The Sacking of Sidon

Larissa could not be said to have a happy life. She would not say herself that she lived an unhappy life (because that would be disrespectful), but she would not disagree with the assessment.

The same could be said of any of the women of Sidon. Husbands came home drunk and abusive, sons went off to war and never returned, even if they did survive. And fathers–fathers wanted nothing to do with their daughters, who were only, after all, a burden. Wasn’t it enough if they sold them to a good husband?

And Larissa’s was no different. When she was younger, she had loved a boy, Iphicles, a shepherd boy, who had been kind to her. But under pressure from his friends–other boys, as always–his kindness had turned. And he hadn’t come back from the wars.

So far, Larissa had resisted all male advances, at least where marriage was concerned. Her father was good enough to leave her Hymen’s final choice. Her virginity, on the other hand–well, she was a servant girl, after all, and one could only expect so much, she sighed, from the nobler men in the way of propriety.

Then, one day, a Trojan ship landed in the harbor. It was just on its way back from Sparta on some sort of ritual quest and bore one of the Trojan princes, Alexander (although, for some reason, he preferred to be called “Paris”). He was a dashing young man, ever so polite and deferent (at least on the surface of things). But Larissa reminded herself in his presence that all men were the same.

Still, it was hard not to notice the way he acted around the woman who was with him on his arm. Her name was not given out publically, so she was referred to as “The Greek Woman”; yet even without a name, she had an aura of power no one in all of Sidon had ever seen, at least not in a woman. Not just in her beauty, but in the way that she carried herself. In the way that she acted with such confidence, so like a man, and still always wearing that look of adoration in beholding her Prince.

There were whispers in the hallways. This wasn’t just any Greek woman this Alexander, or Paris, had carried off. He had stolen Helena of Sparta from Menelaos–there would be war, it was certain! There was an air of excitement, then, about the city and the hall, though nothing was uttered near the honored guests directly. Would the Spartan King come for his bride? Would he meet them there? No, no, the older people assured the young, war would not come to Sidon—the Greeks had been waiting for years for an excuse to sack Troy, this “Paris” had just been stupid enough to give them one.

But then, on the second night when they were feasted once more by Sidon’s king, the question of hospitality was broached. How could they truly welcome a woman into their house if they did not know her name?

It was at that moment that fate took an awful turn. Once Helena confessed that she had indeed left her husband, every man in Sidon rose in anger, hurling accusations, some at the Trojan Prince, but not nearly as many as were hurled at the woman herself for having abandoned the man whom the very Gods had chosen to thrust upon her.

Helena deftly dodged their every ridiculous insult, giving a passionate speech herself on the whys and the wherefores and arguing time and time again that women should be allowed to choose their own fate for themselves, not to mention the man who shared their bed.

But the men of Sidon would have none of it. These men were proud. Though their women had begun to think, to possibly even become inspired, their men had stopped thinking and so gave their actions over to their stomachs, which had been turning over and over at the very thought of letting their wives make these kinds of decisions.

They rose up in anger, encroaching upon her, but the men of Troy, with Paris their leader, stood in their way to protect the new prize. And the women of Sidon were confused, their sisterly affection warring with their better sense when it came to their husbands. So, in utter dismay, Larissa watched with her Sidonian sisters as each and every son of Sidon fell to a Trojan sword. At the end, Paris stood in the banquet hall, a fleeting glint of remorse preceding a sigh of relief as he turned to the women and smiled. “Now you are free,” he told them. “Just as my Helen is free from her terrible husband’s yoke, so you are all free of the oppression these men have laid on you for your entire lives.”

There was a moment of silence, tense, when hardly one of them could breathe, and then a deafening roar of pain and rage, of pulled hair and torn clothing, from the mouths of every woman of Sidon. Some had the strength to hurl themselves head-first into the sea, or off the battlements onto the jagged rocks, dashing their brains out, screaming the names of their husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.

Paris stood in confusion and looked back at Helena in her shock. “I don’t understand,” he complained. “These men were horrible to you. They treated you worse than cattle, worse even than Menelaos treated Helena here. How can you not be happy now that you’re free of them?”

“You fool!” cried Larissa in response. “It doesn’t matter how they treated us; whatever they did, we loved them. They were our husbands, our fathers, our brothers, our sons. We had to love them. No matter what they did to us, their crimes could not compare to yours. No matter how we hated them, we will always hate you more for taking them from us.”