A Thousand Ships

This chapter is set in the Greek camp before the fall of Troy. Briseis is captured by Greek warriors after Achilles leads a raid on her city and kills her family. Chryseis is the daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo in Troy. Chryseis’s mother died in childbirth, and she was neglected by her father, who was more concerned with serving the god than taking care of his daughter. Adventurous, fearless, and left to fend for herself, Chryseis often got herself into trouble.

Sneaking out of the city to meet a shepherd boy, Chryseis is snatched by Greek scouts, and her lover is killed. She makes no effort to escape the scouts because her father’s inevitable disappointment is worse, she believes, than anything the Greeks can do to her. The scouts bring Chryseis back to a tent full of captured women whose husbands, fathers, and sons raiding Greeks have killed. There, she meets Briseis, a young woman who has lost everyone she loves at the hands of Achilles. She proclaims that she will never let the “taunting” Greeks, “these enemies of Troy,” see her grieve (77).

The following day, the women are lined up to be distributed among the men. Chryseis hopes she will not be given to Achilles but then realizes that it hardly matters since “they were all equally bad” (78).