THE GROWTH OF THE TROILUS AND CRESSIDA LEGEND AND BENOIT DE SAINTE MAURE.

Abstract

It is in Homer that we meet for the first time the future protagonists in the Troilus and Cres ida love story. The Iliad opens with th<.: quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles over two captive girls, Chryseis and Briseis, who had been awarded them as prises in the division of spoils following the battle of Thebe. Upon Agammemnon's refusal to restore his captive to her father Chryses, a priest of Apollo, the god himself decided to punish the Greeks and sent a pestilence upon their host. Agammemnon realized that in keeping the girl he was incurring the wrath of the Olympians and thereby imperilling the issue of the venture; he sent Chryseis back to her father, whereas Briseis whose father Homer does not mention, was yielded up by Achilles to Agammemnon as a kind of compensation for the loss of Chryseis. Of the two girls we only know that they were pretty and that Agammemnon preferred Chryseis to his own wife Clytemnestra. Chryseis and Briseis being patronymics, the real names of the two girls remain unknown in Homer.

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