The time has come for Achilles to re-enter the war against the Trojans. For this to happen, Agamemnon must first settle with Achilles. But the over-king feels the need to say more than simply to formulate his proposed terms of settlement. His aim is to excuse himself from responsibility for dishonoring Achilles, and the story that he tells in order to achieve this aim is a retelling of a cosmic atē ‘aberration’ that resulted in the Labors of Hēraklēs. Such a retelling, however, is destined to backfire: it will result in further damage to Agamemnon’s own royal status and in further advancement for the heroic prestige of Achilles, for whom Hēraklēs now becomes a perfect model.

Herakles at the tree of the Hesperides, holding three of the golden apples in his left hand. Behind him is the apple tree with the guardian serpent clinging around it. Bronze, 104.5cm (Roman, 1st century C.E.). Image via The British Museum.

In this brief speech by Achilles, he seems to be holding Zeus responsible for causing the atai ‘aberrations’ that have led to this point in the epic. See the comment on I.19.086–088. The context here at I.19.268–275 shows that Achilles has in mind not only the atai ‘aberrations’ of Agamemnon but also his own. On the atē ‘aberration’ of Achilles himself, see the comment on I.09.502–512. See also the comment on I.09.115–120: there too we see atai ‘aberrations’ in the plural.

The property that Agamemnon promised to give as compensation to Achilles is now being delivered for possession. This property to be possessed by Achilles includes not only material objects but also women who are awarded as objectified war-prizes. Achilles the Aeolian will now be awarded possession of the seven captive women whom he had originally captured from Aeolian Lesbos. More than that, he will now get to repossess the captive woman Briseis, whom he had originally captured from Lyrnessos and who had originally been awarded to him by the Achaeans—before Agamemnon had forcibly taken Briseis away from him at the beginning of the Iliad, thus causing the monumental dishonor that had given shape to the entire narrative arc of the epic, up to this point.

Achilles concedes here that the Achaeans must feast on meat before they can fight again. But Achilles refuses to join them, I.19.304–308. He craves instead to enter the bloody stoma ‘mouth’ of war itself, I.19.312–313.

The wording of Briseis in addressing the corpse of Patroklos is not just a speech expressing her sorrows: morphologically, it is a song of lament. In what follows, I make ten points about this lament:

Point 1. On the morphology of lament, see already the comment on the wording of Andromache at I.06.407–439. It is worth repeating here a caution as expressed in that comment: the laments of characters quoted by epic do not represent the actual meter of lamentation as sung in real laments. The genre of epic regularly uses its own meter, which is the dactylic hexameter, in representing other genres that it quotes, including unmetrical genres (see again Martin 1989:12–42; also pp. 87–88, specifically on lament). But the morphology of laments quoted by epic still follows the rules of lament.

Point 2. In the case of the lament performed by Briseis here at I.19.282–302, the song is a performance by a group of captive women, led in this case by Briseis herself. Such a performance involves not only singing but also dancing, to be visualized as a stylized form of swaying accompanied by gestures such as beating the chest. See the comment on I.18.051–060, where we see Thetis and her Nereid sisters performing a song of lament for Achilles as if he were dead already. To be noted is the reference there at I.18.050–051 to the gesture of beating the chest. Such a group performance by Thetis and the other Nereids is choral, in the sense that the Greek word khoros can be defined as ‘a group of singers/dancers’: see the comment at I.18.590–606. And the same description applies to the group performance by Briseis and the captive women here at I.19.282–302: once again, the performance is choral.

Point 3. The occasion for a choral performance can be sad, as in the case of the laments led by Thetis and Briseis, or it can be happy: see the comment on I.18.590–606, where we see a description of a merry celebration at the time of a harvest.

Point 4. Viewed in such a larger context, the lament of Briseis can be seen as a masterpiece of verbal artistry. This song of lament starts as if it were a wedding song, not a lament, since Briseis is envisioned at I.19.282 as an eroticized bride who matches the goddess Aphrodite herself in beauty and gracefulness. On the convention of comparing the bride to a goddess, especially to Aphrodite, see the comments on I.18.492 and I.19.155. But as soon as Briseis sees the corpse of Patroklos, all cut up by the sharp bronze, I.19.283, happy thoughts about weddings now turn to sad thoughts about funerals. She instantly starts weeping bitterly and singing her song of lament.

Point 5. The vision of Patroklos all cut up by the sharp bronze leads to another vision for Briseis. In the back of her mind is another vision, stored in her memory. It is a vision of the husband she once had, Mynes. Just as she now sees the corpse of Patroklos, all cut up by the sharp bronze, I.19.283, she remembers seeing the corpse of her husband Mynes, all cut up by the sharp bronze, I.19.292. But the sad image of Mynes, who had once been the bridegroom of Briseis, brings back happy memories as she thinks of her own wedding—and of songs sung at that wedding. Such thoughts now evoke the sad image of Achilles, that bridegroom-to-be who will not live long enough ever to become a bridegroom—and who has killed the happy thoughts of Briseis about a bridegroom in her own past. It was Achilles, Briseis keenly remembers, who had killed her lover Mynes and conquered the city of Lyrnessos, I.19.295–296, but she also remembers that Patroklos would not let her lament for Mynes, saying that Achilles would become her new lover, making her a bride of his own, I.19.297–299.

Point 6. So, the theme of a wedding song returns in this lament of Briseis, but there is a sad irony to it all, since there will never be any future wedding for the doomed bridegroom. There will be no marriage for Achilles. All that Achilles has done for Briseis is to kill off her own marriage to Mynes, and meanwhile the death of the kind and gentle Patroklos has cut short that hero’s own intermediacy in trying to arrange a marriage for Briseis and Achilles.

Point 7. In her crying and singing, singing and crying, Briseis performs as a prima donna of lament. She is a distinctly choral personality, analogous to the personality of Sappho herself in the choral songs attributed to that Aeolian prima donna of a later era. (On Sappho as a choral personality, see PH 370, with reference to Calame 1977:367–377; also 126–127.)

Point 8. Meanwhile, the choral group of lamenting women who are likewise captives is singing and swaying in response to the lead song of Briseis, I.19.301–302. Here I epitomize from some relevant remarks in Nagy 2010a:23–24. The group is shown in the act of responding to the lament of Briseis by continuing it with their own lament, in antiphonal performance, at I.19.301: ‘So she [= Briseis] spoke, and the women wailed in response’ (ὣς ἔφατο κλαίουσ’, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες). The verb epi–stenakhesthai, which I translate here as ‘wail in response’, is the conventional way for epic to signal an antiphonal performance in lamentation. See the anchor comment at I.24.720–776 on laments at Hector’s funeral.

Point 9. In singing her song of lament, Briseis as lead singer touches on her feelings as a captive woman who has become the war prize of Achilles—and who hopes to become his war bride. But she also touches on the projected feelings of the ensemble of captive women who respond to her lament in antiphonal song. These women too are war prizes, and they must therefore share in some ways the sorrows felt by the lead singer as she sings her lament. But the lead singer laments primarily the death of Patroklos and only secondarily her own misfortunes, while the ensemble of women who respond in antiphonal song are lamenting primarily their own misfortunes and only secondarily the death of Patroklos. Sorrow over the death of Patroklos seems to be the primary concern of Briseis—to the extent that her lament projects the sorrow of Achilles, which is a driving theme in the plot of the epic. By contrast, the sorrow expressed by the ensemble of captive women over their own misfortunes seems to be a primary concern only for them. Or is it? In what follows at Point 10, I argue that the overall lament will communalize the sorrow expressed by the epic narrative.

Point 10. In the lament of Briseis, the sorrow of the captive women is projected as the primary sorrow of Briseis herself over her own misfortunes, which had been caused by the deaths of her husband and the rest of her family at the hands of Achilles. Briseis shows that she remembers that old sorrow, since her wording indicates that she had wanted to lament her dead husband in the same way that she now laments the dead Patroklos. That death in her past is relevant to the death of Patroklos in the present. And the love of Briseis for her husband and the rest of her family is relevant to her love for Patroklos as a stand-in for Achilles. There is a diversity of emotions here. And the antiphonal exchange of laments between the captive women and their lead singer leads to a communalization of these emotions. The example of Briseis, then, supports the argument that lament is a communalizing experience. It leads here to a communalization of diverse emotions.

analysis of Achilles’ compensation as not a gift from Agamemnon but a distribution from the group