Concubines in the Iliad, Old Testament and Christian Tradition

Today we will learn and reflect on how concubines were treated in the ancient
world, particularly in the Iliad of Homer, and the Torah in the Old Testament, with
teachings and observations from Christian sources and history.
You may ask, how can we benefit when we ponder the concubines in the ancient,
who were often captured as booty in war, who often had no say in their fate?
We should encounter the ancient world on its own terms and not quickly condemn
the ancients by reading back our modern sensibilities into ancient cultures. Also,
we can more accurately understand and interpret ancient Greek and Old Testament
stories and history when we understand that ancient cultures were warrior cultures.
As always, we want to learn to be more compassionate towards our fellow man
when he is in difficult circumstances, though thankfully being kidnapped by
marauding soldiers is no longer a possibility that modern women may face.

At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video, and my blogs that also cover this
topic. Please, we welcome interesting questions in
the comments, sometimes these will generate short
videos of their own. Let us learn and reflect
together!

YouTube Video:
Concubines in the Iliad, Old Testament and Christian
Tradition
https://youtu.be/bGHHD7XTvr0
NOTE: YouTube video corrections may not be reflected on
the slides, and the blog may differ somewhat in content.
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Before attacking Troy, the Greeks first attacked and sacked the cities of
their allies surrounding Troy, seeking both booty and beauties, carrying
off many young maidens as concubines. King Agamemnon won the
young girl Chryseis, while Achilles won the beauty Briseis.
This sound to our ears so brutal, that these men would without a twinge of
conscience kidnap young girls in the heat of battle, but yet when we let
the poetry of the Iliad sink in, we realize that Achilles does truly love
Briseis, and when she is taken away he loses his heart for battle. Likewise,
Agamemnon professes fondness for Chryseis, with as much fondness as
the Iliad permits him, more fondness then for his wife, especially since his
wife is home in Greece many fathoms and many years away.

Jacopo Alessandro Calvi - Chryses Persuading Apollo to
Send the Plague upon the Greeks, painted about 1815

Chryses, the father of Chryseis, priest to Apollo, bravely visits the armed
camp of the enemy, the camp of the Greeks, alone, unarmed, bringing a
ransom for his beloved Chryseis. Chryses is shown no hospitality by King
Agamemnon, but is discourteously told to leave from whence he came,
which is what initially angered the gods, this breaking of hospitality is
something you just do not do.
We have another video that delves into these camp meetings in the Iliad
and also in another warrior culture, the American Indians, in a companion
video which we will link at the end of this video.
This was also the case for the Vikings, they might slaughter anyone they
met on the battlefield, but if you braved the harsh winters and their home
country to visit them, they were bound to offer you, a stranger, their
hospitality.

Chryses has only one option, he prays to Apollo to compel the Greeks to ransom his
daughter. Apollo, the god of medicine and the god of plague, shoots his holy arrows
among the Greeks hitting first dogs, them mules, then men, infecting many in camp
with the plague.
And we will quote from the Iliad:

Jacopo Alessandro Calvi -
Chryses Persuading Apollo to
Send the Plague upon the
Greeks, painted about 1815
For nine days the plague raged, and
on the tenth day Achilles asked a seer
to peer into the motives of the gods,
After an augury the seer answered,
“The god is enraged because
Agamemnon spurned his priest,
he refused to free his daughter,
he refused the ransom.”

King Agamemnon is compelled in council to give
up his prize, the young girl Chryseis to her father
Chryses, to stop the plague, but he does not
surrender her nobly, he behaves badly like a
spoiled child.
King Agamemnon selfishly, with great hubris,
demands:
“Fetch me another prize, and straight off too,
else I alone of the Argives go without my honor.
That would be a disgrace. You are all witnesses,
look – MY prize is snatched away!”
But what is at stake is not his prize, but his pride,
he chides Achilles:
I will “take Briseis in all her beauty, your own prize,
so you can learn just how much greater I am than
you!”
Johann Heinrich Tischbein - Achilles has a
Dispute with Agamemnon, painted 1776

Achilles started to draw his sword and
slay the wayward monarch on the spot,
but Athena intervenes, and he slides his
sword back into its sheath. Achilles
instead lashes him with angry words:
“Staggering drunk, with your dog’s eyes,
your fawn’s heart!
Never once did you arm with the troops
and go to battle or risk an ambush
packed with Achaea’s picked men,
you lack the courage, you can see death
coming.
Safer by far, you find, to foray through
the camp,
commandeering the prize of any man
who speaks against you.
King who devours his people! Worthless
husks, the men you rule.”
Wrath of Achilles
Michel Martin Drolling, painted 1810

Professor Elizabeth Vandiver opines that Agamemnon did much more than rob from
Achilles his concubine, that in his hubris he stripped from Achilles not his armor but
worse, stripped from him his honor and his glory, making him lose face before his
comrades. Indeed, gaining respect and avoiding shame is critical for warriors, and men
in any age.
In our video on the warrior cultures of the Iliad and the American Indians, neither the
Homeric hero nor the Indian brave can never show any signs of romantic love to his
fellow warriors, lest he lose respect and dignity. But there are clues that suggest that
perhaps Briseis is not the typical concubine, she actually has a few lines of dialogue in
the Iliad, and her later actions suggest she genuinely cares for Achilles, which is
reciprocated by pieces of dialogue from Achilles.

Giovannia Battista Tiepolo – Briseis is being
led to Agamemnon, painted about 1757

Achilles’ goddess mother Thetis agrees to plead his case with Zeus, who arranged to let
the tide of battle turn to favor the Trojans, until they drive the Greeks to the sea and start
burning the Greek ships. Achilles barely mentions Briseis in his telling of the story to his
mother Thetis, but she and the other gods know what is in his heart.
Achilles and his subjects the Myrmidons withdraw from the battle and encamp on the
shore next to his ships. His best friend Patroclus sadly delivers Briseis to Lord
Agamemnon. When the tide of war goes against the Greeks, Patroclus convinces
Achilles to lend him his armor and shield so he can fight in his place. The Greeks drive
back the Trojans to the walls of Troy, where he is killed by Hector in battle.
Briseis shows her devotion to Achilles after the Greeks return from the battlefield the
corpse of Achilles’ best friend, Patroclus. Briseis and Achilles both mourn over the
corpse of his best friend Patroclus.

Briseis mourns the
death of Patroculus,
best friend of Achilles.
Julien-Michel Gué,
Painted 1815

In this painting the elderly Nestor returning the beauty Briseis to Achilles,
along with horses and many other gifts, the man pointing above is either
Odysseus, or Agamemnon swearing that he has not touched her.
It does not make sense for Agamemnon to claim this unless we suppose
Briseis risked her life refusing his advances, though the Iliad is totally
quiet about this possibility.
We see the masts of the Greek ships in the background, and to the right
we see the corpse of his friend, the warrior Patroclus. Now Achilles can
return to the battle and revenge his friend’s death by killing his nemesis,
the Trojan warrior Hector, and Zeus can release the curse on the
Achaeans so they can sack Troy. So… in the beloved Iliad many Greeks
are sacrificed to uphold the glory and honor of Achilles, and so his
beloved slave concubine, Briseis, can be returned to him.

Peter Paul Rubens - Briseis Given Back to Achilles, painted 1630

We want to mention that there is a role reversal in the sequel to
the Iliad, the Odyssey, where our hero Odysseus is delayed in
his journey home from the Trojan War when is help hostage and
compelled to sleep with several goddesses, including the seven
years he was forced to be the paramour for the goddess
Calypso.

Jan Brueghel the Elder - Odysseus and Calypso, 1616

You might ask, Did all the armies in the ancient world capture slave and concubines?
The answer is YES, in the ancient worlds when a city-state suffered abject defeat in a
bitter war, the women and children were sold into slavery, and the men were slain,
though sometimes the men were sentenced to death by work in the mines. We read
in the Iliad how Hector laments how his wife Andromache will be sold into slavery
when he fears that Troy will eventually be defeated by the Achaeans.

Hector fearfully tells his wife and queen:
“There is nothing, nothing beside your agony
when some brazen Argive hales you off in tears,
Wrenching away your day of light and freedom!
Then far off in the land of Argos you must live,
laboring at a loom, at another woman’s beck and call.”
Andromache in Captivity by Frederic Leighton (c. 1886)

When the Roman Empire was expanding in the centuries around the time of Christ,
the Romans would enslave slaves by the hundreds and thousands, and sometimes by
the tens of thousands, and since these slaves were property, the slave auctions
displayed these slaves naked, so the buyers knew what they were buying. Many
buyers would purchase the female slaves to be their concubines, this was the case in
nearly all slave societies, including the Deep South.
Another source of slaves were those kidnapped and sold by pirates, one of the first
adventures of the Odyssey pictures the Greeks acting as pirates on their way home to
Ithaca. Today coastal property sells at a high premium, everyone wants to live close
to the beach. Not in the ancient world, everyone wanted live inland, because pirates
raided the coastal towns for booty and slaves. One overlooked provocation that
prompted the knights to invade the Middle East during the Crusades is the Moorish
slave traders captured women and children along the Italian and Mediterranean
coasts, even near the walls of Rome. Here this Arab purchaser is determining
whether this potential concubine has good teeth.

Slave Market in Ancient Rome,
Jean-Léon Gérôme, painted 1884
Jean-Léon Gérôme,
Muslim Slave Market, painted 1866

In our video on the Greek Cynic philosophers, we have
an account how the Greek Cynic philosopher Diogenese
was captured by pirates when he was travelling and was
sold into slavery in Corinth. Pirates also sold any women
slaves they caught as concubines.

The laws in the Torah in the Old Testament try to
guarantee humane treatment of concubines were also
captured in war by the ancient armies of Judah and
Israel.

Mitzvah for concubines captured in battle:
“When you go forth to war against your
enemies, and the Lord your God gives them
into your hands, and you take them captive,
and see among the captives a beautiful
woman, and you have desire for her and
would take her for yourself as wife, then you
shall bring her home to your house, and she
shall shave her head and pare her nails. And
she shall put off her captive’s garb, and shall
remain in your house and bewail her father
and her mother a full month; after that you
may go in to her, and be her husband, and
she shall be your wife. Then, if you have no
delight in her, you shall let her go where she
will; but you shall not sell her for money, you
shall not treat her as a slave, since you have
humiliated her.” Deuteronomy 21:10-14
Levite and his concubine by Pieter de Grebber
(Referring to ugly incident in Book of Judges)
Painted 17th century

The rabbis consider these verses important, for Maimonides draws out both the
positive Mitzvah 221 and the negative Mitzvot 263 and 264 from them. The gist of
the rabbinical commentary is that the captive beautiful woman should be treated
with respect and dignity, she should not be treated as a mere slave, she should
rather be treated as a wife like any other Jewish wife.
She is to be left alone and not violated, allowed to mourn her loss for a solid month,
clipping her nails, cutting her hair, to give time for the soldier’s lust to
subside. Maimonides regards this verse as “only a concession to human weakness,”
and that “there is no doubt that one of the basest things a man can do is to discard
a woman with whom he has lived together,” particularly when alone she has no
good way to earn a living for her and her children.

The rabbis consider these verses
on concubines captured in war as
important, for Maimonides (aka
Rambam) draws out both the
positive Mitzvah 221 and the
negative Mitzvot 263 and 264 from
them.
Maimonides regards this verse as
“only a concession to human
weakness,” and that “there is no
doubt that one of the basest things
a man can do is to discard a
woman with whom he has lived
together,” particularly when alone
she has no good way to earn a
living for her and her children.

Interestingly, the Church Father Origen
in his comments on these verses in the
Torah likens the beautiful captive
woman to the truths of pagan
philosophy, “when we read anything
said (by the Greek philosophers)
that is wise and knowledgeable, we must
cleanse it, removing all that is dead and
worthless. This is like when you trim the hair
and clip the nails of the woman taken from the
spoils of the enemy (the pagan philosophers),
only then would you take her as a wife.”
"The School of Athens"
by Raphael, painted 1511

This is an allegorical interpretation: as discussed in our video on St Augustine’s
keystone work, On Christian Teaching, Whenever the literal meaning of verses of
Scripture seems to contradict our two-fold Love of God and our love for our neighbor,
then we must search for a deeper, allegorical, spiritual meaning for the problematic
spiritual verses.

The Patriarchs of the Old Testament sometimes had polygamous marriages, which
always were more problematic than monogamous marriages. In many of these stories
a wife may offer her husband her handmaiden if she has difficulty becoming pregnant,
to ensure that the bloodline will not die out.
This is true of the painting in our thumbnail where Abraham is turning out his
handmaiden Hagar along with his son by her, Ishmael. When Sarah was barren despite
the promise of Jehovah to provide descendants as numerous as the sands of the sea,
Sarah gave her handmaiden to her husband Abraham to start his bloodline. After Sarah
gave birth to Isaac, she became jealous of Hagar, and persuaded Abraham and
Jehovah to drive them out. We see Ishmael is carrying some possessions hung from a
pole, while is brother Isaac is restrained by his mother Sarah so he cannot follow them.
God permits Sarah this deed because God will provide for Hagar and Ishmael.
We read in the Old Testament that Jacob has twelve sons from whom descend the
twelve tribes of Israel, he bears these sons from his two wives and their two
handmaidens.

Verhaghen, Pieter Jozef -
Hagar and Ishmael Banished
by Abraham - 1781

There are also accounts of the mass kidnapping of young girls as concubines in both
the founding myths of Rome and in the Book of Judges. An early myth is that the
male soldiers who were the founders of Rome needed wives to start the Roman
bloodlines, so these founders of Rome kidnapped the women of a nearby tribe so
they could marry them, as you can see in this painting of the Rape of the Sabine
women.

Pietro da Cortona: Rape of the Sabine Women, founding myth of Ancient Rome, painted 1627-1629

Our other ugly example in probably the worst incident in the
Book of Judges near the end where the men of the tribe of
Benjamin are permitted by the other tribes of Israel to seize the
daughters of Shiloh as concubines and future wives.
The overriding theme in the Book of Judges is the phrase that is
repeated frequently in the last half of the book, “Everyone in
Israel did what was right in his own eyes,“ in place of the universal
moral precept that we must love our neighbor as ourselves,
which should rule all of our lives. Relying on our own moral
rationalizations rather than the universal moral code laid out in
Scriptures can cause us many sufferings and tragedy in our life,
much like the many ugly stories we find in the Book of Judges.

The Tribe of Benjamin
Seizing the Daughters of
Shiloh (1847), by John
Everett Millais
The theme of the
Book of Judges is
the frequently
repeated phrase,
“Everyone in Israel
did what was right in
his own eyes."

This custom that kidnapping was an acceptable form of
courtship never entirely died out, this practice was condemned
in several ancient and medieval church councils. Finally, among
its other reforms regarding the sacrament of marriage, the
Council of Trent repeated this condemnation, stating that
kidnapping is not an acceptable method of courtship, which we
covered in another video.

We read in his Confessions that St Augustine, before he was baptized as
a Christian, lived with a concubine for fifteen years who born him a son,
Adeodatus, which means gift from God. He was not permitted to marry
her under Roman law since she was born into a lower class. His mother
convinces him to put her away to marry a wealthy Christian girl, but he
regrets this and never marries.
Well into the Middle Ages the church tolerated men taking concubines,
as did St Augustine in his youth.

When the barbarians started raiding Roman
cities, St Augustine as bishop of Hippo had
to confront the pastoral problem of whether
the women who were raped by the ravaging
barbarians had lost their virginity, making
them unsuitable for marriage.
In the Life of St Augustine, he is quoted,
“Chastity is not destroyed in the body when
the will of the sufferer does not shamefully
take part in the deeds of the flesh but
without consenting endures another’s
violence.”
St. Augustine by Peter Paul Rubens ,
Painted 1636 - 1638

What moral lessons can we draw from this ugly history of concubines?
We can be thankful for a modern world where all men and women can
look forward to peaceful years of retirement after they have worked all
their lives. And give thanks for prisons, policemen, forensic science and
DNA testing which holds men accountable, none of which existed in the
ancient world.
When we study Greco-Roman history and philosophy, and the Old
Testament stories, we should interpret the ugly stories either allegorically
or in the context of ancient history, which describes a by-gone world in
which women were just not safe when their warrior husbands and fathers
were not nearby.
We can note that these works, and the Old Testament in particular, tried
to blunt the brutality of many cruelties common in the ancient world, to
treat everyone, including women and slaves, with the dignity and respect
that all mankind, who was created in the image of God, deserve to be
treated.

One lesson women should always resist, and I say this from my experience
a facilitator for divorce support groups, this ugly history should never
teach them that they need to tolerate physical or sexual abuse under any
circumstances, that if they are in a relationship in which they do not feel
safe they must always flee to a place where they feel safe.
Although women today should refuse to live under the difficult
circumstances that women in the ancient world were faced to tolerate, we
can learn the general lesson that when we are forced to live and work
under difficult circumstances, we can make the best of our situation and
be compassionate and kind as possible. No matter what our
circumstances, we can always choose to live a godly life.

SOURCES used for our video include Professor Elizabeth
Vandiver’s Great Courses lectures on the Iliad and Robert
Fagles’ translation of the Iliad.
You may not wish to read the Iliad straight through like a novel,
maybe you would want to listen to Vandiver’s lectures first. You
can easily skip through the lists of the ships, but the battle
scenes I found interesting, and the lectures helps you to know
what to look for. Personally, I find the Iliad a joy to read.

We are planning additional videos and blogs on Biblical
interpretation.
PLEASE click on the link for our blogs on the Iliad and the Odyssey.
And please click on the links for our YouTube videos on the Stoic
philosophers, and other interesting videos that will broaden your
knowledge and improve your soul.

Concubines in the Iliad, Old Testament and Christian Tradition

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