These verses at I.02.689–694 focus on Briseis, war-prize of Achilles. An aristocratic woman, she was taken captive by Achilles when he conquered the city of Lyrnessos and killed her husband Mynes, who was defending that city, I.02.690–691. The story about the conquest of Lyrnessos by Achilles and about his capturing of Briseis stemmed from poetic traditions that were distinctly Aeolian in origin. And this Aeolian origin has to do with a most basic fact about the principal hero of the Iliad: Achilles himself was an Aeolian, and he originated from a poetic tradition that was Aeolian. Achilles was an Aeolian not only in the limited sense that he was born and raised in Aeolian Thessaly, to the west of the Aegean Sea: much more than that, the poetic traditions about this hero’s conquests of territories to the east of the Aegean, across the sea from Thessaly, shaped his identity as a prime hero not only for the Thessalians in the European mainland but also for all Aeolians, including the Aeolic-speaking populations that inhabited the coastal mainland of northern Asia Minor and the outlying islands of Lesbos and Tenedos. As we will see in the course of further analysis, it was the myths about the conquests of Achilles in the East, including the regions of Troy and beyond, that shaped the ultimately Aeolian identity of the Aeolic-speaking populations that inhabited those eastern regions—which as I noted in the anchor comment at I.01.463 included the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos as well as the coastal mainland of most of northern Asia Minor. The conquests of Achilles in that whole area can be interpreted as a charter myth that aetiologized a prehistoric or even non-historical “colonization” by Aeolians from Thessaly. (See Nagy 2011b:171–173.) It is in this light that we may view the hero’s conquest of Lyrnessos, which was a city located in the region of Troy, south of Mount Ida. For more details about the location of Lyrnessos, see the comment on I.20.089–102. The conquest of Lyrnessos by Achilles was part of the myths conveyed by Aeolian poetic traditions, and that is how the captive woman Briseis becomes part of that tradition. In other words, Briseis is figured as an Aeolian because she is appropriated by the Aeolian poetic tradition. Likewise, as we see at I.02.691 here, Achilles conquered not only the city of Lyrnessos but also the city of Thēbē. This parallelism of Lyrnessos and Thēbē is most significant, as we will now see. Thēbē was originally not an Aeolian city, and the non-Aeolian identity of Thēbē is accentuated by way of a detail: as we read at I.06.397 and at I.06.415, the inhabitants of Thēbē before its destruction by Achilles had been non-Greek Kilikes ‘Cilicians’. And there is a striking parallelism here between Thēbē and Lyrnessos: the same non-Greek population had reportedly inhabited Lyrnessos as well. We read in Strabo 13.1.7 C586 that the region of the Kilikes was evenly divided between the cities of Thēbē and Lyrnessos. Nevertheless, as in the case of Lyrnessos, the poetic tradition about the conquest of Thēbē by Achilles was Aeolian. And when Achilles conquered the city of Thēbē, as we see at I.01.366–369, he captured there an aristocratic woman named Chryseis. So, as in the case of Briseis, Chryseis too becomes an Aeolian by virtue of being apppropriated by the Aeolian poetic tradition about the conquests of the Aeolian hero Achilles. In the case of Chryseis, she was allotted by the Achaeans to Agamemnon as his very own war-prize, Ι.01.369, while Briseis had been allotted to Achilles, Ι.01.392. (For background on the Aeolian poetic traditions about Briseis and Chryseis, I strongly recommend the work of Dué 2002 and 2006, listed in the Bibliography.) And now we come to a third aristocratic woman who is likewise identified by way of parallel Aeolian connections: she is Andromache, wife of Hector. Just as Achilles captured the women Chryseis and Briseis when he conquered the cities of Thēbē and Lyrnessos respectively, so too Achilles would have captured Andromache at the same time—if she had not been already married off to Hector, who had brought her as his bride to Troy before the Achaeans ever even arrived at Troy. Andromache originated from the city of Thēbē, as we see at I.06.394–396, and we have already seen at I.01.366–369 that Thēbē was the place where Achilles captured Chryseis when he conquered that city. The father of Andromache, Eëtion, was the king of the Kilikes who had inhabited the city of Thēbē, I.06.395–398, and he was killed by Achilles when that hero conquered this city, I.06.416–420. There is an important parallel noted by Strabo 13.1.7 C586 (also 13.1.61 C611–612): the husband of Briseis, Mynes, was evidently the king of the other Kilikes who had inhabited the city of Lyrnessos; Strabo draws attention to this parallelism in the context of citing I.02.691 and I.19.295, both of which verses refer to the time when Achilles conquered Lyrnessos and killed Mynes. In sum, all three of the women who are highlighted in these Iliadic contexts—Chryseis, Briseis, and Andromache—were appropriated by the Aeolian poetic traditions about the conquests of Achilles the Aeolian. And such Aeolian poetic traditions of songmaking are directly attested in Song 44 of Sappho about the wedding of Hector and Andromache. The songs attributed to Sappho as also to Alcaeus, both of whom are dated around 600 BCE, originate from the Aeolian island of Lesbos. There will be more to say about these traditions in the anchor comment at I.09.128–131 / 270–272 on: Aeolian women in the Iliad, part 2. See also anchor comment at I.09.128–131 and at I.09.270–272 on: Aeolian women in the Iliad, part 2; and anchor comment at I.11.624–627 on: Aeolian women in the Iliad, part 3.