Briseis
Brisēís (
/braɪˈsiːɪs/; Greek: Βρισηΐς, pronounced [brisɛːís]; also known as Hippodameia Greek: Ἱπποδάμεια, [hippodámeːa])[1] was a mythical queen in Asia Minor at the time of the Trojan War. Her character lies at the center of a dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon that drives the plot of Homer's Iliad.
[edit] Story
In Greek Mythology, Briseis, a daughter of Briseus, was a princess of Lyrnessus. Briseis was said to have had blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin and she was considered to be very beautiful and clever. Her husband was Mynes. When Achilles led the assault on that city during the Trojan War, she was captured and her family (including her father, her mother, and her three brothers) and her husband died at his hands.[2] She was subsequently given to Achilles as a war prize to be his concubine.
Patroclus comforted Briseis in her fear of being alone among her enemies and her grief over the loss of her country, her family, and her freedom and did not let her weep by promising to have Achilles make her his wife and that he would give a wedding feast for them on their return to Phthia after the war had ended.
According to Book 1 of the Iliad, when Agamemnon was compelled by Apollo to give up his own woman, Chryseis, he demanded Briseis as compensation. This prompted a quarrel with Achilles that culminated with Briseis' delivery to Agamemnon and Achilles' protracted withdrawal from battle. His absence had disastrous consequences for the Greeks. Despite Agamemnon's grand offers of treasure and women, he did not return to the fray until the death of Patroclus.
In the Iliad, Achilles loves Briseis (and Briseis was said to love him back), comparing their relationship with that of man and wife (he refers to her as his bride and wife often) and explicitly to that of Menelaus and Helen, which was, after all, what the war is about.
Achilles is angry at Agamemnon, and seethes with rage in his tent: understandably made furious by the thought of Agamemnon sleeping with Briseis. When Achilles returns to the fighting to avenge Patroclus' death and Agamemnon returns Briseis to him, Agamemnon swears to Achilles that he and Briseis never shared a bed.[3]
Briseis was among those to lament and mourn over the death of Patroclus. She remained with Achilles until his death. His death plunged her into great grief and she took it upon herself to prepare Achilles for the afterlife.
In medieval romances, starting with the Roman de Troie, Briseis becomes Briseida[4] and is the daughter of Calchas. She loves and is loved by Troilus and then Diomedes. She is later confused with Chryseis and it is under variations of that name that the character is developed further, becoming Shakespeare's Cressida.
[edit] Cultural references
- In Ovid's Heroides, an apocryphal letter from Briseis to Achilles makes up the third entry, in which she reproaches him for both giving her up too easily to Agamemnon, and being tardy in gaining her return.
- In The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Briseis fell in love with Achilles and chose to leave Troy to be with him.
- The novel Daughter of Troy by Sarah B. Franklin is written from Briseis' point of view with a substantial pre-history before the events of the Iliad unfold [1].
- In Christa Wolf's novel Kassandra, aspects of the Homeric and medieval versions of Briseis' story are blended so that the character is steadily degraded from being Troilus' lover to Agamemnon and Achilles' plaything.
- Briseis is played by Gloria Milland in the 1962 film The Fury of Achilles.
- Briseis is featured in the 2004 film Troy. In the film, Briseis (Rose Byrne) is a cousin of the Trojan princes Hector and Paris, and falls in love with Achilles (Brad Pitt). She later kills Agamemnon (Brian Cox) during the Sack of Troy; in classical mythology Agamemnon is killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.
- In Steven Saylor's novel A Murder on the Appian Way, part of the Roma Sub Rosa series, Gordianus tries to insult someone by comparing her to Briseis, but the woman fails to understand the allusion and is therefore not insulted.
- In Orson Scott Card's Shadow of the Hegemon, Briseis is the code name for Petra Arkanian while she was being held prisoner by Achilles de Flandres.
[edit] References
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- ^ From the A scholium at Iliad 1.392 we learn that "[Homer] forms the names [of Briseis and Chryseis] patronymically. For as other ancient [poets] relate, Chryseis was called Astynome, and Briseis was called Hippodameia." Dictys Cretensis calls Briseis by the latter name in his account of the Trojan War. See Dué 2002: Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis 56-58.
- ^ See, e.g., Iliad 2. 688-694.
- ^ Homer. Iliad, 19.261-263.
- ^ Brizeida in the letter of Azalais d'Altier.
