![]() And characters from myth can step into our world – history is always then myth is now – whether now is the England of Christopher Marlowe or 21st-century Britain. ![]() You’re allowed anachronisms, like the English rugby songs that Achilles’s men sing after dinner. So the rules for writing historical fiction simply don’t apply. Agamemnon, Achilles, Hector, Priam, Helen – none of them existed. She’s not a historical figure at all, none of them is. Would an elite woman in the late bronze age have sounded like that? Possibly not, but then Helen is so much more than that. I think one reviewer was a bit shocked by how modern Helen in particular sounds. Queen to sex slave in less than 48 hours: change doesn’t come any more rapid or dramatic than that.īriseis has a modern voice, as do all the other women. That night, against her will, she sleeps in Achilles’s bed. He’d killed 60 men in the assault on the city, including Briseis’s husband and all four of her brothers. A day later, the army awarded her to him as his “prize of honour” for his courage in the battle. ![]() ![]() She was a married woman, queen of Lyrnessus, when Achilles sacked her city and took her captive with all the other women and girls. Why did I choose Briseis? Because of all the women mentioned in the Iliad, her fate is the most dramatic. ![]()
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