Episode 7:
Centering Iphis,
Attendant to the Hero’s Tomb
“No man touches her!”
These bellowed words of Achilles
reach me
through the thin walls of my hut
on the edge of the promontory
where I live now,
away from the Achaean camp,
away from the company
of the other enslaved women.
“No man touches her!”
A reminder that life continues
even as I tend to a master
who resides within a tomb.
When Patroclus lived,
I was his woman
not because I wanted to be,
but because Achilles said it was so,
and because the word of Achilles
animated every breath and movement
of his beloved Patroclus.
It now becomes harder to remember those days,
when Briseïs was my companion,
when a living Patroclus was my obligation,
with Achilles looming over us all,
“No man touches her!”
and harder still to remember the days before that,
when I was a princess in Phrygian Hyllos,
when that city was still called Hyllos
before Achilles arrived
leading three thousand men.
He had been so giddy,
this young Phthian conqueror,
in my father’s throne room,
on my father’s throne,
with my father,
prostrate before Achilles,
with my three brothers,
prostrate before Achilles,
flanked by Myrmidon warriors.
“I have never conquered a city before,”
Achilles had said.
“This shall be my first,
Ilion shall be my last,
and in between,
perhaps,
shall be a dozen of lesser importance.”
“We will pay tribute to the Achaeans,”
my once-proud father had pledged.
“Our grain,
our orchards,
our livestock,
our fowl
shall henceforth supply the army of Agamemnon.
You will have my pledge of peace and loyalty,
Lord Achilles,
on behalf of all men of Hyllos,
if you leave us now to tend our wounded.”
The boy-warrior had grown angry at that.
“I dictate the terms, old man!”
And pacing around the hall,
he proclaimed,
“This city shall henceforth be called Skyros.
And you henceforth shall be called Deidamia,
And you henceforth shall be called Deidamia,
And you henceforth shall be called Deidamia,”
he’d said to a progression of trembling maidens,
until each disappointed him in some small way,
to be discarded for the next.
But I was never to be called Deidamia.
I kept my name
even as I lost my freedom,
even as I was presented to Patroclus
by Achilles
on the occasion of his birthday.
“Become a man today, brother,”
Achilles had said,
in the midst of a drunken celebratory stupor,
with a Deidamia on each arm.
“But we shall not call this one Deidamia.
It would be awkward
to find you sleeping with my wife!”
“No man touches her!”
I drop my head
in sorrow,
mourning
the life I might have had,
the life that’s been erased.
“I will serve this man until one of us dies,”
I once thought,
but how naïve
to think that even the death of Patroclus
would free me from my bondage.
I remain enslaved
to a dead master
by the whim
of a monster.”
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