Episode 26E – About a Girl – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 26E Show Notes

Source: Greek Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’ll jump ahead through nine years of siege to the final year of the war. You’ll see that not all kingly ideas are golden, that the Trojan War has a lot in common with Monty Python, and that Hector really doesn’t get enough credit. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the lesser known but better dressed messenger of the gods. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 26E, “About a Girl”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
When we left the story last time, Paris former herdsmen and lost prince of Troy, had kidnapped Helen of Sparta, wife of King Menelaus, because a god promised her to him as a bribe. The Spartan king had summoned everyone he could to go get her back, over 1000 ships worth of soldiers, and set sail for Troy. They spent eight years of misadventures trying to get to the distant city before finally killing the right people to appease the right gods to find their way. There, they have spent another nine years besieging the city of Troy, with neither side really getting any decisive victories.
During the last nine years, the Greeks had succeeded in laying waste to the surrounding kingdoms in Asia Minor that had been allies of Troy, but the city itself still stood strong behind its impregnable walls. The long fighting had taken its toll, and there were some quarrels in the camp. Odysseus was still pissed at Palamedes, who had outed him as sane and forced him to come along on this (so far) 17 year long expedition. This came to a head when Palamedes decided to throw some shade at Odysseus. The latter had gone out on a foraging expedition, and returned more or less empty handed (since most of the places to raid had long since been raided). Palamedes decided to tell anyone who would listen that Odysseus was a shitty forager, and probably a coward. This got under Odysseus’ skin, and so he did what he does best. He played a trick.
Odysseus framed Palamedes as a traitor and left evidence where it would be found by trustworthy people not involved in his quarrel. This led to Palamedes being stoned to death as a traitor, all because he thought he could talk shit about Odysseus and get away with it. Never piss off Odysseus. He’s a great warrior, but he’s also a real sonuvabitch. At some point during the fighting, Agamemnon had captured Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, priest of Apollo, and taken her as a sex slave. He had come in person with a ransom to beg for the return of his daughter, which splits the Greek camp. Many of the Greeks think that it would be wise to return the daughter of a high priest, so as to avoid pissing off the gods, but many more don’t like the precedent it sets.
Agamemnon listens to both sides, and decides he’s not going to be afraid of some silly priest. “Sorry, priest man, but I like fucking your daughter more than I like the piddly amount of gold you’ve scraped together for her. I’m not giving her back. In fact, she’s going to grow old in my house at Argos, far away from you. Now piss off, before something happens to you to.” This understandably went over very poorly with Chryses, and he went back to the temple and prayed to Apollo for aid. Apollo, who was already on the Trojan side after Achilles’ shenanigans from last episode, sends a pestilence through the Greek camp in answer. With his silver bow, he launches metaphorical arrows among the Greeks for nine days, starting with the livestock, and moving up to the soldiers once they were dead. Disease ripped through the Greek warriors, killing hundreds.
This got the army’s attention. Achilles, having talked to the seer Calchas to confirm that this was Apollo’s doing, called a war council of all the assembled kings. “Dude, I know you like being able to rape this girl you kidnapped whenever you want, but people are dying because of it. Lots of people. This has to stop. Apollo is super pissed about this. Give her back to her father before it kills us all.” “Easy for you to say, assface. You get to keep your sex slave.” Eventually, enough of the council agreed with Achilles to make Agamemnon angrily agree to return the woman, but he demanded recompense for his prize. “Alright, fine. I’ll send her back to her daddy, but in return, I want Achilles’ sex slave Briseis. He’s the one that called this council in the first place, so I think it only fair he pay up since it’s his fault I’m losing my favorite piece of ass.”
“The fuck you say? It’s not even a little bit my fault that you pissed off a priest. Our troops are literally dying so you can keep getting some. Stay the hell away from Briseis.” You won’t hear me say this very often, but Achilles has a point. Not so much about the wanting to keep a sex slave, because that’s gross even if it was a fairly accepted if horrible part of warfare for the time, but Agamemnon is being a prick here. He’s literally valuing his orgasms more than the lives of his men. That’s fucked up.
Unsurprisingly, the two short tempered, violent men got really confrontational, and it could easily have come to bloodshed. Agamemnon accused Achilles of trying to undercut him by making him the only Greek without a captured Trojan woman to warm his bed, and Achilles retorting that he had more of a quarrel with Agamemnon than he ever had with the Trojans, who honestly never did anything wrong to him. “Maybe I’ll just pack up and go home. I never get the best prizes in the raids, even though I do the lion’s share of the fighting.” “Fine, go. See if I care.” They both drew weapons, fully intending to kill one another, when Athena appeared in a flash of fire and yanked them apart.
“Okay, seriously, this has to stop. Hera sent me down to tell you two clowns to cut it out. If you want to yell at Agamemnon, yell your heart out, but keep your weapon sheathed. Hera has promised that you will receive gifts three times as wonderful to make up for what you consider an insult. Cool? Because I’m a goddess, so I’m not really asking.”
The two men sheathed their weapons again, so Athena went back to Mt. Olympus, but the fight kept right on rolling. It soon became clear that Agamemnon would get his way (and Briseis), and Achilles decided he’d had enough. “You drunken, ugly, cowardly, piss poor excuse for a king of a puny kingdom, you refuse to go out and fight with the rest of us, and instead just steal our prizes when we get back. Fuck. You. Take the girl, but if you try to take anything else from me, even so much as a loaf of bread, I will kill you where you stand. Other than that, I will sit the rest of this fight out. You’re on your own. Before long, you’ll beg me to come back, and I’ll happily tell you to piss off. You’ll regret this insult, I swear it. You’ll all die without me, and when you do, I’ll be here to piss on your graves.” Then he left to go sulk in his tent.
Agamemnon figured good riddance, but the rest of the Greeks weren’t so sure. Achilles had been by far their best fighter, and many of their victories so far had only happened because he’d been on the field. Without him, the chances of victory seemed remote. Nestor, one of the elders, told everyone still assembled that the Trojans were surely delighted to hear that Achilles and Agamemnon were at each other’s throats. The deal made, Agamemnon takes 20 men onto a ship to return Chryseis to her father, and to try and apologize to Apollo. At the same time, he sent a bunch of soldiers to Achilles’ camp to take Briseis away to wait for Agamemnon to return. The soldiers of Achilles stood there silently as they took her. Achilles makes another little speech about how they can take the woman, but the next time they need him, he will absolutely not help them.
Achilles sent up a little prayer to his mother, Thetis, to petition Zeus to help out the Trojans, which she did. Zeus had been basically acting as a neutral in the war, sometimes helping one side, sometimes the other. Remember, his only aim was to kill as many people, and especially demigods, as he could, so he didn’t much care who won so long as the war dragged out. Hera doesn’t much like it, but Zeus basically tells her to stop meddling or else. It’s not really surprising that Achilles would ask his mommy to get the gods to kill all of his countrymen over the loss of his favorite sex slave, because he’s really only out for himself. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about literally anyone except himself and his mom.
That night, Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon telling him to get his soldiers under arms immediately because that day, they will finally take Troy. The dream tells Agamemnon that Zeus has finally gotten all of the gods on the side of the Greeks, so they definitely can’t lose. Agamemnon wakes and, thinking he’s had a prophecy (which he sort of has, only it’s a complete lie, because Zeus can be a real bastard), musters his troops. He’s worried that he’ll have this victory snatched away by a lack of commitment from the rest of the army, so he tests them by announcing that they should go home. He asks his most trusted advisors to make sure they don’t actually do so.
He makes a speech before the assembled troops. “Before we left, Zeus promised me that we would sack Troy before we turned around and came home, but last night he sent me a dream. It basically said ‘Oops, I lied. You’re not going to get to overthrow Troy so you might as well go home.’ Since that’s what Zeus wants, I guess that’s what we should do, even though the job isn’t done.”
I don’t know why Agamemnon thought this was a good idea. These guys have been at war for nine years, and it took them eight years before that to actually get here. Anyone would be ready to go home after that, especially if the king of the fucking gods told them to. In what should have been the obvious reaction, the men cheer and immediately begin making preparations to go home. It might have actually happened, too, if Hera hadn’t pulled Athena aside and told her to go amongst the soldiers one by one and talk them into staying and fighting.
Athena goes to Odysseus and lets him know that he should talk people into staying in honor of all of the men who had died already trying to take Troy. He quickly recognizes her voice and decides to do as the goddess commands. Whenever he comes to someone powerful, he tells them that running away now would be cowardly and besides, Agamemnon was probably just testing us. We should stay and see if this was just a kingly trick, because kings are a sneaky, prideful bunch. Whenever he comes to a common soldier, Odysseus would hit him with his staff and tell him “Listen to your betters! You are a coward, not a soldier! You are nobody in a fight and nobody in council. We can’t all be kings, and it’s a damn good thing you aren’t one.” Honestly, this seems needlessly harsh, especially since they were just doing what the king had directly and specifically told them to do.
Most everyone falls in line pretty quickly, but one dude kept on saying that it was really, really time to leave. That man was Thersites, whom the story goes to great length to let you know is ugly, handicapped, and cowardly (because everyone knows that the uglier you are on the outside, the uglier you definitely are on the inside). He’s quote “the ugliest man of all those who came to Troy – bow-legged, lame in one foot, and hunchbacked”. He apparently also has a pointy, bald head and a shrill squeaky voice that he usually used to argue with Achilles and Odysseus, who both hated him. He argues that Agamemnon has taken more than enough women and treasure to make up for one measly wife, so what’s the point in staying here anymore?
Odysseus tells him to shut the fuck up and sit down. “If you say one more word, I will take you, strip you naked, and whip you out of the war camp until you go sobbing like a little girl back to your ships.” Then, just to make his point, he beat him about the head and shoulders with his staff until the man lay bleeding and crying on the sand.
There are a couple of speeches, reminding them of the omen from before they left that the war would drag on for nine years (which it had) but that there would be a chance for victory in year ten (which was now), and reminding them that they are men, not women, so they should be happy to fight and die for someone else’s cause.
The story then spends way, way too much time describing the exact preparations each group of Greeks makes before going to battle as well as listing exactly who is in charge of each group and what he wears to battle, and then jumping over to the Trojan side and doing the same thing, having seen the Greeks mustering for battle and going out to meet them. I’m going to skip that, because it really does nothing for the story.
The two armies stand facing each other on the plain of battle outside the city. The Trojans advance like a barbarian horde (which is more or less what the Greeks considered them), screaming and shouting and beating their shields. The Greeks advance like the civilized men they are, silently and in neat ranks.
The Trojans attack first, and without Achilles and his soldiers, it’s not going super well for the Greeks. Even so, the Greeks are still dangerous fighters, so both sides are losing a lot of men. Around noon, a cease fire is called, which gives Paris a chance to strut a little. Paris is trying to look like a great warrior. He has a panther skin draped across his shoulders, and has two spears in his hand. He beats his spears on his bronze shield and dares the bravest of the Greeks to end this war with a duel. Paris’ brother Hector had urged him to do this, to take responsibility for the fact that this whole war is his fault. It goes great right up until Menelaus hears the challenge and leaps out of his chariot to answer.
I mentioned earlier that Paris is shown as a coward, and it shows up here in spades. He sees Menelaus striding forward in his armor, scarred from battle, and he tries to hide behind the Trojan soldiers. Seriously, he turns and runs away, like brave Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Naturally, he runs smack into his brother Hector, who yells at him. “Paris, you’re a good looking dude, but you’re girl crazy, a liar, and evil-hearted. I kind of wish you were never born, or at least that you had died without ever getting married. What will people say when they learn that we sent a pretty boy as our champion and then he ran away before the fight even started? Own up to this. You started this fight by kidnapping Helen, and now you’re too much of a chicken to face the man you wronged in combat to keep your countrymen from dying for your cause? Be a fucking man, brother.”
Paris realizes Hector is right, and agrees to go back and fight the duel that he totally already challenged Menelaus to. Hector was glad to hear it, but didn’t entirely trust him, so he went through the troops himself telling them to sit down until the duel was over. The Greeks, confused, kept their bows and slings trained on him until Agamemnon told them to stand down. He wanted to talk to Paris.
“Hear me, everyone. Paris offers a challenge. We both bring forth one champion, and everyone else lays down their weapons to allow Paris and Menelaus to fight on our behalf. Whomever wins, wins the war and with it, Helen and all she has. She will go with the winner to his home, and the rest of us will swear a covenant of peace. This is it folks. This is the big enchilada that decides everything.”
Hector sat down, and Menelaus stood to respond. “Hear me now, everyone, for I am the one who has suffered the gravest insults. I think the end of this war is near, and it seems fit to me that it should end in single combat between me and the man who wronged me. Let him who dies, die, and let the others fight no more. To make sure this sticks, Priam and myself will swear a sacred oath with Zeus, on the blood of three sacrificed rams, to abide by these terms, so that there’s no sneakiness with his sons. We all know that young men are flighty and hard to trust, but I’ll trust the old king.”
Both armies were stoked to hear this. It’s not often that the common foot soldier gets to watch as the generals resolve the issues that were really their issues in the first place. This would be one hell of a show. Everyone backed up to provide a clear field, and everyone lay down their weapons and removed their armor as a show of good faith.
Iris, goddess of the rainbow and a messenger of the gods, goes to Helen in the form of her sister in law Laodice. She found Helen in her room, embroidering the battles between her new lover’s people and her own people. “Helen, you should come see this. The two armies have stopped fighting so that Paris and Menelaus can fight for you mano y mano. They’ve agreed that you will be the wife of whomever wins. It might have been nice if it even occurred to them to ask what you want to do, but that’s not the way things work here and now, so whatever.”
Helen still loved Paris, because Aphrodite is no slouch, but she yearned for her husband, her home, and her family. She was torn about what she wanted, so maybe it was for the best that she didn’t have to decide this. Her true emotions were at war with those implanted by the goddess. She threw a white scarf over head and, weeping, she went to the walls with her two handmaids. At the gates, she sees several of the city sages, too old to fight anymore, but still wise and trusted advisors to the king. As they see her coming, they whisper to themselves “Man, I get how everyone is willing to fight over such a hot piece of ass, but I really hope the Greeks win and take her back home, or she and her children will breed nothing but trouble for this city.”
Priam called her over to him. “Sit down with me, child, so that you can see this first hand. I don’t blame you for this, I blame the gods. They’ve been very active in this war, and I think you were just their pawn.” Helen agrees, and wishes aloud that she had committed suicide rather than go with Paris to spare the world all this death. He then begins to ask her for details about the various heroes and captains they can see arrayed on the Greek side, and Helen gives their names and descriptions (as much for the audience’s benefit as anyone). They speak of tall, handsome Agamemnon, rugged, clever Odysseus, massive, imposing Ajax, less massive, less imposing Ajax, and godlike Idomeneus. She also mentions that she’s surprised her brothers Castor and Pollux aren’t there, because she doesn’t know that they died years before.
Priam, satisfied that he now knows most of the major players, goes down to the battle lines to swear the sacred oath before the duel. A lot of stuff is about to happen, so I’m going to press pause on the epic again. I’ll let you take your best guesses as to what is about to happen here, and you can feel free to email me your guesses. If I get an answer I really like, I’ll include it in the next episode. That said, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s god is Iris of the rainbow.
In an effort to make things just as confusing as possible, there are numerous positions within the Greek cosmology that have multiple gods to fill the same role. There’s a lot of reasons for this, including minor gods getting absorbed by more important gods, but hanging around in small ways; regional variations; and writers changing or making up details as they saw fit when telling stories. Iris is one such goddess. She serves as one of several messenger for the gods, the most important of which is Hermes,one of the major Olympians.
According to Hesiod, Iris is the daughter of the sea god Thaumus and the Oceanid, or water nymph, Electra. She’s also the sister of the harpies, half woman half bird monsters encountered by several Greek heroes. During the Titanomachy, Iris had volunteered as the messenger of the gods while her twin sister, Arke, betrayed the Olympians and became messenger of the Titans. Iris is depicted as having shimmering golden wings, while Arke has iridescent wings. When the Titans lost, Zeus punished Arke with the Titans by ripping her wings off and casting her into Tartarus. Her wings were later given to Peleus and Thetis on their wedding day, who passed them on to their son Achilles, which is why he was fast enough to run down a fucking horse on foot in an earlier episode.
She was married to Zephyrus, god of the gentle west wind, who we met back in Episode 7. She is a goddess of the sea (from her parents) and the sky (from her husband), and she provides a link from humanity to the gods. Her primary job was watering the clouds with sea water, which would later result in rain. Whenever Iris has a message for a human from the gods, she summons the rainbow to travel on. It is said that the faint shadow of a rainbow that can sometimes be seen below the first is her sister Arke, trapped in Tartarus for her betrayal.
She pops up frequently in the Iliad as a messenger, but is replaced in the Odyssey with Hermes. Both carry the caduceus, or winged staff that you probably know better as the medical symbol. At Zeus’ command, she sometimes will take water from the River Styx to put to sleep those who perjure themselves. She shows up in a number of tales, but always as a minor character, serving in one of the capacities described above. So the next time you see a double rainbow, remember that it means poor Arke is still trapped in exile with the Titans down in hell.

That’s it for this episode of Myth Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll get to the epic showdown between the two main figures. You’ll see that the gods used to be dangerously active in human events, that Athena is clearly an overpowered D&D character, and that Zeus is a master manipulator. Then, in Gods and Monsters, it’s the gigantic twins who took on the gods themselves. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.