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Briseis is essential to The Iliad because her character sets much of the epic’s plot into motion. Claimed by Achilles as a spoil of war, she is then taken from Achilles by Agamemnon; Agamemnon, having been forced to give up Chryseis, a woman he had claimed as his own prize, has demanded Briseis as compensation. Achilles is incensed at this slight to his honor and he refuses to fight until Briseis is returned to him, a moment that comprises the poem’s inciting incident.
Ironically, by taking Briseis for his own, Agamemnon replicates the origin of the war itself; his actions mirror those of Paris, who stole away with Helen and in doing so prompted a decade of deadly fighting. Both events underscore the idea of women as status symbols in the midst of petty squabbles between men. Briseis is introduced in the narrative not as a human being but as a prize to be won or lost. Her lack of autonomy is described in Book 1 when she’s characterized as an “unwilling beauty… in soft sorrows, and in pensive thought” who walks “silent[ly]” as she is led by hand by Patroclus. Everything about this description—from Briseis’s lack of dialogue to the image of her being physically led through the camp by another man—highlights her passivity. Achilles at various points refers to Briseis as his “spouse,” as in Book 9 after he has lost her, and a “black-eyed maid” over whom he regrets fighting with Agamemnon, as in Book 19 when she is returned to him. For her part, Briseis fears for her life and her safety once Patroclus is dead; she refers to him as the “once tender friend of my distracted mind,” and states Patroclus had promised to convince Achilles to marry her, to “make [her] empress in his native land.” This further illustrates the lack of agency afforded to women and Briseis’s precarious status; she is forced to hope she may become the wife of the man who has killed so many Trojans, rather than his slave.
