other prize of honor be given to him—­though, as Thersites taunts him (II, 226-228), his tents are already full of captive women, among whom he always has had first choice.  Achilles, too, informs him that he shall have all the women he wants when Troy is taken; but what really hurts Agamemnon’s feelings is not so much the loss of his favorite as the thought that the hated Achilles should enjoy Briseis, while his prize, Chryseis, must be returned to her father.  So he threatens to retaliate on Achilles by taking Briseis from his tent and keeping her for himself.  “I would deserve the name of coward,” retorts Achilles

“were I to yield to you in everything....  But this let me say—­Never shall I lift my arm to strive for the girl either with you or any other man; you gave her, you can take her.  But of all else, by the dark ship, that belongs to me, thereof you shall not take anything against my will.  Do that and all shall see your black blood trickle down my spear.”

Having made this “uncowardly,” chivalrous, and romantic distinction between his two kinds of property—­yielding Briseis, but threatening murder if aught else belonging to him be touched—­Achilles goes and orders his friend Patroclus to take the young woman from the tent and give her to the king.  She leaves her paramour—­her husband’s and brothers’ murderer—­unwillingly, and he sits down and weeps—­why? because, as he tells his mother, he has been insulted by Agamemnon, who has taken away his prize of honor.  From that moment Achilles refuses to join the assemblies, or take a part in the battles, thus bringing “woes innumerable” on his countrymen.  He refuses to yield even after Agamemnon, alarmed by his reverses, seeks to conciliate him by offering him gold and horses and women in abundance; telling him he shall have back his Briseis, whom the king swears he has never touched, and, besides her, seven Lesbian women of more than human beauty; also, the choice of twenty Trojan women as soon as the city capitulates; and, in addition to these, one of the three princesses, his own daughters—­twenty-nine women in all!

Must not a hero who so stubbornly and wrathfully resented the seizure of his concubine have been deeply in love with her?  He himself remarks to Odysseus, who comes to attempt a reconciliation (IX., 340-44): 

“Do the sons of Atreus alone of mortal men love their bedfellows?  Every man who is good and sensible loves his concubine and cares for her as I too love mine with all my heart, though but the captive of my spear.”

Gladstone here translates the word [Greek:  alochos] “wife,” though, as far as Achilles is concerned, it means concubine.  Of course it would have been awkward for England’s Prime Minister to make Achilles say that “every man must love his concubine, if he has sense and virtue;” so he arbitrarily changes the meaning of the word and then begs us to notice the moral beauty of this sentiment and the “dignity” of the relation between Achilles and Briseis!  Yet no one seems to have denounced him for this transgression against ethics, philology, and common sense.  On the contrary, a host of translators and commentators have done the same thing, to the obscuration of the truth.