Characters
- Ajax — silent recipient of the return
- Briseis — returned captive; lamenter
- Captive women — join the lament
- Patroclus — dead; kind to Briseis in life
- Thyestes — restores her with the gifts
Places
- Hut of Achilles — scene of return and goos
- Lyrnessos — Briseis’s remembered home (inside the lament)
- Molossia — promised destination of marriage (unfulfilled)
Themes
Narrative
When Agamemnon restores the gifts, Briseis is led back to Achilles’ hut. Seeing Patroclus dead, she wails with the women: Patroclus had promised to make her Achilles’ wedded wife when they reached Phthia and had been gentle to her in captivity; she mourns him as she mourned her husband and brothers slain at Lyrnessos. The speech gives Briseis a rare Homeric voice—captive, prize, and mourner—at the hinge of Achilles’ return to war.
Catalogue the restitution-scene and lament apart from the formal oath that Agamemnon never touched her and apart from Achilles’ refusal of food.