Briseis Character Analysis

I’d been kind to Ismene—or I thought I had, but perhaps no kindness was possible between owner and slave, only varying degrees of brutality? I looked across the room at Ismene and thought: Yes, you’re right. My turn now.

“Cheers, lads,” he said. “She’ll do.”

So many pebbles on that beach—millions—all of them worn smooth by the sea’s relentless grinding, but not this one. This one had stayed sharp.

It mattered to me, that obstinate little stone, and it still does.

This is what free people never understand. A slave isn’t a person who’s being treated as a thing. A slave is a thing, as much in her own estimation as in anybody else’s.

“It’s not his fault,” she said. “He has these awful nightmares, sometimes he wakes up, he thinks I’m a Trojan.”

“You are a Trojan,” I said.

“No, I mean a fighter,” Tecmessa said.

Perhaps, at that age, I thought all the stirring tales of courage and adventure were opening a door into my own future, though a few years later—ten, eleven years old, perhaps—the world began to close in around me and I realized the songs belonged to my brothers, not to me.

Everybody in the arena was moved by the old man’s tears—and by the size of the ransom he’d brought with him. Sentiment and greed—the Greeks love a sentimental story almost as much as they love gold.

“Because I know what it’s like to lose everything and be handed to Achilles as a toy.”

His honesty winded me. But at the same time I was thinking: How can you know? You, with all your privileges, all your power, how could you possibly know what it’s like to be me?

“None of that gives him the right to take another man’s prize of honour. It doesn’t belong to him; he hasn’t earnt it.”

There was a lot more, but I’d stopped listening. Honour, courage, loyalty, reputation—all those big words being bandied about—but for me there was only one word, one very small word: it.

I was Helen now.

What I came away with was a sense of Helen seizing control of her own story. She was so isolated in that city, so powerless—even at my age, I could see that—and those tapestries were a way of saying: I’m here. Me. A person, not just an object to be looked at and fought over.

This isn’t about you.

It would have been easier, in many ways, to slip into thinking we were all in this together, equally imprisoned on this narrow strip of land between the sand dunes and the sea; easier, but false. They were men, and free. I was a woman, and a slave. And that’s a chasm no amount of sentimental chit-chat about shared imprisonment should be allowed to obscure.

I heard Odysseus talking as I approached, laughing at the idea that Agamemnon hadn’t laid a finger on me. “It’s not his finger I’m worried about,” he sniggered. Then he caught sight of me and snapped, “Where’s your veil?”

Some of the younger women had since had children by their Greek owners, and I’m sure they loved those children too—as women do—but when I spoke to them, it was the Trojan children they remembered, the boys who’d died fighting to save Troy.

He looked hollow, I thought. All that killing, all that revenge . . . Perhaps he’d managed to convince himself that if he did all that—killed Hector, defeated the Trojan army, broke Priam—Patroclus would keep his side of the bargain and stop being dead. We all try to make crazy deals with the gods, often without really knowing we’re doing it.

I’ve said Achilles awarded prizes—oh, and what prizes they were! Nothing was too much for him to give in memory of Patroclus: armour, tripods, horses, dogs, women . . . Iphis. He made her first prize in the chariot race.

I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.

These words echoed round me, as I stood in the storage hut, surrounded on all sides from the wealth Achilles had plundered from burning cities. I thought: And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and brothers.

“You won’t do it.”

“He’s a guest.”

“Not invited.”

“No, but accepted.”

So this was no longer, straightforwardly, a meeting of owner and slave. There was an element of choice. Or was there? I don’t know[.]

We’re going to survive—our songs, our stories. They’ll never be able to forget us. Decades after the last man who fought at Troy is dead, their sons will remember the songs their Trojan mothers sang to them.

We need a new song.

I’d been kind to Ismene—or I thought I had, but perhaps no kindness was possible between owner and slave, only varying degrees of brutality? I looked across the room at Ismene and thought: Yes, you’re right. My turn now.

“Cheers, lads,” he said. “She’ll do.”

So many pebbles on that beach—millions—all of them worn smooth by the sea’s relentless grinding, but not this one. This one had stayed sharp.

It mattered to me, that obstinate little stone, and it still does.

This is what free people never understand. A slave isn’t a person who’s being treated as a thing. A slave is a thing, as much in her own estimation as in anybody else’s.

“It’s not his fault,” she said. “He has these awful nightmares, sometimes he wakes up, he thinks I’m a Trojan.”

“You are a Trojan,” I said.

“No, I mean a fighter,” Tecmessa said.

Perhaps, at that age, I thought all the stirring tales of courage and adventure were opening a door into my own future, though a few years later—ten, eleven years old, perhaps—the world began to close in around me and I realized the songs belonged to my brothers, not to me.

Everybody in the arena was moved by the old man’s tears—and by the size of the ransom he’d brought with him. Sentiment and greed—the Greeks love a sentimental story almost as much as they love gold.

“Because I know what it’s like to lose everything and be handed to Achilles as a toy.”

His honesty winded me. But at the same time I was thinking: How can you know? You, with all your privileges, all your power, how could you possibly know what it’s like to be me?

“None of that gives him the right to take another man’s prize of honour. It doesn’t belong to him; he hasn’t earnt it.”

There was a lot more, but I’d stopped listening. Honour, courage, loyalty, reputation—all those big words being bandied about—but for me there was only one word, one very small word: it.

I was Helen now.

What I came away with was a sense of Helen seizing control of her own story. She was so isolated in that city, so powerless—even at my age, I could see that—and those tapestries were a way of saying: I’m here. Me. A person, not just an object to be looked at and fought over.

This isn’t about you.

It would have been easier, in many ways, to slip into thinking we were all in this together, equally imprisoned on this narrow strip of land between the sand dunes and the sea; easier, but false. They were men, and free. I was a woman, and a slave. And that’s a chasm no amount of sentimental chit-chat about shared imprisonment should be allowed to obscure.

I heard Odysseus talking as I approached, laughing at the idea that Agamemnon hadn’t laid a finger on me. “It’s not his finger I’m worried about,” he sniggered. Then he caught sight of me and snapped, “Where’s your veil?”

Some of the younger women had since had children by their Greek owners, and I’m sure they loved those children too—as women do—but when I spoke to them, it was the Trojan children they remembered, the boys who’d died fighting to save Troy.

He looked hollow, I thought. All that killing, all that revenge . . . Perhaps he’d managed to convince himself that if he did all that—killed Hector, defeated the Trojan army, broke Priam—Patroclus would keep his side of the bargain and stop being dead. We all try to make crazy deals with the gods, often without really knowing we’re doing it.

I’ve said Achilles awarded prizes—oh, and what prizes they were! Nothing was too much for him to give in memory of Patroclus: armour, tripods, horses, dogs, women . . . Iphis. He made her first prize in the chariot race.

I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.

These words echoed round me, as I stood in the storage hut, surrounded on all sides from the wealth Achilles had plundered from burning cities. I thought: And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and brothers.

“You won’t do it.”

“He’s a guest.”

“Not invited.”

“No, but accepted.”

So this was no longer, straightforwardly, a meeting of owner and slave. There was an element of choice. Or was there? I don’t know[.]

We’re going to survive—our songs, our stories. They’ll never be able to forget us. Decades after the last man who fought at Troy is dead, their sons will remember the songs their Trojan mothers sang to them.

We need a new song.