#hecamede

[fullyconsumedbywhatlovesme]

War Brides of the Iliad

[epic-cycle-ships]

Machaon x Hecamede, if I may request! I love your ships so much and would love to see these two!

Machamede - Machaon/Hecamede

Requested by anon

[lesbodysseus]

The slave girls will forever be some of my favourite characters, I will always cherish them and hold them dear, I just want them all to be happy and for the acheans to drop dead, I love the slave girls a lot you guys don't understand I am their biggest fan.

[littlesparklight]

Turning the thought over that if you'd wish to write a Trojan war story from the POV of one of the enslaved women in the Achaean camp, and would also want said woman to not be a free-born noble... you might have to make up the character whole-cloth.

(As aside from just having to make up most parts.)

Sure, maybe one can't use the rule of thumb that "anyone who gets a parentage must have been freeborn and noble before being enslaved", but it looks like to me that that's a pretty safe assumption. Which would remove basically all our named female slave characters in the Achaean camp. On top of that, none of the royal commanders are going to have geras prizes that aren't "the finest" from the city they were taken from, and the first qualification for that would be that they're noble-born.

Briseis/Hippodamia - John Malalas makes her father a cousin or nephew of Priam, so in this case Briseis isn't just noble, but even related to the Trojan royal family. If Brises/Briseus (and thus Briseis) were originally from Lesbos, Brisa, undoubtedly her father would've been the ruler of that settlement. As a priest of Lyrnessos or Pedasos, he's at least free-born, but most probably also noble, since no matter what Hippodamia is the wife of Mynes, who is either a Lyrnessian prince or the king of Lyrnessos. I don't see how he'd marry anything but an elite woman for his proper wife.

Chryseis/Astynome - Eusthatios makes Briseus and Chryses brothers of one Ardys, and again, in this case since Briseis is either way married to royalty, Chryses would be noble, too. And I don't see why he wouldn't be so either way - the fact that Chryseis is the personal geras of Agamemnon speaks for it.

Diomede of Lesbos - Dictys makes her father Phorbas a king of/in Lesbos, and Malalas makes Phorbas related to Priam, too.

Hekamede of Tenedos - her father is given an epithet, aside from that we know her father's name at all. And her being Nestor's geras again definitely disqualifies her from being "base"-born.

Tekmessa - the daughter of a Phrygian king.

Iphis - the prize Achilles has given Patroklos - a rather more personal/more intimate gift situation than the geras prizes in general seem to be, since all the rest are given out by the Achaeans as one to one or another of the Achaean kings or princes. Iphis is also the only one of our named enslaved women in the Achaean camp who gets no parentage, we only know where she's from (Skyros). I think she's the possible closest case we might be having of a named, enslaved female character in the Achaean camp who might not be noble. On the other hand, would Achilles give his closest companion a less "fine" prize for his personal enjoyment, no matter how beautiful? It could probably go either way.

[defenestratedcowloftelesphorus]

it’s not briseis. it’s hecamede. it’s not phoenix. it’s nestor. kykeon.

[kareenvorbarra]

A little follow-up to my post about unnamed captive women in the Iliad: it’s the named captive women who are usually left out of discussions and adaptations!

Diomede and Iphis

Perhaps the mythology characters I am most irrationally attached to! They are each mentioned just once in Book 9 of the Iliad, right after Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix try to convince Achilles to return to battle:

And Patroclus bade the companions and servant women lay out a snug bed for Phoinix forthwith; and they in obedience lay out the bed as he commanded, with fleeces and a covering cloth and fine nubbed linen. There the old man lay down and awaited the shining dawn; but Achilles slept in the inner recess of his well-built shelter, and with him lay a woman, one he had taken from Lesbos, the daughter of Phorbas, Diomede of the lovely cheeks; and on the other side lay Patroclus, and by him Fair-belted Iphis, whom godlike Achilles gave him when he took steep Scyros, the high city of Enyeus.

I’d love it if there was any media at all focusing on them, but it’s not really surprising that there’s not. Mostly I wish more people would acknowledge their existence and take them into account when trying to put together a complete picture of Achilles and Patroclus as characters. 

Hecamede

Hecamede first appears during the fighting in Book 11, when the Trojans start to press dangerously close to the Greek camp. A number of important Greek warriors are wounded and forced to withdraw from the fighting, incuding Machaon, a son of Ascelpius and one of the army’s best healers. Knowing that Machaon would be a devastating loss for the army, Nestor takes him off the battlefield in his chariot as quickly as possible and brings him home, where Hecamede serves them:

...then going into the shelter they seated themselves on divans; and for them Hekamede with the lovely hair made a porridge, Hekamede whom the old man got from Tenedos, when Achilles sacked it, the daughter of great-hearted Arsinoös, she whom the Achaeans picked out for him, because he surpassed all men in counsel; she first pushed forward a table for them a beautiful one, well polished with legs of blue enamel, then on it a bronze basket for bread, and also an onion as relish for the drink and pale yellow honey, beside sacred barley meal, and near it a cup of surpassing beauty, which the old man had taken from his home, studded with gold rivets; it had four handles, and on either side of each two doves of gold were feeding, and below them were two flanges. Any other man would labor to lift it from the table when it was full, but Nestor, the old man, raised it with ease. It was in this the woman resembling goddesses made a mix for them with Pramnian wine, and on it grated goat-milk cheese with a bronze grater, and sprinkled gleaming barley over; and she summoned them to drink, when she had prepared the porridge.

She is mentioned again in Book 14, later in the same battle:

Now the shouting did not escape the notice of Nestor, although he was drinking, and to the son of Asclepius he addressed winged words: “Take thought, noble Machaon, how these matters will be; the battle shouts of our sturdy young men grow greater by the ships. You now sit and drink the dark-gleaming wine, until Hekamede of the lovely hair has heated warm water to bathe and washed away your clotted blood, and I will go to a watch place and quickly look around.”

[lesbodysseus]

FCOTD DAY 3: HECAMEDE

Hecamede is the daughter of Arsinoos.

She was captured from the isle of Tenedos and then taken as a slave by Nestor

The longest mention of her in the Iliad is her serving pramnian wine, a medicinal drink, to Nestor and Machaon

[kareenvorbarra]

Women of the Trojan War - In the Camp

Briseis (Medalion Rahimi) ✧ Tecmessa (Tuba Büyüküstün)

Diomede (Gaia Weiss) ✧ Iphis (Begüm Akkaya)

Hecamede (Youlika Skafida) ✧ Chryseis (Matilda de Angelis)