f" because "he yearned for
_the battle_." He would, instead, have yearned for the girl. And when
Agamemnon offered to give her back untouched, Achilles, had he been a
real lover, would have thrown pride and wrath to the winds and
accepted the offer with eagerness and alacrity.

But the most amazing part of the story is reached when we ask what
Achilles means when he says that every good and sensible man [Greek:
phileei kai kaedetai]--loves and cherishes--his concubine, as he
professes to love his own. _How_ does he love Briseis? Patroclus had
promised her (XIX., 297-99), probably for reasons of his own (she is
represented as being extremely fond of him), to see to it that
Achilles would ultimately make her his legitimate wife, but Achilles
himself never dreams of such a thing, as we see in lines 393-400, book
IX. After refusing the offer of one of Agamemnon's daughters, he goes
on to remark:

"If the gods preserve me and I return to my home, Peleus
himself will seek a wife for me. There are many Achaian
maidens in Hellas and Phthia, daughters of city-protecting
princes. Among these I shall select the one I desire to be
my dear wife. Very often is my manly heart moved with
longing to be there to take a wedded wife [Greek: mnaestaen
alochon], and enjoy the possessions Peleus has gathered."

And if any further detail were needed to prove how utterly shallow,
selfish, and sensual was his "love" of Briseis, we should find it a
few lines later (663) where the poet naively tells us, as a matter of
course, that

"Achilles slept in the innermost part of the tent and
by his side lay a beautiful-cheeked woman, whom he had
brought from Lesbos. On the other side lay Patroclus
with the fair Isis by his side, the gift of Achilles."

Obviously even individual preference was not a strong ingredient in
the "love" of these "heroes," and we may well share the significant
surprise of Ajax (638) that Achilles should persist in his wrath when
seven girls were offered him for one. Evidently the tent of Achilles,
like that of Agamemnon, was full of women (in line 366 he especially
refers to his assortment of "fair-girdled women" whom he expects to
take home when the war is over); yet Gladstone had the audacity to
write that though concubinage prevailed in the camp before Troy, it
was "only single concubinage." In his larger treatise he goes so far
as to apologize for these ruffians--