Ilium

Dramatis Personae for Ilium

Achilles

son of Peleus and the goddess Thetis, most ferocious of the Achaean heroes, fated at birth to die young by Hector’s hand at Troy and receive glory forever, or to live a long life in obscurity.

Odysseus

son of Laertes, lord of Ithaca, husband of Penelope, crafty strategist, a favorite of the goddess Athena

Agamemnon

son of Atreus, supreme commander of the Achaeans, husband of Clytemnestra. It is Agamemnon’s insistence on seizing Achilles’ slave girl, Briseis, that precipitates the central crisis of the Iliad .

Menelaus

younger son of Atreus, brother of Agamemnon, husband to Helen

Diomedes

son of Tydeus, captain of the Achaeans, and such a ferocious warrior that he receives aristeia (a tale within the tale showing individual valor in battle) in the Iliad, second only to Achilles’ final wrath

Patroclus

son of Menoetus, best friend to Achilles, destined to die by Hector’s hand in the Iliad

Nestor

son of Neleus and the oldest of the Achaean captains, “the clear speaker of Pylos,” given to long-winded rants in council

Phoenix

son of Amyntor, older tutor and longtime comrade of Achilles, who inexplicably has a central role in the important “embassy to Achilles”

Hector

son of Priam, leader and greatest hero of the Trojans, husband to Andromache and father to the toddler Astyanax (the child also known as “Scamandrius” and “Lord of the City” to the citizens of Ilium)

Andromache

wife of Hector, mother of Astyanax; Andromache’s royal father and brothers were slain by Achilles

Priam

son of Laomedon, elder king of Ilium (Troy), father of Hector and Paris and many other sons

Paris

son of Priam, brother of Hector, gifted as both fighter and lover; it is Paris who brought about the Trojan War by abducting Helen, Menelaus’ wife, from Sparta and bringing her to Ilium

Helen

wife of Meneleus, daughter of Zeus, victim of multiple abductions because of her fabled beauty

Hecuba

Priam’s wife, queen of Troy

Aeneas

son of Anchises and Aphrodite, leader of the Dardanians, destined in the Iliad to be the future king of the scattered Trojans

Cassandra

daughter of Priam, rape victim, tortured clairvoyant

Zeus

king of the gods, husband and brother to Hera, father to countless Olympians and mortals, son of Kronos and Rhea—the Titans whom he overthrew and cast down into Tartarus, the lowest circles of the world of the dead

Hera

wife and sister of Zeus, champion of the Achaeans

Athena

daughter of Zeus, strong defender of the Achaeans

Ares

god of war, a hothead, ally of the Trojans

Apollo

god of the arts, healing, and disease—“lord of the silver bow”—and prime ally of the Trojans

Aphrodite

goddess of love, ally of the Trojans, a schemer

Hephaestus

god of fire, artificer and engineer to the gods, son of Hera; lusts after Athena

Ada

a few years past her First Twenty, mistress of Ardis Hall

Harman

ninety-nine years old and thus one year away from his Final Twenty; the only man on Earth who knows how to read

Daeman

approaching his Second Twenty, a pudgy seducer of women and a collector of butterflies

Savi

the Wandering Jew, the only old-style human not gathered up in the final fax 1,400 years earlier

(*autonomous, sentient, biomechanical organisms seeded throughout the outer solar system by humans during the Lost Age)

Mahnmut

explorer under the ice-capped seas of Jupiter’s moon Europa; skipper of The Dark Lady submersible; amateur scholar of Shakespeare’s sonnets

Orphu of Io

eight-ton, six-meter-long, crab-shaped, heavily armored hard-vac moravec who works in the sulfur-torus of Io; Proust enthusiast

Asteague/Che

Europan, prime integrator of the Five Moons Consortium

Koros III

Ganymedan, buckycarbon-sheathed, humanoid in design, fly’s eyes, commander of the Mars expedition

Ri Po

Callistan, non-humanoid in design, ship’s navigator

Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo

Rockvec soldier from the Asteroid Belt

Voynix

mysterious bipedal creatures, part servants, part watchdogs, not of Earth

LGM

Little Green Men, also known as zeks ; chlorophyll-based workers on Mars, tasked with erecting thousands of Great Stone Heads

Prospero

avatar of the evolved and self-aware Earth logosphere

Ariel

avatar of the evolved and self-aware Earth biosphere

Caliban

Prospero’s pet monster

calibani

lesser clones of Caliban, guardians of the Mediterranean Basin

Sycorax

a witch, Caliban’s mother; according to Prospero, she is also known as Circe

Setebos

Caliban’s violent, arbitrary god, the “many-handed as a cuttlefish,” not from Earth’s solar system

The Quiet

Prospero’s god (maybe), Setebos’ nemesis, an unknown entity