A Thousand Ships

When she was young, Cassandra had wanted the gift of prophecy. Sometimes she slept in Apollo’s temple overnight with her twin brother, Helenus. Appearing one night, Apollo wanted to have sex with her. She refused unless he gifted her prophetic ability, but when he did, she refused to have sex with him. In retribution, he cursed her prophecies never to be believed, which effectively “cursed her to a lifetime of solitude” since no one would ever believe her visions (270).

Claimed by Agamemnon, Cassandra is the last Trojan woman to leave Troy. She knows that she will die upon returning to Mycenae with him.

Gaia laments that “greedy” men are such a burden that a large war is needed to diminish the population and asks forgiveness but says, “I cannot hold you any longer” (278).

In her next letter to Odysseus, Penelope is angry. The bards sing of him being held captive by a nymph, Calypso. Penelope thinks this is implausible. She accuses him of forgetting that he is her husband and describes the many suitors who have invaded their home and are consuming their stores. Nevertheless, she admits that “their hard, youthful flesh” is tempting, as is humiliating Odysseus the way he has humiliated her, but they “are all so stupid” (284). She has fooled them for three years, claiming that she must weave a shroud for Laertes, Odysseus’s father. What she wove during the day, she unraveled at night, and the suitors would not have caught on were it not for a treacherous handmaiden, who betrayed her.

Penelope tells Odysseus she wants clever husband home, but she will not wait anymore.

Clytemnestra’s chapter covers her experiences during and after the war. Throughout the war, Clytemnestra nurses her grudge against Agamemnon for sacrificing Iphigenia and in such a cruel way, by tricking her into believing she was to marry a great warrior. At first, she hopes he will die ignominiously at Troy, but as the years wear on, and he continues to live, she plans how she will kill him and avenge her daughter. She invites his cousin and enemy, Aegisthus, to Mycenae with plans to seduce him, which his desperation to be liked makes simple. When Aegisthus and her son Orestes come into conflict, she sends Orestes away for his safety. Her daughter Electra despises Aegisthus and sides with her father, despite his murder of her sister.

Knowing that Agamemnon has offended the gods, Clytemnestra believes they will take her side and sends out scouts to stay abreast of events at Troy. The news finally arrives that the war is over and Agamemnon on his way home, and she is delighted to learn that he has taken a priestess of Apollo, Cassandra, as his concubine, since this is sure to infuriate the god and turn him to her side.

When Agamemnon returns, he appears small, grey, “paunchy,” and pathetic in his “ludicrous regalia” (297). He had brought suffering not only to Troy but to his own men, whose bodies have been broken by war. Clytemnestra lays down tapestries for him to walk across into the palace, but he demurs, believing it impious. She asks if he would do it if commanded to by the gods, and he replies affirmatively, walking over the tapestries at last.

After everyone else has entered the palace, Clytemnestra is left alone with Cassandra, who sees the Furies dancing on the roof of the palace. When Clytemnestra questions her, Cassandra is surprised that the Mycenaean queen believes her vision of the Furies, her knowledge of what happened to Iphigenia, and her vision that Clytemnestra too will die soon. She suggests that Cassandra could escape, but the former priestess replies that, since she is finally believed, Apollo must have left her. The women enter the palace to conduct a sacrifice together.

Clytemnestra leaves Cassandra kneeling in the temple, reminding her again that she has time to flee, then proceeds to Agamemnon, who is bathing. Clytemnestra holds out a robe for him to step into, but she has sewn it into a trap: It has no arm holes. She stabs him to death then returns to Cassandra and kills her too. The Furies descend from the roof, pleased that matters have been settled, but they hear someone pounding on storeroom doors. Electra had been locked up during the murder, and now, she will seek vengeance against her mother. 

Penelope’s last letter is addressed as a prayer of thanks to Athene. She complains that Odysseus returned in disguise and chose to reveal himself first to their son, Telemachus, which he did because he was jealous of Telemachus’s bond with his servant, Eumaeus. Penelope expresses pity for the suitors, who were left behind by their older brothers and fathers, who went to Troy with Odysseus, and suspects Odysseus was more concerned with vengeance than reuniting with his wife. She wonders, too, if Odysseus “jettisoned” his companions on their return home, “rather than losing them” (318).

Referring to the contest of the bows that precedes Odysseus’s slaughter of the suitors, Penelope says she “never imagined it would be so violent or so cruel” and doubts that Odysseus ever considered how to apologize to the suitors’ families (322). She cannot be sure if the man sleeping upstairs is her husband, but he “fits the space that Odysseus left” (323). 

The Moirai are the Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, who spin, measure, and cut mortal lives. Sometimes Lachesis, tasked with measuring the length of each life, makes mistakes, but she feels “no sorrow for these souls” because doing so would paralyze her (325).

Andromache travels to Epirus as the war prize of Neoptolemus, Achilles’s brutal son. Initially, grief consumes her, but she carries on, urged to eat by Neoptolemus’s men who fear his wrath if something happens to his property. Eventually, she gives birth to their son, Molossus, and Neoptolemus is pleased. He marries Hermione, Menelaus’s daughter, but prefers Andromache.

One night, he reveals how bravely Polyxena went to her death and that he tried to make it as painless as possible. Andromache is not surprised knowing that Polyxena preferred death to enslavement. Neoptolemus asks if Andromache felt the same, and she admits that she thought she would but no longer does because of Molossus, who eventually merges in Andromache’s mind with Astyanax.

When Neoptolemus is at Delphi, Mycenaeans kill him at Apollo’s temple, claiming he has committed an impiety, but Andromache knows this is “a filmy pretext” (335). Orestes claims Hermione as his bride, and Andromache marries Helenus, a Trojan prince who had betrayed the Greeks to the Trojans and excels at “making friends rather than enemies” (337).

Calliope says that she has sung as the poet commanded, of the “forgotten” and “ignored” women affected by war. If the poet does not want the song, then she will “take it away and leave him silent” (339).