Summary
Patroclus describes the Greek division of spoils from war: While every man is entitled to what he personally takes, the general wealth acquired in battle is split between the best soldiers. Agamemnon has named himself first to choose and Achilles second, making himself look greedy and Achilles look even more powerful.
This is important when for the first time, after three weeks of raids, a woman is put up in front of the Greeks as a prize. Patroclus begs Achilles to claim her as his war prize, skipping Agamemnon. They take the frightened woman back to their tent; she doesn’t trust them until Patroclus kisses Achilles, after which she willingly offers her hands to be unbound. It takes privacy, space, and some comforting work from Patroclus before she speaks, naming herself Briseis. As Achilles raids, Patroclus expands Briseis’ knowledge of Greek, and the two grow close across the language barrier.
More days of raids, more women put on the dais as war prizes. Women are common around camp now, and still the walls of Troy are silent. Patroclus can’t stand to hear the women’s screams at night, and he asks Achilles to save as many as he can—Diomedes jokes that he didn’t even know Achilles liked women, but he’s developing a reputation for a voracious appetite around camp. In reality, it is Patroclus and Briseis who care for their growing collection of displaced women—with the women, Patroclus finds that it is easy to forget that the war has not really begun.
Just as the Greeks’ patience with raiding grows thin, Troy raises a flag of parley. The council of kings sends Menelaus and Odysseus as emissaries. As they wait, Patroclus and Achilles speculate on Helen’s motivation and character, as well as whether Agamemnon would stop his attack even if she returned with Menelaus (they decide he wouldn’t). Menelaus and Odysseus return alone—King Priam claims that Helen herself does not want to leave. War is declared, and Patroclus realizes that he will need to go on the battlefield.
The next morning, Achilles helps anxious, uncomfortable Patroclus dress for war. The Greeks meet the Trojans on the plain outside the city, and it takes Patroclus until mid-afternoon to realize that Achilles is protecting him from the battle. He hasn’t had to kill anyone, and instead of the grisly reality of death, he sees the beauty of Achilles’ power.
The next day is the same, and the next, and the next month, and then two months. A rhythm is built: fight for seven days, off for three for funerals and festivals. Achilles flourishes but is bored by any fight that’s not an onslaught in which he is truly threatened. Patroclus begins to fight only when Achilles wants him on the field. Sometimes Patroclus glimpses Thetis there. The Greeks and Trojans grow familiar with one another. Time passes.
Achilles shares that Thetis is worried: The gods are behaving strangely, picking sides in the war. He has been having a vision of killing Hector, which Patroclus worries is a prophecy. To fill time, Patroclus begins to help as a field nurse. A year passes, and then two; the Phthians form a sort of comfortable family, including Briseis, and Patroclus is pleased that Achilles seems to have accepted her as one of them. Achilles realizes after the fact that he has slaughtered the family of Hector’s wife, Andromache, leaving only one son alive.
After four years have passed, soldiers begin to loiter in the agora and complain about the war. Agamemnon has them whipped, but this only makes them angrier, and men begin to mutiny. Achilles gives a rousing speech, inspiring the men where Agamemnon could not, driving another wedge between the two leaders.
The Greek mentality changes. They begin to treat Troy as more of a home, building a palisade, forges, and potters’ sheds. Six or seven years into the war, Patroclus knows many of the soldiers and kings from his work in the medical tents.
One morning, after Achilles and Patroclus are physically intimate, Thetis appears in their tent to warn them that Apollo is angry and Achilles must make a great sacrifice to him. There has also been an additional prophecy: The best of the Myrmidons will die within the next two years, but Achilles will be alive when it happens. This puzzles Achilles and comforts Patroclus—they have another two years together.
On a different afternoon, Briseis kisses Patroclus, asking if he’d like to have her as a wife—some men have both wives and lovers—but Patroclus says he does not ever mean to marry. He can’t stop himself from picturing a life with her: children, comfort, and contentment. When he discusses it with Achilles, Achilles tells him that having children with Briseis would be all right, but Patroclus decides that things are all right now.
In the ninth year of the war, Achilles and Patroclus are 27 years old; Agamemnon claims a beautiful woman named Chryseis as his war prize. Her father, Chryses, is a high priest of Apollo, and when he comes to ransom her, Agamemnon threatens to kill him. That night, a plague begins to kill the Greeks. It spreads too quickly for funeral rites. Thetis confirms that the plague is Apollo’s work—he is the divinity of light and medicine and plague.
On the 10th day of the plague, Achilles calls a meeting—the first man except Agamemnon in 10 years to do so—in which a priest tells all of the men that Agamemnon must return Chryseis without ransom, in addition to prayers and sacrifices. Agamemnon refuses, and he and Achilles argue. When Achilles refuses to kneel to Agamemnon, Agamemnon declares that he will confiscate Briseis, dishonoring Achilles. Achilles, furious, will no longer fight for Agamemnon, telling him that he has caused his own death and the death of his men.
Patroclus believes Achilles will try to save Briseis, but he realizes that Achilles intends to allow Agamemnon to rape her so that the High King will be objectively revealed to be in the wrong. Patroclus, disgusted, warns Briseis, who understands and asks him to leave.
Analysis
Nine years pass in this section, and Patroclus's understanding of war and of Achilles shifts dramatically. He sees Achilles' growing preoccupation with his honor and legacy, which culminates in Briseis being taken by Agamemnon.
As the years pass, Helen’s absence in the narrative becomes more apparent. In fact, the Queen of Sparta appears only once in the book, at the beginning, when Patroclus is presented as a suitor to her. The only description we get of her famous beauty is what Patroclus has heard she looks like; she speaks only a few words. Helen’s non-presence gives the impression that Achilles and Patroclus are right when they speculate about Agamemnon’s motivation: he wants war with Troy, and Helen is just a figurehead he uses to achieve it.
Patroclus narrates from a position of advanced knowledge, seen most clearly on page 260, when he explains that Agamemnon does succeed in uniting the different Greek kingdoms into one nation: “For a generation, there would be no wars among those of us who had fought at Troy.” The Trojan war turns enemy kings into brothers in combat, resolving a lot of conflict in their region. This reveals that Patroclus has knowledge of at least one generation after the war, as well as their activities.
The living Patroclus of the narrative, however, doesn’t have this advanced knowledge. He lives day to day, and instead of participating in battle, he does what many Greek warriors might consider “women’s work.” He educates Anatolian women and loves spending time with Briseis. Thanks to his work in medical tents, he gets to know almost all of the Greeks over these nine years; when he walks through camp, it is he, rather than Achilles, who people greet by name. This surprises Achilles, but he states that it’s better for people to recognize him than for him to know them—a cold, godlike stance, distancing him further from Patroclus.
This distance culminates in Patroclus’s horror when he realizes that Achilles means to give Briseis to Agamemnon. He initially assumes that Achilles will have a plan to save her, and when he sees that he doesn’t, he goes to warn Briseis. While the knowledge that she’s about to be taken is incomprehensibly horrible to Patroclus, Briseis immediately understands and is resigned to her reality. For as sympathetic as Patroclus is to women, he doesn’t truly understand the reality in which they live. Patroclus sees Briseis as family, but Briseis has never forgotten that she is a prisoner of war.
