I started Hand of Fire in order to answer a question that had bothered me for a long time. For years I’d taught the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem of the Trojan War, and kept wondering with my students how Briseis, the captive woman who sparked the bitter conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, could possibly have loved Achilles—which is what Homer shows us. The half-immortal Greek had killed her husband and brothers, destroyed her city and turned her from princess to slave—hardly a heartwarming courtship. She is central to the plot and yet she gets only a handful of lines. In those few words, the one clear notion expressed is her sorrow when she is forced to leave Achilles. I should say I always liked Achilles, the existential hero who calls the whole war into question—which shows he’s no brainwasher—so the answer wasn’t some ancient version of Stockholm Syndrome. The initial inspiration for Hand of Fire was this psychological puzzle.
Even though I’m a Classicist with training in ancient literature and languages, I realized I had a lot of research to do in order to discover an historical Briseis. I knew a fair amount about the Mycenaean Greeks who, according to Homer’s tale, beached their ships in front of Troy and besieged the city. I’d been taught in a vague sort of way that the Trojans were the cultural equivalent of these Greeks. After all, Homer shows them praying to the same gods and various other similarities (that we now know are inaccurate). To excuse Homer, he lived several centuries after the events he depicts, and I’ll remind you that Shakespeare dressed his Romans in Elizabethan garb. Our ideas of how to depict people from “long ago” have changed in the last three millennia.
That may excuse Homer, but it doesn’t excuse my opening assumption that the Trojans were a version of Greeks. I soon discovered that quite recently a whole new world had been dug out of archaeological sites all across Turkey where the Bronze Age world of the Trojan War was situated. The long lost empire of the Hittites, as powerful as the Egyptians and Assyrians, had been brought into living detail, and it was clear the Hittites were the real cultural cousins of the Trojans. We have treaties between Troy and the Hittite Great King and the material finds of Troy on the western coast mirror those from the Hittite capital far to the east, near modern Anakara.
I started Hand of Fire in order to answer a question that had bothered me for a long time. For years I’d taught the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem of the Trojan War, and kept wondering with my students how Briseis, the captive woman who sparked the bitter conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, could possibly have loved Achilles—which is what Homer shows us. The half-immortal Greek had killed her husband and brothers, destroyed her city and turned her from princess to slave—hardly a heartwarming courtship. She is central to the plot and yet she gets only a handful of lines. In those few words, the one clear notion expressed is her sorrow when she is forced to leave Achilles. I should say I always liked Achilles, the existential hero who calls the whole war into question—which shows he’s no brainwasher—so the answer wasn’t some ancient version of Stockholm Syndrome. The initial inspiration for Hand of Fire was this psychological puzzle.
Even though I’m a Classicist with training in ancient literature and languages, I realized I had a lot of research to do in order to discover an historical Briseis. I knew a fair amount about the Mycenaean Greeks who, according to Homer’s tale, beached their ships in front of Troy and besieged the city. I’d been taught in a vague sort of way that the Trojans were the cultural equivalent of these Greeks. After all, Homer shows them praying to the same gods and various other similarities (that we now know are inaccurate). To excuse Homer, he lived several centuries after the events he depicts, and I’ll remind you that Shakespeare dressed his Romans in Elizabethan garb. Our ideas of how to depict people from “long ago” have changed in the last three millennia.
That may excuse Homer, but it doesn’t excuse my opening assumption that the Trojans were a version of Greeks. I soon discovered that quite recently a whole new world had been dug out of archaeological sites all across Turkey where the Bronze Age world of the Trojan War was situated. The long lost empire of the Hittites, as powerful as the Egyptians and Assyrians, had been brought into living detail, and it was clear the Hittites were the real cultural cousins of the Trojans. We have treaties between Troy and the Hittite Great King and the material finds of Troy on the western coast mirror those from the Hittite capital far to the east, near modern Anakara.
So now I had a second inspiration. For the first time, a writer could reconstruct what Briseis’s life might really have been filled with. Even if I’d tried to write Hand of Fire as an undergraduate, the material would not yet have been there for the work. Briseis, herself, may never actually have lived. She may be the figment of a bard’s imagination, but if I wanted to answer that question—how could the Homeric Briseis love Achilles—I needed a real, flesh and blood woman from the pages of history (or in this case the clay tablets of history since that is the form of the Hittite libraries). Now I knew where to look. I found, for example, in those clay cuneiform libraries, a perfect job for her: that of a healing priestess, called in Hittite hasawa. These women served as healers (like Achilles), singers of tales (like Achilles) and leaders of their people (like Achilles). A woman strong enough to challenge the mightiest of the Greeks began to climb out of the dusty clay and live in my imagination. Eventually she answered my question in Hand of Fire.
About Judith:
Judith Starkston writes historical fiction and mysteries set in Troy and the Hittite Empire. Her novel, Hand of Fire (Fireship Press, September 2014), brings Briseis to life against the mythic backdrop of the Trojan War. Thrust into leadership as a young woman, she must protect her family and city. Sickness and war threaten. She gains much-needed strength from visions of a handsome warrior god, but will that be enough when the mighty, half-immortal Achilles attacks?
An excerpt from Hand of Fire, book reviews, ancient recipes, historical tidbits as well as on-going information about the historical fiction community can be found on her website www.judithstarkston.com.
You can also connect with her on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/judy.starkston)
or on Twitter (https://twitter.com/JudithStarkston).
