Homer's Treatment Of Women In The Iliad

In the time of the Greeks and the Trojans, women were either a man’s prize or true love. They can also affect their man’s involvement in battle. A woman who is a prize is taken from a conquered city and given to the military officers as a reward for fighting in battle. A woman of true love, on the other hand, is a woman that has given up everything to be with a man that cares so deeply for her. A woman of true love is important to the man, even if honor and bravery in battle is a priority of his, as it was to all great warriors, his woman is almost as important. The clear difference between the two kinds of women is clearly exhibited in Homer’s Iliad.

Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, was taken as a war prize by Achilles, but was later

She loves him with all her heart and the thought of losing him in battle is too much for her. Since Andromache and Hektor have gotten married and raised an infant together, they are committed to each other in every way. Andromache says “Hektor, thus you are my father to me, and my honored mother, you are my brother, and you it is who are my young husband.” she explains that her entire family was killed and because the fact that her whole family was murdered, Hektor is her whole world, he’s all she has left (besides their son, who is a piece of him too). She cannot lose him like she lost all of her other loved ones. When Hektor knew that his time was near and that he would die in battle against Achilles, he said to his loving wife: “But it is not so much the pain to come of the Trojan that troubles me, not even the pain of Priam the king or Hekabe, not the thought of my brothers who in their numbers and valor shall drop in the dust under the hands of men who hate them, as troubles me the thought of you, when some bronze-armored Achaian leads you off, taking away your day of liberty, in tears” (352). He knows that he will die and he cannot stop that due to fate, but his biggest concern, more than his king and queen or his people who he is so loyal too, is his loving wife who he knows will have to suffer the remainder of her life without him, as another man’s war prize, and that hurts him the most. This would never be seen