Women in the Iliad
In the Iliad women are items of exchange and markers of status for the men who possess them (Chryseis and Briseis, whom Agamemnon and Achilles argue over in Book I) obstacles that the male hero has to overcome or resist to fulfill his heroic destiny (Andromache's entreaties to Hector in Book VI). To the extent that the Iliad has a moral lesson to impart to its readers, part of it would have to be that the behavior of Agamemnon and Achilles in the first book (and beyond) is excessive. Both men are so fixated on their own images as heroic warriors that they bring woe upon themselves and the rest of the Greeks. A main part of that is the way they treat women as emblems of their status and martial prowess. Notice what Agamemnon says to the seer who declares that he must give back Chryseis: Now, again, you divine god's will for the armies, bruit it about, as fact, why the deadly Archer multiplies our pains: because I, I refused that glittering price for the young girl herself, I want her mine in my own house! I rank her higher than Clytemnnestra, my wedded wife-she's nothing less in build or breeding, in mind or works of hand (I, 127-134).To those who already knew the stories of the Trojan War heroes, these words would have been o
So now I mourn your death-I will never stop-you were always kind (XIX, 338-356). This does not make him a revolutionary, a reformer or a proto-feminist. From his point of view he may have simply been telling it like it is. They would know that Agamemnon had angered his wife Clytemnestra by sacrificing their daughter to obtain favorable winds for the expedition. Contrast Agamemnon's callousness, its results, with the gentler attitude of Hector toward his mother and wife in Book VI, and it's easy to see that the poet can imagine a different sort of attitude toward women. And mother-she ruled under the timberline of woody Placos once-he no sooner haled her here with his other plunder than he took a priceless ransom, set her free and home she went to her father's royal halls where Artemis, showering arrows, shot her down. In another passage Homer brutally drives home the impact of the war on the women. There is no reason to think that he wanted to, or thought that he could, change society in any way. But he does all this in a way that doesn't seek to support or justify that system. all in the same day went down to the House of Death, the great godlike runner Achilles Butchered them all, tending their shambling oxen, shining flocks. Andromache's address to Hector makes us realize how little separates this princess from the girls that Agamemnon and Achilles consider to be their prizes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------**Bibliography**. Instead, he presents it with such honesty and clarity that it makes the injustices of the society clear.
Common topics in this essay:
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Achilles Butchered,
Phthia Myrmidons,
Book VI,
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Trojan War,
Notice Agamemnon,
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Contrast Agamemnon's,
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Acceptance Essays
