Seba.Health

The Iliad 1.345–351

The Iliad 1.345–351
and led forth from the hut the fair-cheeked Briseis, and gave her to them to lead away. So the two went back beside the ships of the Achaeans, and with them, all unwilling, went the woman. But Achilles burst into tears, and withdrew apart from his comrades, and sat down on the shore of the grey sea, looking forth over the wine-dark deep. Earnestly he prayed to his dear mother with hands outstretched: Mother, since you bore me, though to so brief a span of life, honour surely ought the Olympian to have given into my hands, Zeus who thunders on high; but now he has honoured me not a bit. Truly the son of Atreus, wide-ruling Agamemnonhas dishonoured me: for he has taken and keeps my prize through his own arrogant act. So he spoke, weeping, and his lady mother heard him, as she sat in the depths of the sea beside the old man, her father. And speedily she came forth from the grey sea like a mist, and sat down before him, as he wept,
ὣς φάτο, Πάτροκλος δὲ φίλῳ ἐπεπείθεθʼ ἑταίρῳ, ἐκ δʼ ἄγαγε κλισίης Βρισηΐδα καλλιπάρῃον, δῶκε δʼ ἄγειν· τὼ δʼ αὖτις ἴτην παρὰ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν· δʼ ἀέκουσʼ ἅμα τοῖσι γυνὴ κίεν· αὐτὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς δακρύσας ἑτάρων ἄφαρ ἕζετο νόσφι λιασθείς, θῖνʼ ἔφʼ ἁλὸς πολιῆς, ὁρόων ἐπʼ ἀπείρονα πόντον· πολλὰ δὲ μητρὶ φίλῃ ἠρήσατο χεῖρας ὀρεγνύς·
Lattimore commentary
It was not unmanly for heroes to weep under pressures of grief and loss. The poet does not prolong the scene of departing with a depiction of emotional states, other than to say that Briseis went unwillingly. Achilleus restrains his tears until he finds solitude at the shore.
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