the Iliad, just as even if there was a real Robin Hood in Medieval England, he was probably not fully like Errol Flynn or Kevin Costner in the film versions. Therefore, in asking if Achilles' and Patroclus's relationship was a loving and sexual one, we are really asking: 1. Does Homer say that it was? (No) 2. Does Homer hint that it was without saying so? (Possibly) 3. If not, if we were writing the story ourselves, would we want or find it more believeable to assume that it was? (Valid question, but the answers go beyond analysis of Homer's Iliad, and may tell us as much about us ourselves as about Homer's heroes.) As for 2., there is the question that if Homer meant to imply there was more to the relationship than just being friends, but did not like to say so, why he chose to keep it mysterious, when he is prepared to talk more frankly about e.g. Paris having sex with Helen. Here, as far as I know, we simply don't know what the attitude to homosexuality was in Homer's time, let alone in Mycenaean Bronze Age times when the legends probably originated. If what I read somewhere is right, there is no mention of homosexuality, male or female, anywhere in Homer or Hesiod, the poet who may have been Homer's closest contemporary. It is not condemned, just not mentioned. So far as sleeping arrangements in Achilles' hut are concerned, as observed when they have visitors, Homer says that both Achilles and Patroclus had female slave concubines who slept beside them, implying heterosexual relations. That is, unless we are supposed to assume that the girls were only for show, and that once visitors were gone they swapped partners, or that in the privacy of their hut at night there was some more complicated bisexual menage à trois or à quatre going on. In later Ancient Greek literature, in places like Athens and Thebes in the 5th and 4th Centuries BC, in many circles some forms of male homosexuality were openly practiced and even celebrated, although even there we should not assume that their attitudes were the same as those of modern gay rights campaigners. However, as far as I know, we simply don't have any information on whether the Greeks of Homer's time would have been coy, or ashamed, about admitting to physical intimacy between male warriors or not.
Although further to my above Comment (apologies for the length of it) my gut reaction, only, which I can't prove, is: -Yes, there was a physically intimate relationship and what we would now call 'gay love' going on between Achilles and Patroclus. -Achilles was also having sex with Briseis and perhaps other slave women among the many he had captured. Patroclus probably just accepted this without getting too jealous as something that masters were allowed to do with their slaves. Perhaps he was doing likewise. -There was in Homer's time, perhaps from the ancient bardic tradition of which he was part, some sense, which the Ancient Greeks mostly lost in later centuries, that there was something unnatural and wrong about homosexuality, that caused Homer to let the more Worldly members of his audience assume it without his explicitly mentioning it, and to be careful to provide 'cover' for Achilles by portraying him as also desiring beautiful women.
10.23 The other women of Achilles' household join in with lamenting for Patroclus. As this video does not set out to be a complete reading of the whole Iliad I accept that it must leave some things out. However, in the original, Homer adds that although they appear to be crying for Patroclus, these women are secretly really mourning 'each for her own sorrows'. To me, this is one of the sadder lines in the Iliad, reminding us, amidst all the Greek warriors' grief for their fallen comrade Patroclus, how much other hidden pain there must be among the women in the Greek camp, who have been taken from their homes as 'War Prizes' and reduced to slavery, after their menfolk were killed by the Greeks. Normally, Homer seems just to accept without comment or obvious emotion that this is what happens in war, and we are still meant to see those like Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax and Odysseus, who inflict such suffering, as heroes. This is one of the few occasions that Homer shows that, while it is not his main focus in telling the story, he is aware of the extent of the conquered women's misery. Others are Briseis' own lament in this Book, that links her sorrow at the prior destruction of her city and former family with her probably genuine grief for Patroclus, and Andromache's lament in Book 6, that Achilles and the Greeks have already destroyed the city and family in which she grew up, and fear that they will yet do the same to her new home city and family that she has in Troy with Hector. Homer presumably just accepted that this was the way of the World, fate, the will of the gods, inevitably going to happen in wartime. However, it suggests that, Briseis excepted, the captured Trojan women's mourning for Patroclus, may at least in part be under compulsion, an exercise in power that provides the female mourners by custom thought appropriate for a great man's funeral, that underlines these women's helplessness, that they are forced to mourn for one of the men who enslaved them. This helplessness will shortly be underlined at Patroclus's Funeral Games, when Achilles will take a few of these women from his household to give away as prizes in some of the athletics contests. The realization that some of them may have their lives further disrupted by being arbitrarily reallocated to different masters following the death of Patroclus may even be among 'their own sorrows' for which they are secretly grieving when they mourn Patroclus.
This Book is the last major mention of Briseis, apart from, as far as I know, just a single line in Book 24, when she is described as sleeping beside Achilles in his hut. Briseis's short speech mourning Patroclus is the only time she speaks in the Iliad. I don't know what to make of: '10.36 She tells us that Patroclus was the really nice one of the pair. That when her whole family were being killed by Achilles, like, in front of her, it was Patroclus who... wouldn't let her feel any sorrow' - What? That's being 'nice', not allowing Briseis to grieve despite her family having been killed in front of her? Sounds cruel and inhuman to me, unless I have misunderstood something. -10.55 'It was Patroclus who promised her that he would get Achilles to marry her' - Should we believe this? Achilles never says anything about intending to marry Briseis, which would be, while not impossible, quite a promotion for a slave who had been taken as a war captive from an enemy nation. Could it be something Patroclus said just to fob Briseis off to stop her crying? As for what will become of Briseis after Achilles is killed, as it is prophesied in the Iliad that he will soon be killed, I don't think any surviving Ancient literature mentions. Odysseus and the minor Trojan prince character Aeneas in due course each got a separate epic about their subsequent adventures. Agamemnon, Ajax, Hecuba and Andromache all got their own plays, and Helen, Menelaos and Nestor all appear in the Odyssey back in Greece, reminiscing about the Trojan War years afterwards. Yet, for Briseis, nothing. Presumably, as a mere slave woman, her subsequent life was considered unimportant and uninteresting to Ancient audiences. This means that in the recently flourishing field of novels based on Greek Mythology, including the Trojan War, modern authors have invented very varied later lives for Briseis. I have not read the whole of Madeline Miller's 'The Song of Achilles', although I loved the same authoress's 'Circe', but I understand that in Song of Achilles, after Achilles' death, Achilles' son Pyrrhus tries to claim Briseis as his own slave and she is killed trying to escape from him. In Pat Barker's starker 'Silence of the Girls', which is a very well written book but not suitable for the very sensitive or easily upset, Briseis becomes pregnant with Achilles' child and is freed from slavery and married to one of Achilles' men. Perhaps, in a way, the most faithful to the Ancient myths is Natalie Haynes' 'A Thousand Ships', a book I much enjoyed although it divides readers. In 'A Thousand Ships', as in the Ancient literature, Briseis, having appeared in earlier chapters, simply fades out of the story. A character being led through the Greek camp at the end of the War looks out to try to see the famously beautiful Briseis but is unable to spot her, and wonders if she has chosen to hide herself away.
8.35 - 9.22 Agamemnon swears he did not sleep with Briseis when he had her in his tent, as he also swore the same in relation to Chryseis in Book (1?), in both cases when this is the diplomatic thing to say. I agree with our presenter, perhaps this could be true once, but hard to believe Agamemnon both times. (Does Agamemnon have some get out e.g. does he think the gods will forgive him for breaking an oath if he makes enough sacrifices? Or has he realised that getting Achilles back fighting on his side is so crucial to victory that Agamemnon is willing to take some divine punishment? Pat Barker in her well-written but stark modern novel retelling 'The Silence of the Girls', imagines that Agamemnon is technically able to swear the oath because he had got up to a different sexual practice with Briseis than conventional intercourse.)
I just can’t help but laugh at Achilles’s speech in Book 19. In Book 9 he ranted about how much he “loved” Briseis as a justification for not returning to battle, and now he’s like “fuck Briseis, this is her fault!”. So your speech back then was a big lie, Achilles? Okay, then! But of course he also waxed poetic about how much he loved Patroclus (and we _see_ his grieving process throughout the rest of the poem) so I guess it’s easy to see when he’s lying and telling the truth.
In book IX Achilles makes it clear that the main reason why he does not want to go back to the battle field is that he realised that war and glory are not worth of a human life. No lie at all in this. Then he will go back to fighting for love and respect of Patroclus. He could still leave and go for a long, dull life back to his own country but he consciously, bravely chooses to fight, which is a suicide as it means (whatever the outcome of the duel with Hector) accepting to die at Troy, very young. He gives his life for a beloved companion, which makes him truly the greatest Greek hero, much respected from the Gods and Goddesses. I think that Diomedes and Ajax are great warriors but poor characters, Hector is a great hero and a great fictional character, Achilles is from another galaxy.
Patroclos my little bird. His death is so sad! But now I need to see the video of you reacting to the movie Troy. I loved that movie for so long and (still do) although it's not accurate at all. It's just a guilty pleasure for me. XD I didn't find the video of you reacting though. Can you refer me to it? :)
A child who has meditated on war and life, only character in the poem to do so, and a child whose emotions and feelings are the strongest and most genuine among the heros.
Achilles 'meditations on war and life' seem to be compatible with depriving an awful lot of people of life while waging war on them. Still, if someone cuts your head off with a blow from his sword in war, perhaps it is some comfort to know that at least he has meditated deeply on such matters.
HELLO LOVELIES, I'VE FINALLY UPDATED MY WEBSITE! You all can find the written summary of Iliad book 19 via this link :) I hope these help xx www.moaninc.co.uk/homers-iliad/book-19-summary
Remember this isnt a history book , your feeling what Homer wants you to feel.
3.25 Achilles saying he wishes Briseis had been killed by an arrow so that Achilles and Agamemnon might not have fallen out over 'a girl' is quite a shock.
Although at one point (I think it's Book 9) Achilles says he hates the man who says one thing and means another, Achilles says contradictory things about his feelings for Briseis at different points, depending on whom he wants to convince of what, and possibly also his own mood, as Achilles is an emotional character.
Hence earlier statements as to how much Briseis means to him are presumably exaggerated to emphasize how much his pride has been hurt by Agamemnon taking Briseis away from him, and to justify withdrawing from the war.
Could it be that his dismissive comments about Briseis and having fallen out with Agamemnon over 'a [mere] girl' are exaggerated the other way and likewise not necessarily to be taken at face value? At this point Achilles wants to reconcile with Agamemnon so he can resume fighting on the Greek side and take a bloody revenge on the Trojans for Patroclus. Consequently, it is now in Achilles' interest to play down the importance of Briseis 'What were we doing falling out just over that girl? Let's forget that and be friends again.'
So I don't know that we ever get to know what the real relationship between Achilles and Briseis is and what it really means to either of them, but evidently Briseis never meant anywhere near as much to Achilles as Patroclus did.
I may get round to posting another Comment about my thoughts on Briseis and her reactions recounted around 10.00 mins into this video.
In the meantime, I note:
-Late in this poem, when King Priam of Troy surprisingly spends a night at Achilles' hut, I think it's early Book 24, I am not sure if Erica has time to mention it in her summary but Homer says in his description of the sleeping arrangements that Briseis, now of course restored to Achilles, spends the night sleeping beside him. How she feels about this we are not told.
-In the Odyssey, where Odysseus is miraculously able to visit the Underworld and the spirits of the dead, he meets the ghost of Achilles there. Patroclus' ghost is mentioned as being present with Achilles, although Patroclus is not recorded as speaking. However, Achilles asks Odysseus for news of what has happened to his father Peleus and his son Pyrrhus/Neoptolamus, but he does not apparently care enough about Briseis to ask what has become of her.
To be fair, Agamemnon might have been truly scared that if he did sleep with Briseis that it might just be the thing that pushed Achilles over the edge. Our boy was just sitting there sulking in his tent just waiting for an excuse. So while Agamemnon is arrogant and his pride & hubris knows no bounds, his desire for power & wealth is even greater. His pride most likely made him keep her in his tent, just to infuriate Achilles. But then again, it is Agamemnon, and his behavior towards, and regarding women in the poem is poor to say the least. (I still can’t get over that he had the nerve to publicly disrespect Clytemnestra like that at the beginning. Not just his wife, but the Queen of Mycenae, and by extension, High Queen of the Greek alliance. The person keeping it all together back home & mother of his children. There’s still weather, natural disasters, disease, pirates, barbarians, all kinds of crazy crap that doesn’t stop just because people decide to go to war. Made even worse because most of the brightest and most talented of the Greeks are on the beaches of Troy rather than doing whatever it is they do at home. And she’s been an amazing administrator to keep everything from going to crap for 9 years. Plus she’s Helen’s sister, I imagine she’s quite attractive also).
9.57 - 11.07 Briseis speech mourning for Patroclus:
-This is the only time Briseis herself speaks in the Iliad, as opposed to the men arguing or negotiating over who should own her, which of course seems harsh and unfair to us, although presumably not to the average Ancient Greek.
-As she is mourning for Patroclus, she does not directly tell us about her feelings for Achilles, which we are never clearly told, except that early in the Iliad she was seen to be reluctant to be transferred from Achilles to Agamemnon. (We don't know if that is because she has come to care for Achilles, despite the traumatic, violent beginning to their relationship, dislike of Agamemnon, or because she has formed attachments to other members of Achilles' household like Patroclus. Perhaps the captured women in Achilles' household emotionally supported each other in their shared loss.)
-Acting as a mourner, Briseis is able to speak publicly, perhaps the only time she would be allowed to do so, and although she is from an enemy nation and a captive in the Greek camp, and may not therefore dare to say everything she feels, her speech seems heartfelt and she feels able to refer in front of the Greeks to the fact that the Greeks killed much of her family, causing her grief, and that she 'loved' Patroclus, not Achilles, 'the best'. (This seems to me to leave open the possibility that her feelings for Achilles are anywhere between mild affection to dislike. Can we assume it was not utter hatred, or she would not have hoped to be promoted from his slave concubine to his wife, nor have been so openly reluctant to be transferred from Achilles to Agamemnon earlier?
-10.37 'Patroclus was the really nice one of the pair. When her family were being killed by Achilles like in front of her...Patroclus was the one who would not let her feel any sorrow'
I think this quite closely follows Briseis' speech in the Iliad. But how could Briseis not feel any sorrow if much of her family have just been killed??? And is Patroclus really being kind in not letting Briseis weep for them?? In another internet forum, when this was discussed, someone suggested that Homer, as a man, is insensitive here to what a woman would actually feel in a situation like this.
-Don't know what to make of Briseis telling us Patroclus had promised to persuade Achilles to marry her. Achilles never mentions this even as an option he was considering, either in the arguments over who should have Briseis or when in Book 9 Agamemnon offers Achilles his daughter's hand in marriage and Achilles rejects this, saying his family would find a suitable bride for him back in that part of Greece we can't pronounce.
So was Patroclus making a promise to Briseis that he knew he could not deliver, to fob her off and stop her crying?
Anyone who reads this who has any thoughts about any of these questions is of course very welcome to comment.
This make it so much easier to read the book for school! I would usually just watch one of these videos on the book I’m reading in class and just annotate and skim! Without it would take about 3 hours to read and analyze but with MoAn Inc. it takes just 1 and half hours!! Thank you ❤
So, again, really enjoying these recaps with your flair and perspective! Two quick (unasked for but helps your engagement 😊 ) perspectives. (1) The talking horses - In the Hebrew scriptures, Numbers 22 (specifically 28 but the verses around that), we have the story of Balaam and his talking donkey. In it, we have this guy, savagely beating his donkey and then the donkey literally tells him off. Nothing weird about that! (I guess, right after, “the Lord’s messenger” talks to him … so I guess a talking donkey wasn’t the strangest thing to happen to him that day.) When reading it, it doesn't even add anything to the story (unlike this example) ... It is just so casual the conversation. Basically the rider is saying "you suck" and the donkey says "yeah, well you suck too" and then the story continues. (Could be missing something, I suppose) (2) As a modern, obvious “hip” woman, I have been grateful for your perspective on these books. There has been some pretty misogynistic stuff before this, but this book was a great example of our male hero’s first blaming a woman (who, herself was captured, right?) and then a female god for their issues. I wonder what goes down in the Woman Classicists Lounge when you discuss these?
I once read the take that wether or not its true, Agamemnon swearing that he never slept with the slaves serves two purposes. One, it preserves their worth, both to Achilles (if he does what Patroclus asks and marries Briseis) and to Criseis' father, who will want to marry her off too. This is only possible if they are "officially" virgins. Also, probs more important to Achilles, it emasculates Agamemnon in front of his men. Its humiliating, because yeah. What was he doing with them? Is he not "man enough" to r*pe them like he is supposed to? That, I think, is the main point here. Thank you for another great video on the Iliad! You are doing a great job :)
this is a super interesting take, thank you for this!
but if i'm not mistaken, briseis isn't a virgin. she was married before achilles took her as a slave
11.40 'Way worse than if his dad had died ... which is why lots of people think that there was more than just a friendship between them because Achilles' grief [for Patroclus] is - Heavy'
In asking what the 'real' relationship between Achilles and Patroclus was, strictly, there was no 'real' relationship, as we are basically talking about fictional characters as imagined by Homer, not real people.
Even if there had, probably a few centuries before, been a real Trojan War that gave rise to the legends, and even if there had been real people involved in it called Achilles and Patroclus, whose names were still remembered in Homer's time and incorporated in his poem, they were probably not exactly like the way they are portrayed in the Iliad, just as even if there was a real Robin Hood in Medieval England, he was probably not fully like Errol Flynn or Kevin Costner in the film versions.
Therefore, in asking if Achilles' and Patroclus's relationship was a loving and sexual one, we are really asking:
1. Does Homer say that it was? (No)
2. Does Homer hint that it was without saying so? (Possibly)
3. If not, if we were writing the story ourselves, would we want or find it more believeable to assume that it was? (Valid question, but the answers go beyond analysis of Homer's Iliad, and may tell us as much about us ourselves as about Homer's heroes.)
As for 2., there is the question that if Homer meant to imply there was more to the relationship than just being friends, but did not like to say so, why he chose to keep it mysterious, when he is prepared to talk more frankly about e.g. Paris having sex with Helen.
Here, as far as I know, we simply don't know what the attitude to homosexuality was in Homer's time, let alone in Mycenaean Bronze Age times when the legends probably originated.
If what I read somewhere is right, there is no mention of homosexuality, male or female, anywhere in Homer or Hesiod, the poet who may have been Homer's closest contemporary. It is not condemned, just not mentioned.
So far as sleeping arrangements in Achilles' hut are concerned, as observed when they have visitors, Homer says that both Achilles and Patroclus had female slave concubines who slept beside them, implying heterosexual relations. That is, unless we are supposed to assume that the girls were only for show, and that once visitors were gone they swapped partners, or that in the privacy of their hut at night there was some more complicated bisexual menage à trois or à quatre going on.
In later Ancient Greek literature, in places like Athens and Thebes in the 5th and 4th Centuries BC, in many circles some forms of male homosexuality were openly practiced and even celebrated, although even there we should not assume that their attitudes were the same as those of modern gay rights campaigners. However, as far as I know, we simply don't have any information on whether the Greeks of Homer's time would have been coy, or ashamed, about admitting to physical intimacy between male warriors or not.
Although further to my above Comment (apologies for the length of it) my gut reaction, only, which I can't prove, is:
-Yes, there was a physically intimate relationship and what we would now call 'gay love' going on between Achilles and Patroclus.
-Achilles was also having sex with Briseis and perhaps other slave women among the many he had captured. Patroclus probably just accepted this without getting too jealous as something that masters were allowed to do with their slaves. Perhaps he was doing likewise.
-There was in Homer's time, perhaps from the ancient bardic tradition of which he was part, some sense, which the Ancient Greeks mostly lost in later centuries, that there was something unnatural and wrong about homosexuality, that caused Homer to let the more Worldly members of his audience assume it without his explicitly mentioning it, and to be careful to provide 'cover' for Achilles by portraying him as also desiring beautiful women.
10.23 The other women of Achilles' household join in with lamenting for Patroclus.
As this video does not set out to be a complete reading of the whole Iliad I accept that it must leave some things out. However, in the original, Homer adds that although they appear to be crying for Patroclus, these women are secretly really mourning 'each for her own sorrows'.
To me, this is one of the sadder lines in the Iliad, reminding us, amidst all the Greek warriors' grief for their fallen comrade Patroclus, how much other hidden pain there must be among the women in the Greek camp, who have been taken from their homes as 'War Prizes' and reduced to slavery, after their menfolk were killed by the Greeks.
Normally, Homer seems just to accept without comment or obvious emotion that this is what happens in war, and we are still meant to see those like Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax and Odysseus, who inflict such suffering, as heroes.
This is one of the few occasions that Homer shows that, while it is not his main focus in telling the story, he is aware of the extent of the conquered women's misery. Others are Briseis' own lament in this Book, that links her sorrow at the prior destruction of her city and former family with her probably genuine grief for Patroclus, and Andromache's lament in Book 6, that Achilles and the Greeks have already destroyed the city and family in which she grew up, and fear that they will yet do the same to her new home city and family that she has in Troy with Hector.
Homer presumably just accepted that this was the way of the World, fate, the will of the gods, inevitably going to happen in wartime.
However, it suggests that, Briseis excepted, the captured Trojan women's mourning for Patroclus, may at least in part be under compulsion, an exercise in power that provides the female mourners by custom thought appropriate for a great man's funeral, that underlines these women's helplessness, that they are forced to mourn for one of the men who enslaved them.
This helplessness will shortly be underlined at Patroclus's Funeral Games, when Achilles will take a few of these women from his household to give away as prizes in some of the athletics contests.
The realization that some of them may have their lives further disrupted by being arbitrarily reallocated to different masters following the death of Patroclus may even be among 'their own sorrows' for which they are secretly grieving when they mourn Patroclus.
This Book is the last major mention of Briseis, apart from, as far as I know, just a single line in Book 24, when she is described as sleeping beside Achilles in his hut.
Briseis's short speech mourning Patroclus is the only time she speaks in the Iliad. I don't know what to make of:
'10.36 She tells us that Patroclus was the really nice one of the pair. That when her whole family were being killed by Achilles, like, in front of her, it was Patroclus who... wouldn't let her feel any sorrow'
- What? That's being 'nice', not allowing Briseis to grieve despite her family having been killed in front of her? Sounds cruel and inhuman to me, unless I have misunderstood something.
-10.55 'It was Patroclus who promised her that he would get Achilles to marry her' - Should we believe this? Achilles never says anything about intending to marry Briseis, which would be, while not impossible, quite a promotion for a slave who had been taken as a war captive from an enemy nation. Could it be something Patroclus said just to fob Briseis off to stop her crying?
As for what will become of Briseis after Achilles is killed, as it is prophesied in the Iliad that he will soon be killed, I don't think any surviving Ancient literature mentions.
Odysseus and the minor Trojan prince character Aeneas in due course each got a separate epic about their subsequent adventures. Agamemnon, Ajax, Hecuba and Andromache all got their own plays, and Helen, Menelaos and Nestor all appear in the Odyssey back in Greece, reminiscing about the Trojan War years afterwards. Yet, for Briseis, nothing.
Presumably, as a mere slave woman, her subsequent life was considered unimportant and uninteresting to Ancient audiences.
This means that in the recently flourishing field of novels based on Greek Mythology, including the Trojan War, modern authors have invented very varied later lives for Briseis.
I have not read the whole of Madeline Miller's 'The Song of Achilles', although I loved the same authoress's 'Circe', but I understand that in Song of Achilles, after Achilles' death, Achilles' son Pyrrhus tries to claim Briseis as his own slave and she is killed trying to escape from him.
In Pat Barker's starker 'Silence of the Girls', which is a very well written book but not suitable for the very sensitive or easily upset, Briseis becomes pregnant with Achilles' child and is freed from slavery and married to one of Achilles' men.
Perhaps, in a way, the most faithful to the Ancient myths is Natalie Haynes' 'A Thousand Ships', a book I much enjoyed although it divides readers. In 'A Thousand Ships', as in the Ancient literature, Briseis, having appeared in earlier chapters, simply fades out of the story. A character being led through the Greek camp at the end of the War looks out to try to see the famously beautiful Briseis but is unable to spot her, and wonders if she has chosen to hide herself away.
My grades📈📈📈
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8.35 - 9.22 Agamemnon swears he did not sleep with Briseis when he had her in his tent, as he also swore the same in relation to Chryseis in Book (1?), in both cases when this is the diplomatic thing to say. I agree with our presenter, perhaps this could be true once, but hard to believe Agamemnon both times.
(Does Agamemnon have some get out e.g. does he think the gods will forgive him for breaking an oath if he makes enough sacrifices? Or has he realised that getting Achilles back fighting on his side is so crucial to victory that Agamemnon is willing to take some divine punishment?
Pat Barker in her well-written but stark modern novel retelling 'The Silence of the Girls', imagines that Agamemnon is technically able to swear the oath because he had got up to a different sexual practice with Briseis than conventional intercourse.)
I just can’t help but laugh at Achilles’s speech in Book 19. In Book 9 he ranted about how much he “loved” Briseis as a justification for not returning to battle, and now he’s like “fuck Briseis, this is her fault!”. So your speech back then was a big lie, Achilles? Okay, then!
But of course he also waxed poetic about how much he loved Patroclus (and we _see_ his grieving process throughout the rest of the poem) so I guess it’s easy to see when he’s lying and telling the truth.
Mans literally does a 180 on Briseis REAL fast
In book IX Achilles makes it clear that the main reason why he does not want to go back to the battle field is that he realised that war and glory are not worth of a human life. No lie at all in this. Then he will go back to fighting for love and respect of Patroclus. He could still leave and go for a long, dull life back to his own country but he consciously, bravely chooses to fight, which is a suicide as it means (whatever the outcome of the duel with Hector) accepting to die at Troy, very young. He gives his life for a beloved companion, which makes him truly the greatest Greek hero, much respected from the Gods and Goddesses. I think that Diomedes and Ajax are great warriors but poor characters, Hector is a great hero and a great fictional character, Achilles is from another galaxy.
Patroclos my little bird. His death is so sad!
But now I need to see the video of you reacting to the movie Troy. I loved that movie for so long and (still do) although it's not accurate at all. It's just a guilty pleasure for me. XD I didn't find the video of you reacting though. Can you refer me to it? :)
The video isn’t up anymore! If I make it public again I’ll let you know :) But thank you so much for watching and for commenting!!! ❤️
4:23 The Italian Hands 🤌🤌🤌
I blame my Italian mother 🥴
@@MoAnInc 🤣🤣🤣
when they started tryin to blame other ppl i was like ohmygosh for real? but what was i expecting hahahahaha
Honestly we all expect too much from these characters 😂😂😂
@@MoAnInc ikr
The audacity of Achilles to still manage to blame a woman after being a child for nineteen books is rather impressive 😅
Like … we’ve all read the same thing, right?!?! 🫠
@@MoAnInc fr
A child who has meditated on war and life, only character in the poem to do so, and a child whose emotions and feelings are the strongest and most genuine among the heros.
Achilles 'meditations on war and life' seem to be compatible with depriving an awful lot of people of life while waging war on them. Still, if someone cuts your head off with a blow from his sword in war, perhaps it is some comfort to know that at least he has meditated deeply on such matters.
slay
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