Taken as a whole, Iliad 19 is not a memorable book. It is at one level a pacing element: an interlude before the confrontation between Achilles and Hector on the fourth and final day of battle.Footnote 1 It begins with Thetis bringing new armour to her son and ends with Achilles putting it on, but in between there is a series of episodes that move the action from Thetis and Achilles at his camp, to the assembly of the Greeks, to the laments by Briseis and Achilles at his tent, to Olympus, and back to the preparations in the broader Greek camp, before focusing in on Achilles’ own arming scene. There is no overt conflict, and the connections between these scenes are relatively loose. Accordingly, readers tend to focus not on the book as a whole but on individual episodes or speeches, and many rich thematic connections have been established between various passages in Book 19 and other parts of the epic.
Two single speeches that have drawn considerable attention are Briseis’ lament over Patroclus (19.287–300) and Xanthus’ prophetic speech to Achilles (19.408–17). Each speech, extraordinary enough in itself, forms part of a large-scale pattern that spans the whole epic, while being significantly juxtaposed with another speech in its immediate context. The lamentation of Briseis is unique in the access it grants to an enslaved woman’s perspective; at the same time, it is closely connected to other laments throughout the epic, and also corresponds closely to Achilles’ subsequent speech. The prophetic speech of the horse Xanthus is a strikingly fantastic element in the Iliad; at the same time, the prediction of Achilles’ death resonates throughout the epic and is entangled with the deaths of both Patroclus and Hector, while in its immediate context this speech is part of a remarkable conversation with Achilles in the moments before he enters the battlefield. It is challenging to keep all of these layered connections in focus simultaneously; nevertheless, it is rewarding to do so, as each informs the others.
I suggest an additional level of resonance operating within Book 19. We can productively consider together the scenes featuring Briseis and Xanthus and identify a number of important parallels. These lie not in the speeches themselves, which have little in common; I will spend correspondingly little time on their details. My focus is rather on the ways in which Briseis and Xanthus are handled similarly before, during, and after these scenes. Until their speeches in Book 19, neither Briseis nor Xanthus is treated as a character, but as a luxury possession – highly desirable, but without individuality and essentially interchangeable with similar high-quality objects. Their value is largely asserted or constructed by others rather than explained in terms of their own qualities or character; their interiority is strictly limited, so that they are not considered as possible narrative focalizers. But in Book 19, the poet grants each of them one unexpected and transformative speech before cutting off their voices and giving the final word to their common interlocutor, Achilles. Within the world of the epic, both the woman and the horse return to being mere possessions after their unique speeches; for the external audience, however, the import of their speeches need not be simply erased. I argue first that considering the two scenes together highlights how strongly the construction of the speakers’ identities distinguishes their speeches from others that resemble them in form and content. I then show how these scenes both extend and sharpen the peculiar dynamic of unresolved tension that underlies the focal Greek assembly of Book 19. It is this dynamic, I suggest, that unifies the book and defines its primary function in the epic.
1. Briseis and Xanthus
Constructed value and objecthood
For the first eighteen books of the epic, Briseis and Xanthus are both treated primarily in terms of their value as possessions: as ‘prize/woman’ and as ‘horse’ rather than as independent agents. The parameters of this valuation have been discussed very fully for BriseisFootnote 2 and rather less often for Xanthus, whose objecthood is taken for granted by most modern readers.Footnote 3 I will therefore focus on highlighting the parallels in their handling in two contexts: their introduction in Books 1 and 2 and the more complex discussion of their value in Books 9 and 10.
The initial presentation of Briseis in Book 1 as a geras rather than as a person is explicit, and the interchangeability of prizes is unquestioned throughout this first assembly scene. Agamemnon has initially threatened to take an unspecified compensatory prize to offset the loss of Chryseis; it might be Odysseus’ or Ajax’ or Achilles’ (1.138). Briseis’ nameFootnote 4 is introduced only as Agamemnon decides and declares that he will seize his compensation from Achilles; he tells Achilles that he is coming for Briseis and targeting ‘your prize’ (τϵὸν γέρας, 1.184–5).Footnote 5 This singling out emphasizes not the particular qualities of Briseis herself as an especially desirable object, but rather specifies her owner as the particular target of retaliatory action. Similarly, when Achilles’ horses are first introduced in Book 2 their excellence is initially defined only in relation to their owner: ‘for he [Achilles] was far the mightiest, and the horses who carried the amumōn son of Peleus’ (ὃ γὰρ πολὺ φέρτατος ἦϵν,/ἵπποι θ’, οἳ φορέϵσκον ἀμύμονα Πηλϵίωνα, 2.769–70). The horses’ excellence is asserted but not described in independent terms; the poet mentions only the fact of their service to their owner, while grammatically the singular predicate applied to Achilles is understood to apply to the horses too, but without specific reiteration. Their superlative quality is understood as a corollary of Achilles’ own.
The value of both Briseis and the horses in these passages is therefore grounded in Achilles’ ownership. This is emphasized by the fact that in both of these passages the excellence of comparable women and horses is constructed from their own qualities, which are described in some detail. Before Briseis is named in Book 1, Achilles initially describes the worth of his own geras after a successful raid as never equal to Agamemnon’s (1.163), whereas Agamemnon’s prize is ‘much greater’ (σοὶ τὸ γέρας πολὺ μέζον, 1.167). Chryseis’ value has indeed already been explained by Agamemnon and her desirable qualities as regards figure, stature, mind, and skill (δέμας, φυή, φρένϵς, ἔργα) compared favourably to Clytemnestra’s (1.112–15). By contrast, Briseis is only given the common epithet καλλιπάρηον (‘beautiful-cheeked’, 1.184), echoing an earlier description of Chryseis (1.143); her value is not grounded in any distinctive or outstanding traits, but in the fact that Achilles possesses and values her. Similarly, we can compare the accepted excellence of Achilles’ horses with the explicit description of the mares of Eumelos. When the poet, after the catalogue of ships, asks the Muse to name the best men and horses on the Greek side (2.761–2), the answer begins with the mares driven by Eumelos, identified as ‘far the best’ (μέγ’ ἄρισται, 2.763). This judgement of quality is explained, like Agamemnon’s valuation of Chryseis, by descriptive detail: their excellence lies in their physical qualities (they are swift, matching in coat and age, straight-backed), their rearing (by Apollo), and the effect they produce on enemies (2.763–7). Only then is it revealed that they are the best horses in the same way that Ajax is the best warrior – in the absence of Achilles (2.768–9). This qualification reveals the artifice of the initial answers, and Achilles’ horses are acknowledged as superlative, in conjunction with their master’s own excellence.Footnote 6 Yet the description of Eumelos’ mares is not capped or challenged; it is not yet clear, at this point in the narrative, how Achilles’ horses are superior.Footnote 7 While his own extraordinary qualities have been well established and his behaviour in camp is contrasted with that of his men (2.771–9), his horses’ withdrawal from active battle is not singled out from the idleness of the other horses (2.775–7). Other horses, like other women, are valued according to their desirable qualities, independently from the status of their ownersFootnote 8 – but, at this stage in the epic, not Achilles’. The excellence of his horses, like that of his geras Briseis, is essentially situated in the fact that they are owned by the pre-eminent Achilles, particularly by contrast with the descriptions of the specific merits of Eumelos’ horses and of Chryseis.
This construction of value, centring on ownership, is developed further in the discussion of Briseis in Book 9 and of Achilles’ horses in Book 10. These passages are focalized through men who want but do not currently possess them; they are singled out as particularly desirable through their valuation by their would-be owners. In Book 9, Achilles suddenly speaks of Briseis as a ‘wife dear to the heart’ (ἄλοχον θυμαρέα, 9.336) and for eight lines (9.336–43) compares his feeling for her with Menelaus’ and Agamemnon’s feelings for their wives, and that of any noble and sensible man who ‘loves and cares for his own’ (ἣν αὐτοῦ φιλέϵι καὶ κήδϵται, 9.342).Footnote 9 But though the sincerity and emotive implications of this claim are subject to interpretation, Briseis remains the accusative object of Achilles’ estimation; it is his desire and not her desirability that is expressed. Similarly, the horses of Achilles are discussed in Book 10 as a prize whose value is defined by their potential recipient. Hector offers a Greek chariot and the best horses (οἵ κϵν ἄριστοι ἔωσι, 10.306)Footnote 10 to whoever will act as a spy on the Greek camp (ὅς τίς κϵ τλαίη, 10.307) as a ‘gift’ and ‘payment’ (δῶρον and μισθός, 10.304). Both the horses and the spy are at this point undetermined, as the indefinite relative clauses emphasize. It is Dolon who specifies the particular horses and chariot that he considers ‘the best’ when he volunteers – those that bear the son of Peleus (10.322–3). Achilles’ horses are, at this point, presented as a precious but not a unique prize, and they are once again defined by their present ownership by Achilles.
The value of both Briseis and the horses is also strikingly circumscribed. Ultimately, Achilles chooses not to accept Briseis’ return; in his own judgement – if not that of the other Greeks – the circumstances of Agamemnon’s offer are problematic enough to outweigh her value.Footnote 11 Dolon does not reject his requested prize though he fails to earn it. But Odysseus smiles when Dolon explains his motivation for the expedition, and declares that the horses are ‘hard to master and drive for any mortal man’ (οἳ δ’ ἀλϵγϵινοὶ/ἀνδράσι γϵ θνητοῖσι δαμήμϵναι ἠδ’ ὀχέϵσθαι, 10.402–3) except Achilles, the son of a goddess.Footnote 12 The horses’ unique lineage is not yet mentioned, but only the exceptional nature of the driver they demand. By this statement Odysseus both heightens and diminishes their value as a prize to an ordinary man. Dolon is no Achilles, and so the prize he has named is beyond his power to use even if he could obtain it; the quality that makes the horses desirable also makes them useless to Dolon in practical terms.
These same passages also include comparanda that further circumscribe the value of these particular objects of desire. Briseis is included with the offer of a group of enslaved women defined by their beauty and skill (9.128–30 = 9.270–2),Footnote 13 as well as Achilles’ own future choice of the twenty most beautiful Trojan women (9.139–40 = 9.281–2), and one of Agamemnon’s daughters as a wife (9.144–8 = 9.286–90). Achilles rejects this offer both wholesale and in parts, specifically refusing the daughters of Agamemnon whatever their goddess-like qualities (9.388–91). Instead, he looks forward to an entirely distinct group of Greek women (9.393–400) from whom Peleus will seek and Achilles will choose his own wife, following his thumos’ insistence on a ‘wedded wife, a suitable bride’ (μνηστὴν ἄλοχον, ἐικυῖαν ἄκοιτιν, 9.399) – and Briseis is tacitly excluded. Similarly, Dolon’s admission to Odysseus of his desire for Achilles’ horses is quickly followed by his enthusiastic praise for Rhesus’ horses, whose beauty, size, colour, and speed he describes in superlative terms (‘his are truly the most beautiful horses I have seen, and the largest; whiter than snow, and they run like the wind’, τοῦ δὴ καλλίστους ἵππους ἴδον ἠδὲ μϵγίστους‧/λϵυκότϵροι χιόνος, θϵίϵιν δ’ ἀνέμοισιν ὁμοῖοι, 10.436–7). This praise might well seem a self-serving distraction, given Dolon’s desperate circumstances, but it is repeated and amplified later in the book (10.544–51) when Nestor asks Odysseus whether the horses were a gift from the gods, as they are like the rays of the sun (10.547) and he has never seen or thought of such horses (10.550). Achilles’ horses are not directly compared to Rhesus’Footnote 14 just as Briseis is not explicitly excluded from the group of marriageable women. Nevertheless their excellence is qualified in these books just as it is in Books 1 and 2 by the descriptions of Chryseis and the horses of Eumelos; Briseis is quietly superseded in Achilles’ speech by his discussion of marriageable Greek women,Footnote 15 and Achilles’ horses by the praise for Rhesus’ team.
Throughout the first half of the Iliad, then, Briseis and the horses are presented as possessions whose exceptional value depends on their ownership by Achilles, and whose own qualities are implied rather than stated. A key complement to this external construction of value is the strict limitation of the individuality of both Briseis and Xanthus in the first eighteen books of the epic. Briseis is given no personal qualities, no history beyond Achilles’ acquisition of her from the sack of Lyrnessus (2.690),Footnote 16 and a single adjective reflecting her interiority when in Book 1 she accompanies Agamemnon’s heralds unwillingly, ἀέκουσα (1.348).Footnote 17 The horses are initially defined only by their belonging to Achilles, until Patroclus’ arming scene when their fantastic lineage as descendants of the harpy Podarge and the West Wind is fully disclosed, together with their names (16.148–51).Footnote 18 Yet even now that Xanthus has a name, he is indistinguishable from Balius, and he is still treated in this passage as a piece of equipment – wondrous equipment with a literal pedigree, and key to a warrior’s victory or loss in battle, but equipment nevertheless, paralleled by the armour forged by Hephaestus. It is in this capacity, as practical god-given gifts carrying Patroclus and Automedon into and away from battle, that the horses are treated throughout Book 16 (380–2, 470–6, 866–7).
The horses, however, do demonstrate intense grief for Patroclus at 17.426–49.Footnote 19 As Johnston argues, ‘Xanthus and Balius [mourn] in unmistakably human ways’ and are described in terms that suggest both cognitive and emotional capacity.Footnote 20 Yet throughout this passage, the horses are neither named nor distinguished from each other, and they are largely described by dual forms; the focus is on the responses of the team as a unit. Of equal importance is the abrupt and total shift away from this focus on the horses as feeling subjects; at 17.448, Zeus, whose recognition of their grief is initially described in the same terms as his recognition of human grief (17.441 = 19.340), is suddenly concerned that they will be captured by Hector, like the armour (17.450), and acts to prevent this.Footnote 21 The horses revert to being possessions, so that for the remainder of the episode they are reduced to equipment to be won or lost on the battlefield; they have the physical and useful qualities of strength and speed, and the lesser charioteer has difficulty managing them,Footnote 22 but they have no further interiority. They are once again valuable possessions, fundamentally desired by the Trojans and defended by the Greeks.
Suddenly a subject
As we have seen, by the beginning of Book 19 Briseis and Xanthus have been presented almost exclusively in terms of their valuation by other characters, and have been constructed for the audience as possessions rather than as individuals with personal history and qualities. Neither has served as a narrative focalizer, and there is accordingly no expectation that either the enslaved woman or the animal will speak. Horses – even those of divine lineage – are otherwise treated naturalistically in the Iliad,Footnote 23 while enslaved perspectives are minimally represented.Footnote 24
Briseis’ objectification is categorical right up until the lines that introduce her speech. In the passage that brings her back into the narrative, the Myrmidons are taking care of the gifts (δῶρα) sent by Agamemnon, bringing them to the ship, putting them in the tents, seating the women (κάθϵσαν δὲ γυναῖκας), and driving the horses to join the herd (19.278–81). They are stowing away commodities, and Briseis is not even singled out from the other women.
And suddenly in the next line Briseis emerges as a subject:
Βρισηῒς δ’ ἄρ’ ἔπϵιτ’ ἰκέλη χρυσῆι ᾿Αφροδίτηι,
ὡς ἴδϵ Πάτροκλον δϵδαϊγμένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῶι,
ἀμφ’ αὐτῶι χυμένη λίγ’ ἐκώκυϵ, χϵρσὶ δ’ ἄμυσσϵν
στήθϵά τ’ ἠδ’ ἁπαλὴν δϵιρὴν ἰδὲ καλὰ πρόσωπα.
ϵἶπϵ δ’ ἄρα κλαίουσα γυνὴ ϵἰκυῖα θϵῆισιν ‧
But then Briseis, who was like golden Aphrodite, when she saw Patroclus mangled with the sharp sword, collapsed onto him and shrieked loudly, and with her hands she tore her breast and tender throat and beautiful face. And as she wailed the goddess-like woman spoke… (19.282–6)
This unique introductory passage rewards closer attention. Briseis’ name is placed first in the first line, the grammatical subject and the new focalizer of the narrative. She is first compared to AphroditeFootnote 25 and, in the last line, to the goddesses in general; she sees and cries out, instead of being seen and not heard; and perhaps most importantly she disfigures herself. As Faraone notes, of all the women who lament in the Iliad, ‘Briseis is the only one who also disfigures the prize areas of female beauty: her breasts, her neck, and her face.’Footnote 26 This may be part of the traditional expression of grief, but we must not overlook the fact that Briseis here literally attacks – within the acceptable context of ritual – the beauty for which enslaved women were particularly valued. The extremity of this action underscores the uniqueness of the initiative taken by Briseis in performing the lamentation before we even hear the strikingly personal speech that follows; the extraordinary actions of mourning prepare us for the extraordinary spoken lament.
In this military setting, given the absence of a Greek woman to perform the lamentation, Briseis’ adoption of the role of mourner has been casually accepted as natural, faute de mieux.Footnote 27 This, however, is by no means an expectation that has been developed within the narrative. Laments in the Iliad are otherwise spoken only by family members – mothers, fathers, wives, and siblings – while more general mourning by the people or by professionals are described but not reported.Footnote 28 Achilles’ laments for Patroclus are the only other exception, and these are well prepared in Books 16 and 17. By contrast, Briseis has so far been a passive object, and not even Patroclus’ own slave; their only prior interaction is when he leads her out to Agamemnon’s heralds (1.346–7), which includes no indication of personal connection. But when Briseis steps back into the narrative in Book 19, her actions – even before she begins to speak – claim a relationship to Patroclus that has been completely unmentioned until this moment, and that is otherwise entirely unattested.
The fact of Xanthus’ speech is equally unexpected. In the last scene of the book, at the end of the arming scene, Achilles’ companions get his chariot ready, and he calls out to his horses by name and by pedigree (19.400–3). There is nothing in his speech to prepare us for a reply.Footnote 29 Instead, ‘the narrator clearly indicates the extraordinary nature of the situation in his structuring of the dialogue between human and horse’Footnote 30 by omitting the usual speech concluding formula (such as ‘thus he spoke’, ὣς ἔφατο) and instead moving directly to a speech introduction that is, like Briseis’, extended and unique in detail:
τὸν δ’ ἄρ’ ὑπὸ ζυγόφι προσέφη πόδας αἰόλος ἵππος
Ξάνθος, ἄφαρ δ’ ἤμυσϵ καρήατι, πᾶσα δὲ χαίτη
ζϵύγλης ἐξϵριποῦσα παρὰ ζυγὸν οὖδας ἵκανϵν‧
αὐδήϵντα δ’ ἔθηκϵ θϵὰ λϵυκώλϵνος Ἥρη‧
Then from beneath the yoke the swift-footed horse Xanthus addressed him. Suddenly he bowed his head, and his whole mane streamed from beneath the yoke pad by the yoke and reached the ground; and the goddess, white-armed Hera, gave him speech… (19.404–7)
This four-line introduction to his speech draws attention to the unexpected speaker in several ways. The familiar line τὸν … προσέφη that often precedes a direct speech is modified to indicate the unusual speaker who addresses his interlocutor ‘from beneath the yoke’ (ἄρ’ ὑπὸ ζυγόφι for the more usual nominative participle). The subject, ‘the swift-footed horse’ (πόδας αἰόλος ἵππος) ‘is a unique noun-epithet combination’ (Edwards (n. 1) on 404–7), but even the singling out of one horse (ἵππος) is rare and striking; horses in the Iliad are almost always referred to in the plural, either as a team of horses, or as a collective part of the army.Footnote 31 Xanthus himself is otherwise always paired with Balius. The description of his actions (19.405–6), which reprise the mourning that he and Balius earlier performed together over Patroclus’ body in Book 17,Footnote 32 prolong our anticipation of his speech, as does the explicit and supernatural explanation of his ability to speak (19.407).Footnote 33 Both of these elements also prepare us for the fatal content of the speech to come.
Before we hear from either Briseis or Xanthus, the narrative signals the emergence of an unexpected individual voice from a previously mute and objectified source, giving extraordinary power to the speeches that they deliver. These extended introductions highlight the exceptionality of the speakers, while anticipating the traditional genres – lament and prophetic speech – that they draw upon.
Speaking up
For the purposes of my argument, extensive discussion of the speeches is hardly necessary. It is evident that each speech gives us access to a perspective and an experience that is otherwise absent from the epic, and especially for Briseis the implications of this unique and personal viewpoint have been amply and productively discussed. The new information about Briseis’ past, her description of a lost future, the emotional language of lament, and the extensive use of first-person personal pronouns, all clearly centre the specific experience of an enslaved woman in a way that connects to but is distinct from other comparable speakers who anticipate what she has already experienced.Footnote 34 Xanthus’ speech is likewise connected to other Iliadic anticipations of Achilles’ death and other comments on the inevitability of fate,Footnote 35 as well as a broader tradition of animal prophecy,Footnote 36 but it also clearly articulates the very particular perspective and specific limitations of a horse, even one with a fantastic lineage.
There are some other large-scale parallels worth noting. In type, both draw on traditional speech genres – lament and prophecy – that offer a set of conventions that encourage lateral connections with other parts of the epic and of wider cultural traditions, while also providing a framework that brings out the nuanced individuality of these particular speeches. In form, both are structured in ring composition, setting them off from their contexts as cohesive units.Footnote 37 In content, both are responses to the death of Patroclus which reflect the unique perspectives offered by these atypical speakers. Briseis shares her personal history and lost hopes for the future through the death of Patroclus, while Xanthus links it to Achilles’ fate, and calls attention to the limitations of the horses’ excellence in the face of the divine and human factors that determine their past and future drivers’ deaths.
Achilles recentred
Once the speeches are delivered, however, the narrative imposes sharp limitations on the speakers, and Achilles’ corresponding speeches recapture our attention. The two lines that follow Briseis’ speech, in which the other women join her lamentation, form a rare acknowledgement of the experiences of enslaved women.Footnote 38 However, the subsequent transition to Achilles’ perspective is swift and inexorable: in one phrase (‘but about him,’ αὐτὸν δ’ ἀμφί, 19.303)Footnote 39 the scene changes to Achilles and the male elders. Briseis disappears from the narrative once more and we lose access to her interiority. Furthermore, Achilles’ ensuing lament for Patroclus (19.315–7) matches and displaces Briseis’ claims without engaging directly with them. For example, Briseis’ implied comparison of the death of Patroclus with the actual loss of her dead husband and brothers (19.290–4) is superseded by Achilles’ explicit comparison with the imagined loss of his father and son (19.321–7). Her lost hope of a marriage to Achilles and a celebration in Phthia, arranged by Patroclus, is replaced by Achilles’ lost hope that, after his own certain death, Patroclus would survive to take Achilles’ son back to Phthia to claim his inheritance.Footnote 40 Thus, as Achilles speaks, Briseis’ lament – the epic’s only construction of her personhood – is overwritten.Footnote 41 We hear about her only once more, in our last glimpse of the Greek camp before Priam returns to Troy with Hector’s body, lying next to Achilles (24.676).Footnote 42
Xanthus’ speech is still more stringently and actively constrained. Before Achilles even begins his reply, we are told that Xanthus loses the power of speech (‘when he had thus spoken, the Erinyes checked his voice,’ ὣς ἄρα φωνήσαντος Ἐρινύϵς ἔσχϵθον αὐδήν 19.418). There is no possibility of further conversation; Xanthus has been granted exactly one speech, and we know that Achilles will be in control of the end of the exchange even before his speech is introduced. What is more, Achilles appears untouched by the miraculous fact of the horse’s speech;Footnote 43 he responds to the content of the speech as a matter of course. Dismissing Xanthus’ concerns (‘Why do you prophesy my death?’ 19.420), he restates his intention to re-enter the battlefield despite the known and accepted consequences (19.422–3). Key to the dynamic of this scene is the parallel with the end of Book 16 (859–61); Xanthus foretells the death of Achilles as Patroclus foretells the death of Hector. This parallel certainly encourages comparisons between the men’s responses to these predictions;Footnote 44 more particularly for my purposes, however, the intervention of the Erinyes parallels the moment of Patroclus’ death, so that Achilles speaks to the muted horse as unilaterally as Hector speaks to the dead man. Reply is not simply unexpected but specifically precluded, and the impossibility of further conversation underscores both the finality and the limitations of the final riposte as communication.Footnote 45 What is more, a single line in the narrator’s voice follows Achilles’ speech, firmly establishing the man’s mastery over the horses in the last words of the scene and the book (ἔχϵ μώνυχας ἵππους, 19.424). After his only speech, Xanthus returns to his initial function as property and battle equipment, one of a pair of objects controlled by a subject. He is never again considered as an individual.Footnote 46
The mechanisms of the two scenes differ significantly. Achilles and Briseis do not speak directly to each other and Briseis is disregarded rather than actively silenced, while Xanthus’ speech is part of a highly constrained three-turn conversation (ABA), in which speaker B is initially not expected to speak and is made mute before A’s reply. Yet in both scenes, it is Achilles who is given the last word, and both the content of his speeches and the narrative framing firmly re-establish the priority of his perspective.
Snapshots from below
When considered together, the figures of Briseis and Xanthus are constructed in very similar ways. Initially figured as valuable possessions, animate but not individualized, they function as catalysts rather than agents, and they are repeatedly and consistently established as non-speaking entities in the considerable time before the speeches in Book 19. In this they differ from the many other figures who deliver only a single speech, including minor warriors whose military exploits include a single conventional speech in council or on the battlefield (e.g. the Trojan Cebriones, the Greek Tlepolemus), and characters who appear only in a single scene to deliver a single and notable speech (e.g. Thersites, Cassandra).Footnote 47 By contrast, Briseis’ and Xanthus’ speeches in Book 19 emerge suddenly from unexpected sources, long established in the audience’s awareness as non-speaking. They interrupt the flow of narrative focalization and reflect on the central events of the epic from previously inaccessible viewpoints. Both speeches are then overwritten by their master Achilles, whose familiar voice and point of view are strongly asserted, and the newly-distinguished perspectives are never revisited; both Briseis and Xanthus effectively disappear after this single speech, she entirely out of the scope of the narrative and he back into a team of indistinguishable horses. The poem progresses along expected lines, but both the fact and the manner of their silencing leave traces; the interruption is not erased, but points to an underlying tension that is not resolved.
Recognizing the parallels between the two scenes can help to put into perspective the predominantly gender-focused approaches to Briseis’ speech. Briseis certainly plays a part in the Iliad’s intermittent exploration of women’s perspectives on and experiences of war, and her lament is clearly linked with the speeches of major female characters such as Helen and Andromache. But it is problematic to ignore her construction as mute property for the majority of the epic, and to elide her role as an enslaved woman with the characterization of the free women. Like Thetis, whose mourning also cannot simply be assimilated to the experience of the mortal women, Briseis offers an expansion of the range of the female experience of war and death. She clearly serves as a doublet of both the contested Helen and of Andromache, whose fears she embodies, but it is key that Briseis, as a contested prize and as a captive from a sacked city, is not constructed as a person for the majority of the epic; it is in part this dehumanization that Helen resists and Andromache fears. While enslaved voices are prominent in much of Greek literature, the Iliad represents enslavement – the women’s counterpart to men’s death – as a full social death, bringing with it reduction to an effectively mute animal state; enslavement in the Iliad is not just the halving of aretē (as at Odyssey 17.322–3) or the limitation of personhood, but its end. When Briseis’ voice is heard, her speech is as anomalous and unexpected as an animal’s, and it is quickly re-obscured. The violation and restoration of social order in this scene is paralleled and reinforced by the even more strongly marked violation and restoration of natural order in Xanthus’ scene at the end of the book.Footnote 48 Like Cassandra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon or Pylades in Choephoroi, the enslaved woman and the horse are initially established as conventionally mute figures, and their sudden speech transgresses an otherwise strongly enforced expectation. Our brief access to their perspectives is as startling as it is poignant.
2. Dynamics in Book 19
I have argued that Briseis and Xanthus are constructed in closely parallel ways that come to a climax in Book 19, in scenes featuring unexpected speeches that are subsequently capped by Achilles. Briseis and Achilles both sincerely lament Patroclus, but the formal correspondence of their speeches serves to highlight the differences of their perspectives. Achilles charges into battle with his horses, but only after an exchange that echoes the final speeches of Hector and Patroclus. Both of these actions – the lamentation and the re-entry into the battle – are jointly undertaken by the two speakers, but the speeches that precede them reveal a fundamental difference in their claims and concerns. This divergence is subtle, expressed not through hostility or direct conflict but through the articulation and discounting of an unexpected perspective.
This dynamic, I suggest, is not limited to these two scenes, but forms part of a broader pattern that underlies much of Book 19, which consists largely of direct speechFootnote 49 arranged not as single speeches but grouped together, with Achilles participating in nearly every exchange. The council of the Greeks provides three examples of corresponding speeches, including two direct exchanges that have been much discussed as well as a suggestive juxtaposition that operates more subtly. Each of these ends in apparent harmony but without offering a true resolution of the difference in perspectives expressed by the speakers.
The most famous speeches of the book constitute the apparent reconciliation of Achilles and Agamemnon (19.54–153). Achilles, after rousing the Greeks, deplores the quarrel over ‘a girl’ and declares his intention to return to battle; Agamemnon excuses himself, invoking Ate and the extended mythological parallel of Zeus’s deception by Hera at the time of Heracles’ birth, and offers compensation; and Achilles dismisses this gesture and focuses on urging the men to battle. This exchange results in agreement on the course of action proposed by the original speaker – the impending return of Achilles and the other Greeks to the battlefield – but, as has been broadly recognized, the conversational dynamics of the subsequent speeches are uneasy. The complexities of Agamemnon’s long speech have been much scrutinized and variously interpreted, as has Achilles’ indifference to the offered gifts, and it is generally recognized that their conflict is not so much resolved as superseded.Footnote 50
The focus then shifts to a subsequent disagreement between Achilles and Odysseus over whether or not to allow the men to eat before battle (19.154–237). Odysseus advises Achilles not to urge the Greeks to return to the battlefield before eating, and to accept the offered compensation and a reconciliatory meal from Agamemnon. Unusually, it is Agamemnon rather than Achilles who replies, speaking up in agreement and focusing on the transfer of gifts.Footnote 51 Achilles demurs, advocating a general fast and insisting on a personal one until Patroclus is avenged, but Odysseus intervenes again, insisting on the importance of allowing the men to eat. This conversation eventually results in acceptance of the course of action proposed by the initial speaker – the Greek army will eat, and Agamemnon will offer compensation – but the unusual dynamics of the exchange highlight Achilles’ pointed self-exclusion from the societally significant commensality and his indifference to the gestures of reconciliation.Footnote 52
The addresses to Zeus that accompany the ritual sacrifice and conclude the assembly (19.252–75) offer a third and subtler example. After the public presentation of the gifts to Achilles, Agamemnon fulfils the promise made in Book 9, invoking Zeus and other gods to swear that he has not touched Briseis – his final speech in the Iliad – and concluding with a sacrifice.Footnote 53 This oath is followed by a corresponding speech from Achilles (19.270–5) that is also addressed to Zeus, but serves a less clear function.Footnote 54 He begins by acknowledging Zeus as the source of ‘great delusions’ (μϵγάλας ἄτας, 19.270), thereby revisiting the theme of god-sent Ate on which Agamemnon’s own speech in the assembly focused (19.88–137) and which Achilles did not acknowledge in that exchange (19.145–53). He then restates the origin and consequences of the quarrel, couched in a counterfactual:
οὐκ ἂν δή ποτϵ θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθϵσσιν ἐμοῖσιν
Ἀτρϵίδης ὤρινϵ διαμπϵρές, οὐδέ κϵ κούρην
ἦγϵν ἐμϵῖ’ ἀέκοντος, ἀμήχανος. ἀλλά ποθι Ζϵύς
ἤθϵλ’ Ἀχαιοῖσιν θάνατον πολέϵσσι γϵνέσθαι.
‘The son of Atreus would never have driven wild the heart in my breast, nor led off the girl against my will, shamelessly (ἀμήχανος). But somehow Zeus wished that death should come upon many Achaeans.’ (19.271–4)
This recapitulation does more to reassert rather than to resolve the quarrel that has apparently just been concluded. In his indirect response to Agamemnon’s closural oath, Achilles reminds the hearers that it was Agamemnon who provoked him so thoroughly (διαμπϵρές), juxtaposing their respective descriptions as unwilling (ἀέκοντος) and shameless or impervious (ἀμήχανος) in order to emphasize the wrong done to him. He then expands this wrong by restating the consequences for the army, suppressing his own part in this with a speculative particle (ποθι) casting Zeus as the probable cause of the Greek losses. He ends abruptly by urging the Greeks to go to their meal (ἔρχϵσθϵ) so that they can all enter battle (ἵνα ξυνάγωμϵν ἄρηα, 19.275). The shift from the second-person imperative to the first-person plural emphasizes again Achilles’ exclusion from the meal and his recent disagreement with Odysseus.
As the assembly breaks up, it is made triply clear that the conflict underlying the original quarrel has not been fully settled. Although it is agreed that Achilles will rejoin the Greeks on the battlefield and will not reject the gifts from Agamemnon, these three sets of speeches serve largely to deepen Achilles’ essential isolation among his allies, despite his apparent reconciliation. In this context, the scenes featuring Briseis and Xanthus can be seen to continue in Achilles’ own camp the dynamic of unresolved dissent already established in the assembly. The inclusion of Briseis and Xanthus in this dynamic is striking partly because their subordination to their owner is so extreme that any speech is unexpected, let alone the expression of a distinct point of view. They are markers of Achilles’ status and not a challenge to it, removed from the complex struggle for power and recognition that is foregrounded in his performative interactions with Agamemnon and Odysseus in the assembly. Their scenes complete the picture of Achilles re-entering the Greek community but not in harmony with it, in private as in public, and reinforce the unsettling dynamic of inexorable action and plot momentum overriding the deeper thematic and ethical concerns of the epic.
Iliad 19 thus offers no mere interlude in the plot, nor a collection of unsystematic thematic developments; rather, it consists of sets of corresponding speeches delivered by speakers with overlapping but separate goals. Each set of speeches concludes without overt conflict and with consensus of action, yet each also brings out disparities in perspective and in values that are left unresolved and largely unacknowledged by the characters. As fundamental points of divergence are repeatedly suppressed rather than addressed, a cumulative picture emerges of ongoing interpersonal tensions and failed communication between Achilles and his community, destabilizing the fragile sense of his reintegration. This unsettling undercurrent runs throughout the book and complements the anticipation of the impending confrontation with Hector. As Achilles drives Xanthus and Balius into the final day of battle, the suspense caused by the delay in the action is heightened by the external audience’s increasing awareness that the death of Hector will offer only superficial satisfaction. The construction of Book 19 extends the larger thematic arc beyond the battlefield and lays the groundwork for the necessary return of focus to the Greek camp in the last two books of the epic.
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