Page:Lovers Legends - The Gay Greek Myths.pdf/116

 LOVERS’ LEGENDS

the fiercest of the Greek fighters, led the troops headlong into battle, like some savage beast unleashed, and his dear friend, Patroclus, fought always by his side, tempering Achilles’ wildness and pride with loving sound advice. The Greeks laid waste to all the land, plundered its wealth, its women. Agamemnon, their general, then parceled out the spoils, and the loveliest girl, Briseis, fell to Achilles’ lot. Rampaging through the towns like men possessed, the Greeks even outraged the boys. Achilles himself ripped 30 out the life of lord Apollo’s own dear son, the handsome Troilus, cut off his head on the god’s very altar because the boy refused his caresses. In Troy, however, the fury of the Greeks merely pent up the Trojans, under Hector’s command, inside the impregnable citadel. But now thundering Zeus turned his face from the Greeks, and smiled instead upon the Trojans. They poured out the city gates, pushed the Greek armies hard against their ships, shattered their defenses. The Greeks fought for their lives, tears running down their cheeks for the wives and children 40 they would not see again, looking right, looking left, no one there to save them now. All that because one warrior chief had turned his back on the pitched battle – Achilles himself. He refused to fight, and kept his men holed up in their ships. His warriors, with Patroclus foremost, clamored to disembark and join the fray, but Achilles would not hear of it. He raged, Achilles did, against Agamemnon. He had reached unbidden into Achilles’ tent, had snatched his hard-earned plunder, his darling Briseis, before the eyes of all the Greeks, in a fit of 102 102