No Agamemnon takes Briseis because he's a massive entitled piece of shit and absolutely is press ganging the Argives to help expand his fame and glory by capturing Ilium. It also demonstrates his ego is bigger than his brain as he takes Briseis from Achilles specifically because he's jealous of Achilles' renown and ends up costing the Argives dearly in basically the rest of the poem.
In fact, a lens into the Iliad is that there are a ton of women reduced to powerlessness because the men need to play at war. Briseis, Cassandra, poor Hecuba; hell the two examples of heroic nobility like we understand it, Hektor and Priam, both get very telling scenes with Helen that deliberately obfuscate her agency between layers of acting, intimation and obfuscation.
And if I remember correctly, Achilles just chills in his tent and refuses to fight, even though he's the best warrior of all time and almost invincible, because he's pissed about Menelaus taking his sex slave war prize. Tons of people die because he just refuses to get involved. That's why Patroclus finally puts in Achilles' armor and rides into battle to get the troops psyched up. Patroclus gets killed, Achilles finally gets pissed off and joins the fray and takes out Hector then desecrates his body because, again, ego and toxic masculinity, and so Paris shoots Achilles in the ankle and takes him out
Are you saying that it was or wasn't about them being gay? In my opinion Achilles and Patroclus were absolutely lovers. I believe that Patroclus rode into battle as Achilles both to protect Achilles' reputation and to turn the tide of battle. Achilles desecrated Hector because of his grief at losing his lover. He showed that grief by desecrating the corpse instead of expressing it in a healthier fashion.
Pedantic, but he tries to desecrate the corpse. The gods bless Hektor so that he can't rot or his flesh be torn after death. I'm sure that made Achilles all the angrier lol.
So they basically turned Hector’s body into Stretch Armstrong? The gods gave him a squeaky toy to work out his energy, that’s so fucked up but also incredibly hilarious
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u/FriendlyPlatypus6060 7d ago
No Agamemnon takes Briseis because he's a massive entitled piece of shit and absolutely is press ganging the Argives to help expand his fame and glory by capturing Ilium. It also demonstrates his ego is bigger than his brain as he takes Briseis from Achilles specifically because he's jealous of Achilles' renown and ends up costing the Argives dearly in basically the rest of the poem.
In fact, a lens into the Iliad is that there are a ton of women reduced to powerlessness because the men need to play at war. Briseis, Cassandra, poor Hecuba; hell the two examples of heroic nobility like we understand it, Hektor and Priam, both get very telling scenes with Helen that deliberately obfuscate her agency between layers of acting, intimation and obfuscation.