The Silence of the Girls

When her city falls to the Greeks, led by Achilles, Briseis's old life is shattered. Abducted and shipped to the Greek camp on the battleground at Troy, she goes from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to Achilles as a prize of honour. And she's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long, bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes and flung to the fighters. As told in The Iliad, the Trojan War was a quarrel between men - over Helen, stolen from her home and spirited to Troy. But what of the other women in the story, silenced by their fates? Briseis and her fellow women are at last given voices to tell this mythic story anew.