A Thousand Ships Quotes
"Every conflict joined, every war fought, every city besieged, every town sacked, every village destroyed. Every impossible journey, every shipwreck, every homecoming: these stories have all been told, and countless times."
"If he wants my help, he will make an offering for it. That is what mortals do: first they ask, then they beg, finally they bargain."
"The Greeks were doing it on purpose, she knew: flaunting their carcasses in front of a besieged city."
"When a war was ended, the men lost their lives. But the women lost everything else."
"You have heard the message, Antenor. You know they will act tonight."
"I’m not offering him the story of one woman during the Trojan War, I’m offering him the story of all the women in the war."
"The day the Amazon died; that’s when we knew for sure."
"He watched her eyes cloud, like cataracts forming. He saw her open her mouth and say a single phrase, and then he saw the light darken."
"I would have swung the plough into my own feet, and cut them into ribbons before I hurt our son or let the Argives take me away from here."
"Troy didn’t fall because of the death of Penthesilea. It fell because the gods willed it so."
"People said the troublesome spirit had entered her when she was a baby, because they could think of no other explanation for why, if there was any trouble inside the city, Chryseis always seemed to be involved."
"Fear of upsetting her father had been a much greater influence on her behaviour than anything else, she realized."
"It had never occurred to her that being captured by the Greeks might be worse than being killed by them."
"The women were strangers, and none of them spoke to her."
"Her gaze was drawn to the bright blue eyes of a tall, slender woman who stood with the others but was somehow apart from them."
"‘Is that what they did to your town? Looted and burned it? Couldn’t your men fight for you?’ Chryseis asked."
"‘Our losses will be shared,’ she said. ‘You should save your sorrow for yourself.’"
"‘I have no one else either,’ the woman said quietly."
"‘It was Nestor’s idea,’ Achilles replied. ‘The wily old man will do anything to keep the peace, you know. Even if it means cheating his king of the first pick.’"
"‘No wonder you haven’t heard of the places they’re taking now. They cast their net wider with each passing year. They’re never happy unless they’re taking what doesn’t belong to them, and burning everything they can’t carry with them.’"
"‘You don’t see much inside your city walls, do you?’ said the woman. ‘That is what the Greeks do. They kill the men, they enslave the women and children. They have done it across the peninsula. And it’s what they will do to Troy, when the Fates compel it.’"
"‘I thought they were playing a trick at first. There’s a pause, you know, before the blood starts to flow out beneath them.’"
"‘Freedom matters less to me than grief,’ she said. ‘I would gladly have given up my freedom to keep my husband and my brothers safe.’"
"‘He is a follower of men, in all things. Even women.’"
"‘Do you have a sister?’ she asked. He shook his head. ‘A mother, then?’ she suggested."
"‘What men?’ said the woman. ‘They killed all our men.’"
"‘All of them?’ Chryseis said. She had been told many times by her father that the Greeks were no better at fighting than any other men."
"‘Your walls cannot keep them out forever,’ the woman added. ‘You may be the first Trojan woman they’ve captured, but I promise you will not be the last. And when they come for your sisters and your mother’ – Chryseis did not trouble to correct her – ‘your menfolk will be no more help than ours were.’"
"‘I’m sorry for what you have all lost,’ she said."
"He was hard to describe in her absence, as though the mortal gaze could not retain the memory of such perfection."
"All he has ever wanted is to have Helen as his wife."
"I, who destroy everything I touch, polluting and ruining with my very existence?"
"Why does everyone always forget that Paris was a married man?"
"When she urged me to accompany him to Troy, I tried to resist. But she gave me no choice."
"They blame me for the war just like you do."
"A god’s power is far greater than mine."
"No one could resist him, and so he was always spoiled."
"A man like Menelaus, who would never seduce another man’s wife, so can’t imagine that another person might behave differently."
"We sent him to an old friend, and that friend has revealed himself to be the most treacherous of men."
"You were too small. When you have your own child you will understand."
"My favour builds kingdoms, my disfavour crushes them."
"My presence is scarcely required at all, so long as it cannot be said that I am with someone else."
"To give your handsome son everything he asked for, like everyone else did, because he was pretty and sweet and he enjoyed it so much."
"He was a kind boy, open-hearted and sometimes foolish, but not reproachful or cruel."
"You have not lost every ship but your own, as the bards have it, I can well believe what the bard said happened next."
"You cannot know what it is like to look at your own newborn child and be told that he will be the downfall of your city."
"I am dying, Oenone. Without you I will die."
"A man who would go on a hunting trip, begging his wife’s pardon for burdening her with the tedious guest."
"How can you be so guiltless when all of this is your fault?"
"Paris was a married man. Why does everyone always forget that?"
"He loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans and slaves."
"The terrible destiny belonged to Paris and Paris alone."
"The one thing you could say about giants was that they were rarely subtle and never quiet."
"Eris felt a jolt of rage consume her. Whose wedding was it? Who dared overlook her, Eris, queen of strife and discord?"
"She would fly down there and sow the discord that made her feared. She would stir god against god and man against man."
"For the most beautiful? Eris smiled. She would take the apple. But she would not keep it."
"I have had enough of Helen. Enough of her beauty, enough of her power, enough of her."
"You pride yourself on your wisdom, I see."
"He will grow up to hear his father’s name spoken with admiration, how brave he was, how audacious."
"I will change my name. I will leave Andromache here in Troy and become someone else in Greece."
"Polyxena suppressed a shudder. The Trojans had feared Achilles as the great warrior he was... But his vicious nature was also like that of the lion."
"Your voyage home is more difficult and more treacherous than that of any other Greek, because you have earned the enmity of a god."
"He demanded her and she refused. He asked a second time, and now she was fully awake she refused again, unless he gave her something in return."
"You have not sailed to the place of perpetual night in spite of the danger, have you? You have done so because of it."
"You are further from home now than you were when you were at Troy, or on Aeaea."
"She saw the hated Odysseus appeal to the Greeks for Ajax to be punished for violating the temple and image of Athene, and she saw the Greeks ignore him."
"She had only just begun to tell me what happened and how they both returned to me on the same day, from who knows where. But the stories will come. I already know that it is you I have to thank."
"But eating alone did not bring her back to life. Her eyes could not focus on anything but the horizon, she did not hear anyone speak unless he screamed in her ear, and she could not bear any touch or taste."
"Sing, Muse, he said, and I have sung. I have sung of armies and I have sung of men."
"I have sung of gods and monsters, I have sung of stories and lies."
"A war does not ignore half the people whose lives it touches. So why do we?"
"He was already planning his revenge on the men who had dared to think of marrying his wife."
"What kind of man wore a bronze breastplate and a plumed helmet to return home?"
"She had brought Iphigenia back from Aulis to Mycenae, buried her at the closest priest-sanctioned place she could."
"She looked into her dark mirror and admired her strong jaw."
"I have sung of the women, the women in the shadows. I have sung of the forgotten, the ignored, the untold."
"Sometimes she had to remind herself that she had a greater ambition in mind than an adulterous relationship with her husband’s sworn enemy."
"She was sure Artemis would be her ally, because everything had been caused by Agamemnon’s affront to the goddess all those years ago at Aulis."
"She knew that she would have preferred any one of these ruined men to her own husband."
"She had only trust that the gods would protect him (as they had not protected Astyanax) because she now knew that if the worst should happen, there was nothing she could do to save him."
"But she did not set out to murder him at first. For a year or two, she prayed daily that he would be killed in the war, and she prayed that his death would be ignominious."
"Walk on the tapestries, now we have laid them out for you so carefully. Reward us for our gratitude that you have returned."
"She gave a small nod, convincing herself that she was granting them permission to leave."
"She was so willing to die. She did nothing to resist. She offered me her throat to cut. Why wasn’t she afraid?"
"Her own servants were aghast that she should make any contact with the son of Thyestes."