Abduction
Briseis, Helen, Sita and Penelope[i]
All are
beautiful. All except Penelope were
abducted. All except Briseis are
household names, still famous today, even though their stories are thousands of
years old. Briseis was a slave while
Helen, the daughter of Zeus, was married to Paris. Sita was the wife of Rama, the hero in The Ramayana. Penelope resembles Sita in defending her
chastity, resembles Helen in her beauty, and Briseis in having to confront the
possibility of an ugly future. Briseis is
much less well known, a footnote in history, known only to scholars of Homer
and those who remember her from The Iliad. Her life story is glimpsed from a few
passages of the poem. She became
enslaved while she lived in the city of King Mynes. She was married. She was the daughter of Briseus. Both her husband and her three full brothers
were killed in a battle with Achilles, the leader of fifty ships of Myrmidons,
Hellenes, and Achaeans, who sacked the town of Lyrnessos. She is described as Briseis of the lovely
hair and “golden Aphrodite”.[ii]
Briseis was
beautiful enough to be considered a noteworthy prize. She was awarded to Achilles by the Greek
Army, perhaps the best prize being given to the greatest of the Greek warriors. She is together with Achilles when The Iliad ends. According to the poem, Achilles will soon be
killed. What happens to Briseis is
unknown, to me, but it is likely that, still a slave, she would have been
passed on from dead Achilles to become the concubine of whoever then led the
Myrmidons.
We know much more
about Helen, Sita and Penelope. Helen is
encountered in The Odyssey, an epic
set later than The Iliad when Telemakhos,
Odysseus’ son, visits King Menelaus in Sparta.
There is even a story, not in The
Iliad, that after death she will not go to Hades, but live in The Isles of
Bliss with Achilles![iii]
Another story says that Aphrodite
spirited her out of Troy to have a tryst with Theseus.[iv] Helen was once a byword for shame. Yet another story, in defense of her tarnished
reputation by the Greek dramatist Euripides, has swayed opinion. Perhaps she
might really have been chaste, because it was not her, but another Helen, a kind
of shadow who went to Troy.[v] At Indian weddings, songs today are sung
about Sita. Most of her marriage to Rama
was blissful but she too, like Helen, had a tarnished reputation, resulting in
stories about Sita having doubles and reincarnations, one of them, Draupadi,
who was so anxious for a husband that she prayed to Shiva five times and so was
made wife of the five Pandavas, famous even today as heroes in The Mahabharata.[vi] There is story that connects Penelope to an
oath binding Helen’s suitors to the defense of whoever was chosen to be Helen’s
husband. This story has it that Odysseus
suggests the idea of the oath to Helen’s father while asking him in return to
help him marry Ikarios’ daughter, Penelope.[vii] Penelope has become a byword for faithfulness.
Abduction was
common in Classical literature. Medea,
Helen, and Sita are some famous examples, all females; Ganymede, Hylas, and Odysseus
all well-known males. While no rules
appeared to govern abduction by the gods, a passage from The Mahabharata illustrates that abduction between mortals was
governed by societal rules. Just before
he seizes three maidens and absconds with them in his chariot, Bhishma
announces to the King of Kasi’s court that: “Of the several forms of choosing a
bride, as the sages have mentioned, the noblest is that in which a maiden is
acquired by force from amidst a valiant gathering such as this”.[viii]
From this, it follows that to abduct a
woman in the culture of The Mahabharata,
a prospective husband would first have announced his intention, then fought for
the woman he desired, and by winning the fight, have been able to abduct her
legally. Bhishma’s intention when
abducting the King’s daughters was to provide wives for his ward, the young
king of Hastinapura.
The Iliad centers on two abductions, Helen,
taken by Paris from her husband Menelaus, and Briseis, a slave girl whom
Agamemnnon took away from her master Achilles.
Helen’s abduction led to The Trojan War. Agamemnon’s action caused Achilles’ prolonged
withdrawal from the Trojan War. Achilles
was not in the position of a father whose daughter had been abducted, or a
husband his wife. The Greek army had
awarded him the beautiful girl Briseis as a prize. From hints in The Iliad, we can assume that Briseis, once abducted, was probably
a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. Her own
husband and three brothers were killed by Achilles and his men when she was
enslaved.[ix] At the time, she was consoled by Patroclus,
who promised her she would become Achilles’ bride. She was fond of Patroclus, Achilles’ best
friend while she was Achilles’ concubine.
The rage that Achilles felt at Agamemnon was not because of losing
Briseis the woman but, as he prayed to his mother, the goddess Thetis:
“Agamemnon has taken away my prize and dishonored me.”[x] Achilles does not ask his mother to help get
Briseis back. Instead, he asks her to
have Zeus wreak havoc on the Greeks until Agamemnon realizes “what a fool he’s
been because he did not honor the best of all the fighting Achaeans.”[xi] Thetis shows no sympathy for Briseis. A slave had very little status in such
cultures.
From versions of The Ramayana, we gain further insight
into the importance of honor to a man in epic poetry. Like Briseis, Sita in The Ramayana, Rama’s wife, is abducted. The wily demon who took her, Ravana,
contrived to get her husband Rama and his brother Lakshmana away from the house
where Sita was left alone. Like Paris
for Helen, Ravana had been afflicted by desire for Sita, in this case, not by
Aphrodite, but by his demon sister.
Luckily for Sita, Ravana believes that because of a curse he will die if
he touches an unwilling woman.[xii] Sita refuses to give him such permission and
preserves her chastity. A war will ensue
that will result in the fall of Ravana’s kingdom of Lanka, just as the Trojan
War will end with the destruction of Troy.
Like Helen, when Sita is re-united with her husband she realizes their
relationship has been violated even if she had not. Sattar’s version of the story provides more
explicit details of Rama’s feelings for Sita who dishonored him by being
abducted. He tells her: “I have done my
duty by rescuing you from the enemy…I did it to vindicate my honor and to save
my noble family from disgrace…I have terrible suspicions about your character
and conduct. The sight of you is as
painful to me as a lamp to a man with diseased eyes!”[xiii]
As with Achilles,
honor is worth more to Rama than his relationship with a woman. Sita must throw herself on a burning funeral
pyre to be vindicated by the Sun God and presented back to Rama, before he will
accept her again as his wife. In Sattar’s version, Sita is subsequently
exiled to live under the sage Valmiki’s protection because Rama hears that
there is unseemly gossip about Sita and Ravana among his people. Sita is pregnant and people assume that Sita
could not have been so long under Ravana’s power without losing her
chastity. “Now we shall have to do the
same thing with our wives”, people are saying, “in a similar situation…subjects
must do as their king does!”[xiv] In contrast with Rama, Odysseus clearly
trusts his wife Penelope even though they have been separated for twenty
years. For some of that time she has been besieged by
suitors wanting to marry her. When
Odysseus returns, disposes of those that were disloyal in his household and
kills all the suitors, he accepts his wife without reservation, although, in an
unusual demonstration of female power in classical literature, she subjects him
to a final test, before she will accept that he truly is her long-lost
husband. Only her husband would know the
details of their marriage bed and how it was constructed to incorporate an
olive tree. Odysseus passes the test.[xv]
Physical beauty is
often, of itself, a motivator for abduction.
From sources other than The Iliad,
we know that, before Helen was married to Menelaus, she had once been abducted
by Theseus and Peirithoös when she was ten, only to be rescued by her brothers Castor
and Pollux, still a virgin.[xvi] Theseus and Peirithoös are also known to have
attempted to abduct Persephone from Hades.[xvii] They are the two heroes Odysseus regretted he
was unable to meet before being chased out of the land of the dead by Persephone
herself.[xviii] There
is no full description of Helen’s abduction from Greece in either The Iliad or The Odyssey, presumably because such details were told in tales
that have since been lost. Unlike Sita,
Helen, who was familiar with the excitement of abduction may have been thrilled
to abscond with Paris, no doubt further encouraged by Aphrodite.[xix] But it seems clear from these epics that when
Paris abducted Helen, Paris did not abide by time-honored convention. Instead, like Ravana, he committed a crime
against custom. An example of the correct procedure can be found in Draupadi’s Bridegroom Choice (352-354), a
section of The Mahabharata. Arjuna does not have to abduct Draupadi
because Draupadi self-selects him once he has accomplished a necessary feat
with a bow. But Arjuna’s intrusion into
the competition does resemble an abduction in that it follows the pattern of
publicly announcing an intention to carry off a bride, fighting for her, and
winning. That he had to fight off angry suitors
even after being selected by Draupadi in open contest gives further credence to
the legitimacy of his prize. The Trojan
war might have been prevented if Paris, instead of snatching Helen away in
secret, had come to blows with Menelaus, her husband, or at least some of
Helen’s bodyguard, and won in combat the prize with whom he absconded.
The Odyssey, also has many abductions. Odysseus’ loyal servant, Eumaios, the
swineherd was abducted as a child and sold into slavery.[xx] When Odysseus returns to Ithaca he invents a
story that he himself was abducted (the second Cretan lie) to forge a common
bond with his loyal servant who has not yet recognized his master. Odysseus is abducted, first by Circe who
fails in the attempt, then by Polyphemus the Cyclops from whom Odysseus is only
able to escape due to his guile, and then by Calypso. Circe’s attempt to abduct him and change him into
a pig, was thwarted by Hermes.[xxi] The Odyssey does not explain what brought
Hermes to Circe’s island. Circe like
Calypso invites Odysseus to bed. She subsequently entertained him and his crew
for a year before his crew grew restless and she helped him leave. Calypso will abduct Odysseus for seven years
and he will sleep with her at night while pining for Penelope during the day.[xxii]
In the meantime,
Penelope, Odysseus’ faithful wife has been besieged by suitors. Having kept them at bay for several years
they are now pressing her to proceed with a marriage. They are essentially waiting for a swayamwara, a Sanskrit word given to an
event where a bride makes a “self-choice”.
Normally, such an event would be hosted by a King to marry off his
daughter. Penelope is unusual, again, in
that she organizes a bow competition on her own, perhaps complicit with her
husband who has returned to Ithaca disguised as a beggar. It does not occur to the suitors during their
long waiting period that any one of them could abduct Penelope, presumably by fighting
off all the others. Could this be the
reason for Penelope’s lavish, hospitality?
She does not forbid the continual feasting on valuable livestock. Having finished weaving Laertes’ death
shroud, she was desperate not to be forced into making a marriage
decision. She was still playing for
time. When Odysseus is reunited with his
wife he tells Penelope he will replenish the flocks the suitors depleted by
going on raids.[xxiii] Slaves like cattle had value because their
productivity could increase a family’s wealth.
Slaves had no legal status and their abduction probably carried no
penalty. We can speculate that it was by
raiding his distant neighbors and abducting their livestock and their women
that Odysseus would have gone about replenishing his household staff as well as
his flocks.
Meanwhile, we can
expect that Briseis is twenty years older and is either still a beautiful slave
plucking wool for a loom or now lingers among the throngs of dead in
Hades. Perhaps in Hades she was
re-united with her husband. She is not
totally forgotten by poets. In a 1929
article published in The Criterion IX, Ezra Pound recalled her as part of the
“old story of Briseis and Achilles”.[xxiv]
References
[i]
All in epic poetry, Briseis and Helen in The Iliad, Penelope and Helen in The
Odyssey, and Sita in The Ramayana.
[vi]
Levaniouk, class handout, March 7th. 2017
[viii]
Mahabharata, Narayan, 4.
[ix]
Iliad, Lombardo, 382-383, book XIX,
300-322.
[x]
ibid, book I, 369-370.
[xi]
ibid, 430-431.
[xii]
Ramayana, Narayan 87.
[xiii]
Ramayana, Sattar, 633.
[xiv]
ibid, 662.
[xv]
Odyssey, Fitzgerald, page 435, book
XXIII 202-230.
[xvii]
Ibid 291-295
[xviii]
Odyssey, Fitzgerald, page 205-206,
book XI 749-754.
[xx]
Odyssey, Fitzgerald, page 280-283,
book XV 475-586.
[xxi]
ibid, Fitzgerald, page 173-175, book XV 475-586.
[xxii]
ibid, Fitzgerald, page 82-85, book X 305-390.
[xxiii]
ibid, Fitzgerald, page 440, book XXIII, 401-405.
[xxiv]
Pound, Horace, The Criterion IX, 1929-1930, 181.
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