The girl – I won’t give up the girl. Long before that,
old age will overtake her in my house, in Argos,
far from her fatherland, slaving back and forth
at the loom, forced to share my bed!
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 1, lines 33-36. Agamemnon says this to Chryses about his daughter Chryseis, whom Agamemnon has enslaved. He will not give up the girl, he says, and indeed is going to force her to sleep with him. Despite pleas from his own military to accept the Chryseis’ offer of ransom for the return of his daughter, the proud and selfish Agamemnon refuses. Chryses is the priest of Apollo at Chryse and this dishonor shown to him will have have serious consequences for the Greeks.