se on Briseis herself, who had previously appeared as a mute object handed back and forth between Achillesand Agamemnon. In this passage, Achilles' friend Patroklos has been killed by Hektor. This is what makes Achilles put asidehis anger at Agamemnon and rejoin the battle. As a reward for rejoining, Agamemnon has given Briseis back to Achilles, andhere she mourns Patroklos when his body is being brought back to Achilles' camp. She is in such a helpless and desperatesituation that the death of one of her captors -- the kindest one of her captors -- is an occasion for massive grief, and her besthope is that her future life is as the wife of the man who killed her family rather than one o f his house slaves or concubines: And now, in the likeness of golden Aphrodite, Briseis when she saw Patroklos lying torn with sharp bronze, folding him in her arms cried shrilly above him and with her hands tore a t her breasts and her soft throat and her beautiful forehead. The woman like the immortals mourning for him spoke to him: 'Patroklos, far most pleasing to my heart in its sorrows, I left you here alive when I went away from the shelte r, but now I come back, lord of the people, to find you have fallen. So evil in my life takes over from evil forever. The husband on whom my father and honoured mother bestowed me I saw before my city lying torn with the sharp bronze, and my three brothers, whom a single mother bore with me and who were close to me, all went on one day to destruction. And yet you would not let me, when swift Achilles had cut down my husband, and sacked the city of go dlike Mynes, you would not let me sorrow, but said you would make me godlike Achilleus' wedded lawful wife, that you would take me back in the ships to Phthia, and formalize my marriage among the Myrmidon...
