From g2robert@watarts.uwaterloo.ca Sun Nov 4 15:58:50 2001 Received: from mailscan2.cac.washington.edu (mailscan2.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.16]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.10) with SMTP id fA4Nwmn02964 for ; Sun, 4 Nov 2001 15:58:48 -0800 Received: FROM mxu4.u.washington.edu BY mailscan2.cac.washington.edu ; Sun Nov 04 15:58:48 2001 -0800 Received: from watarts.uwaterloo.ca (watarts.uwaterloo.ca [129.97.42.10]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.10) with ESMTP id fA4Nwk926830 for ; Sun, 4 Nov 2001 15:58:47 -0800 Received: from watarts.uwaterloo.ca (cnts1p09.uwaterloo.ca [129.97.112.9]) by watarts.uwaterloo.ca (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA23949 for ; Sun, 4 Nov 2001 18:59:00 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3BE5D706.AA6BAB10@watarts.uwaterloo.ca> Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 19:02:14 -0500 From: "G.I.C. Robertson" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: How was Chryseis captured? References: <002201c16514$a3a782a0$f4ec1ec4@al40> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Terrence Lockyer wrote: > In addition to the passage already cited from Iliad 19.282-300 (where Brisis > herself speaks of being taken from the "city of godlike Mynes" after seeing > her father and brothers killed), there is the one at Iliad 1.364-9 in which > Akhilleus addresses Thetis and describes Khryseis as part of the spoils from > the sack (which is explicitly mentioned) of "Thebe, sacred city of Eetion". > I see that David Lupher has confirmed that the two were from different > cities, but I don't think the Iliad 1 passage has been mentioned yet (at > least down to the end of Digest 2701). Emmet Robbins discusses the sack of Eetion's city of Thebe in an article on this passage ('Achilles to Thetis: Iliad 1.365-412', Echos du monde classique / Classical Views n.s. 9 [1990] 1-15, at pp. 10-11), and makes some interesting points. The acquisition of Chryseis and Eetion's wife in the same raid not only emphasizes the distinction between Agamemnon's rejection of Chryses' ransom offer and Achilleus' return of his captive in exchange for _apereisi' apoina_ (described by his captive's daughter Andromache at 6.425ff.). Both women are eventually returned to their fathers, but under quite different circumstances. The parallel also supports Achilleus' claim that Agamemnon routinely gets the best prizes while Achilleus gets less desirable ones (1.166ff.): in the raid on Thebe, Agamemnon got the young and beautiful Chryseis while Achilleus got Andromache's mother. Thomas Jenkins reported Casey Due's observation that 'war prizes ... seem to be eternal kourai, whether married or not', but I'm not sure that this would have cut much ice with a hero who was allotted a woman old enough to have seven sons plus a daughter who was married and possibly already a mother herself (Astyanax is obviously an infant in the Iliad -- I don't know if there's any clear indication as to whether he'd already been born at the time of the Thebe raid). Michael Hendry wrote last night: 'Perhaps every time the Greeks sack a new city the kings get new concubines and pass the old ones on to their henchmen? Or am I being too cynical?' Not when it comes to Agamemnon, it would seem. Best, George -- ============================= G.I.C. Robertson Department of Classical Studies University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 Canada g2robert@watarts.uwaterloo.ca Tel. 519-579-6670 Fax 519-746-7881 .