Agamemnon makes good on his threat and has his men seize Briseis from Achilles’ ship. Achilles walks off by himself along the seashore to weep and pray, and his goddess mother hears him. She was “seated near her father, the Old Man of the Sea in the salt green depths. Suddenly up she rose from the churning surf like mist and settling down beside him as he wept.”
She hears her mortal son out. Achilles knows that Zeus owes her a favor, and he asks her to call in her chit. She agrees. She will plead to Zeus to make Agamemnon pay for this humiliation.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
“Unhappy son! (fair Thetis replies,
While tears celestial trickle from her eyes)
Why have I borne thee with a mother’s throes,
To Fates averse, and nursed for future woes?
So brief a time the light of heaven to view!
So short a time! and filled with sorrow too!
O might a parent’s careful wish prevail,
Far, far from Ilium should thy vessels sail,
And you, from camps remote, the danger shun
Which now, alas! too early threats my son.”
-- The Iliad of Homer
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When I first read these passages, I was quite struck to read Achilles crying like a baby or a mommy’s boy. I thought it touching. The conventions of contemporary fiction practically never allow such displays of weakness from its top alpha-male characters.
{Sources: Pope, Fagles, et al.}
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