Achilles and Patroclus

The relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is a key element of the stories associated with the Trojan War. In the Iliad, Homer describes a deep and meaningful relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, where Achilles is tender toward Patroclus, but callous and arrogant toward others. Its exact nature—whether homosexual, a non-sexual deep friendship, or something else entirely—has been a subject of dispute in both the Classical period and modern times.

Achilles bandages the arm of Patroclus

Homer, in the original epic, never explicitly casts the two as lovers,^[1][2] but they were interpreted and depicted as lovers in the later archaic and classical periods of Greek literature, particularly in the works of Aeschylus, Aeschines and Plato.^[3][4] As an exception, Xenophon's Symposium has Socrates argue that the relationship was purely platonic.^[5] Contemporary critics have also debated the Iliad's portrayal of the relationship. Some classicists and queer studies scholars argue that it was homosexual, homoerotic, or latently homosexual, with the Iliad describing these elements implicitly.^[6] Some historians and classicists disagree, stating that there is no textual evidence for a sexual relationship, and that repressed homosexuality here is unfalsifiable.^[1]

In the Iliad

Achilles mourning Patrocles, John Flaxman, 1795.

Achilles and Patroclus quarter together in a tent near their Greek allies fleet of ships. King Agamemnon realizes that Achilles, due to his heroic reputation, needs to enter the fight, but Achilles, having been disrespected by Agamemnon, refuses. Agamemnon sends an envoy to change his mind. In Book IX (lines 225 to 241) the diplomats, Odysseus and Ajax, hear Achilles playing the lyre and singing all alone with Patroclus. They both spring to their feet in surprise as the guests enter. After much talk, the embassy fails to convince Achilles to fight.

After more fighting, Nestor arrives back to the Greek allies base with a wounded soldier. Achilles sends Patroclus out to speak with him. In Book XI (lines 786 to 804) Nestor reminds Patroclus that his father had long ago taught him that, although Achilles was nobler, he (Patroclus) was still Achilles' elder, and therefore he should counsel and guide Achilles wisely so that perhaps he would finally enter the fight against the Trojans, but if not, then he himself (Patroclus) should don Achilles' armor to deceive the Trojans into thinking that Achilles had joined the fight, which should scare them away from their base and back to their own walls.

Later on, the Trojans continue their advance on the Greek allies' base and breach the defensive wall guarding their ships. Patroclus eventually dons Achilles' armor and scares the Trojans back as planned, and Patroclus also kills Sarpedon, a son of Zeus, but then Hector kills Patroclus. News of Patroclus' death reaches Achilles through Nestor's son Antilochus, which throws Achilles into deep grief. The earlier steadfast and unbreakable Achilles agonizes, touching Patroclus' dead body, smearing himself with ash and fasting. He laments Patroclus' death using language very similar to the grief of Hector's wife. He also requests that when he dies, his bones be mixed with Patroclus' in a vase.^[a]

The rage that follows from Patroclus' death becomes the prime motivation for Achilles to return to the battlefield. He returns to battle with the sole aim of avenging Patroclus' death by killing Hector, despite a warning that doing so would cost him his life. After defeating Hector, Achilles drags his corpse by the heels behind his chariot.

Achilles' strongest interpersonal bond is with Patroclus. As Gregory Nagy points out:

For Achilles [...] in his own ascending scale of affection as dramatized by the entire composition of the Iliad, the highest place must belong to Patroklos [...] In fact Patroklos is for Achilles the πολὺ φίλτατος [...] ἑταῖρος — the 'hetaîros who is the most phílos by far' (XVII 411, 655).^[7]

Hetaîros meant "companion" or "comrade"; in Homer it is usually used of soldiers under the same commander. While its feminine form (hetaîra) would be used for courtesans, a hetaîros was still a form of soldier in Hellenistic and Byzantine times. In ancient texts, philos (often translated "most beloved") denoted a general type of love, used for love between family, between friends, a desire or enjoyment of an activity, as well as between lovers.

Achilles' attachment to Patroclus is an archetypal male bond that occurs elsewhere in Greek culture: the mythical Damon and Pythias, the legendary Orestes and Pylades, and the historical Harmodius and Aristogeiton are pairs of comrades who gladly face danger and death for and beside each other.^[8]

In the Oxford Classical Dictionary, David M. Halperin writes:

Homer, to be sure, does not portray Achilles and Patroclus as lovers (although some Classical Athenians thought he implied as much (Aeschylus fragments 135, 136 Radt; Plato Symposium 179e–180b; Aeschines Against Timarchus 133, 141–50)), but he also did little to rule out such an interpretation.^[9]

Classical views in antiquity

Since the 5th century BC, Greek writing has dealt with the nature of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. The majority of extant works from this period portray the pair as lovers, whether the works are retelling their myth or interpreting their portrayal as written in the Iliad. Because the Iliad never explicitly states the nature of the pair's relationship, there was long-standing debate over textual interpretation, even though there are limited extant works which argue that they were not lovers. Writers who argued most forcefully that the relationship involves sex and same-sex love include Aeschylus, Plato, and Aeschines. Xenophon is the most notable source to refute this portrayal, claiming that the relationship is not erotic.^[6][10]

In Athens, the relationship was often viewed as being both sexual and pederastic.^[11] The Greek custom of paiderasteia between members of the same sex, typically men, was a political, intellectual, and sometimes sexual relationship.^[12] Its ideal structure consisted of an older erastes (lover, protector), and a younger eromenos (the beloved). The age difference between partners and their respective roles (either active or passive) was considered to be a key feature.^[13] Writers that assumed a pederastic relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, such as Plato and Aeschylus, were then faced with a problem of deciding who must be more active and play the role of the erastes.^[14] When classical writers labeled their roles, they mostly characterized Achilles as the erastes and Patroclus as the eromenos, although Plato notably flips this characterization. The pair didn't neatly fit into expected pederasty roles, and pederasty may not have been a common institution at the time the Iliad was written, making this a subject of debate.^[6]

Aeschylus

Aeschylus makes the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus the center of his lost tragedy The Myrmidons (5th century BC), explicitly casting the relationship as homoerotic, pederastic, and sexual.^[10] Aeschylus assigned Achilles the role of erastes or protector (since he had avenged his lover's death, even though the gods told him it would cost him his own life), and assigned Patroclus the role of eromenos. Achilles publicly laments Patroclus' death, addressing the corpse and criticizing him for letting himself be killed. In a surviving fragment of the play, Achilles speaks of "the reverent company" of Patroclus' thighs and how Patroclus was "ungrateful for many kisses."^[15][16]

Pindar

Pindar's comparison of the adolescent boxer Hagesidamus and his trainer Ilas to Patroclus and Achilles in Olympian 10.16–21 (476 BC) as well as the comparison of Hagesidamus to Zeus' lover Ganymede in Olympian 10.99–105 suggest that student and trainer had a romantic relationship, especially after Aeschylus' depiction of Achilles and Patroclus as lovers in his play Myrmidons.^[17]

Plato

In Plato's Symposium, written c. 385 BC, the speaker Phaedrus holds up Achilles and Patroclus as an example of divinely approved lovers. Phaedrus argues that Aeschylus erred in claiming Achilles was the erastes because Achilles was more beautiful and youthful than Patroclus (characteristics of the eromenos) as well as more noble and skilled in battle (characteristics of the erastes).^[18][19] Instead, Phaedrus suggests that Achilles is the eromenos whose reverence of his erastes, Patroclus, was so great that he would be willing to die to avenge him.^[19]

Xenophon

Plato's contemporary, Xenophon, in his own Symposium, had Socrates argue that Achilles and Patroclus were merely chaste and devoted comrades in the Iliad.^[11] Specifically, according to Socrates: "Homer pictures us Achilles looking upon Patroclus not as the object of his passion but as a comrade, and in this spirit signally avenging his death".^[20] Xenophon cites other examples of legendary comrades, such as Orestes and Pylades, who were renowned for their joint achievements rather than any erotic relationship.^[19] Notably, in Xenophon's Symposium, the host Kallias and the young pankration victor Autolycos are called erastes and eromenos.

This interpretation of the Iliad relationship as non-sexual influenced later authors. It is reflected in works from Bion of Smyrna, Dio Chrysostom, Lucian, Plutarch, Themistius, and Libanius.^[21]

Aeschines

Aeschines, at his trial in 345 BC, placed an emphasis on the importance of paiderasteia to the Greeks, and argues that though Homer does not state it explicitly, educated people should be able to read between the lines: "Although (Homer) speaks in many places of Patroclus and Achilles, he hides their love and avoids giving a name to their friendship, thinking that the exceeding greatness of their affection is manifest to such of his hearers as are educated men."^[22] Aeschines presented the relationship as pederastic, noble, and loving, and cites the Iliad in his speech.^[10] Aeschines describes Achilles as the erastes in the relationship.^[6]

Most ancient writers (among the most influential Plutarch, Theocritus, Martial, Meleager, and Lucian) followed the thinking laid out by Aeschines.^[10][23] The poets Bion of Smyrna and Strato also characterized the relationship as pederastic, with Achilles as the erastes.^[6]

Aristarchus of Samothrace

Attempts to edit Homer's text were undertaken by Aristarchus of Samothrace in Alexandria around 200 BC. Aristarchus believed that Homer did not intend for Achilles and Patroclus to be lovers. However, Aristarchus thought one passage of the Iliad implied Achilles was in love with Patroclus.^[24] Aristarchus disavowed these lines, arguing that it was an edited section from someone who wanted Achilles and Patroclus to be lovers.^[6] In the text, Achilles wishes that every Greek and Trojan except himself and Patroclus would die, so that the two can sack Troy together.^[25] Aristarchus thought this was too intense and believed Homer's Achilles was too sympathetic to wish for all the Greeks and Trojans to die this way.^[6]

Pseudo-Apollodorus

According to Pseudo-Apollodorus, Patroclus was the son of Menoetius and Polymele. After Patroclus killed a young boy in anger, Menoetius gave him to Peleus, the father of Achilles. As such, Patroclus can be seen as a brother-like figure to Achilles.^[26]

Other interpretations from antiquity

Statius in the Achilleid states that Achilles and Patroclus were either within the same age group, or acted as if they were.^[27][28]

The poet Theocritus characterizes the relationship as sexual in one of his poems. This poem can be read as implying the relationship is more egalitarian than traditional pederasty roles allow.^[6]

Chariton of Aphrodisias and Apollonius Rhodius viewed the Iliad's version of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as homoerotic, according to modern classicists Gabriel Laguna-Mariscal and Manuel Sanz-Morales. This is because the ancient writers allude to Homeric passages about the relationship when they are writing of love within erotic contexts in their own works.^[21]

When Alexander the Great and his confidant Hephaestion passed through the city of Troy on their Asian campaign, Alexander honoured the sacred tomb of Achilles and Patroclus in front of the entire army, and this was taken as a clear declaration of their own relationship. The joint tomb and Alexander's action demonstrates the perceived significance of the Achilles–Patroclus relationship at that time (around 334 BC).^[29][30]

Post-classical and modern interpretations

Achilles Lamenting the Death of Patroclus (1855) by the Russian realist Nikolai Ge

Commentators from the Classical period interpreted the relationship through the lens of their own cultures. The post-classical tradition shows Achilles as heterosexual and having an exemplary platonic friendship with Patroclus. Medieval Christian writers deliberately suppressed the homoerotic nuances of the figure.^[31]

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida portrays Achilles and Patroclus as lovers in the eyes of the Greeks.^[32] Achilles' decision to spend his days in his tent with Patroclus is seen by Odysseus (called Ulysses in the play) and many other Greeks as the chief reason for anxiety about Troy.^[33]

Achilles in Vietnam

Jonathan Shay, whose book Achilles in Vietnam proposes readings of the Iliad that have been helpful and therapeutically useful for the healing of mental wounds in Vietnam veterans, pointed out that their familial relationship in the Iliad must not be overlooked: Patroclus is Achilles' cousin and his foster brother; symbolically, comrades in battle are "like brothers," making the Achilles/Patroclus model useful for thinking about the intensity of Vietnam veterans' feelings of loss when their comrades fell beside them. Shay places a strong emphasis on the relationships that soldiers who experience combat together forge, and points out that this kind of loss has in fact often led to "berserking" of soldiers stunned with grief and rage, in a way similar to the raging of Achilles in the Iliad. Shay points out that a frequent topos in veterans' grief for a companion is that companion's gentleness or innocence; similarly, while a warrior of great note, Patroclus is said in the Iliad by other soldiers and by Briseis the captive to have been gentle and kind.

Troy (2004)

The film Troy presented Patroclus as a younger relative of Achilles, without any romantic or sexual aspects.^[34] (In the Iliad, it is explicitly stated that Patroclus was the older and more responsible of the two.)

The Song of Achilles

Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles (2011) is a coming-of-age story told from Patroclus' point of view, showing the development of a loving and sexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus.^[35][36]

Modern academics

Modern scholars have debated how the Iliad portrays the nature of Achilles' and Patroclus' relationship. Specific questions include whether the bond was homoerotic, included sexual intercourse, conformed to pederasty, and was a platonic friendship. Scholars have also debated whether some questions are even answerable, what types of evidence are appropriate, and what the norms and context of Homer's time would have been.^[6]

John Addington Symonds, in his 1873-76 text Studies of the Greek Poets, argued that the love between Achilles and Patroclus was central to the plot of the Iliad.^[14] Symonds later described it as an idealized example of masculine love: “a powerful and masculine emotion, in which effeminacy had no part, and which by no means excluded the ordinary sexual feelings…the tie was both more spiritual and more energetic than that which bound man to woman.” In this essay, he also described their bond as a "heroic friendship," and rejected the interpretation that their relationship was pederastic.^[37]

Saul Levin, in the 1949 article "Love and the Hero of the Iliad," states that their relationship was not pederastic, but that the relationship was more meaningful to Achilles than any love he could have for women, or his other familial relationships.^[38]

W. M. Clarke, in the 1978 article "Achilles and Patroclus in Love," argues that the pair are in love, in a homoerotic, and likely sexual, relationship. He rejects the notion that they just had a close platonic friendship, and also says that the relationship does not align with pederasty. Clarke cites comparisons between their relationship and others in the Iliad, as well as how other characters describe the pair and how they describe each other. Clarke also uses comparative evidence from other literature and myths, especially on tropes of love, and dissects ancient commentary on the Iliad.^[11]

Bernard Sergent, in his 1986 Homosexuality in Greek Myth, stated that their relationship was definitely homophilic but not pederastic, and their relationship involved "an intensity of emotions between two men in an expression that surpasses what our own culture tolerates." Sergent does not comment on whether the pair had sex.^[39] According to William A. Percy III, other scholars also believe that in Homer's Ionian culture there existed a homosexuality that had not taken on the form it later would in pederasty.^[40]

David Halperin argues that that Achilles and Patroclus had a non-sexual platonic friendship.^[39] In works like One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, Halperin compares Achilles and Patroclus to the roughly contemporary traditions of Jonathan and David, and Gilgamesh and Enkidu.^[41] He argues that while a modern reader is inclined to interpret the portrayal of these intense same-sex male warrior friendships as being fundamentally homoerotic, it is important to consider the greater themes of these relationships:

The thematic insistence on mutuality and the merging of individual identities, although it may invoke in the minds of modern readers the formulas of heterosexual romantic love [...] in fact situates avowals of reciprocal love between male friends in an honorable, even glamorous tradition of heroic comradeship: precisely by banishing any hint of subordination on the part of one friend to the other, and thus any suggestion of hierarchy, the emphasis on the fusion of two souls into one actually distances such a love from erotic passion.^[42]

According to Halperin, these distinctive friendships needed to be explained to audiences using the familiar language and imagery of marital and familial relationships.^[41] This can explain the overtones in Book 19 of the Iliad wherein Achilles mourns Patroclus (lines 315–337) in a similar manner used previously by Briseis (lines 287–300).^[11]

Classicists Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath argue that modern authors who identify the pair as homosexual ingeniously reinvent the Homeric text at will.^[43]

James Davidson, in the 2007 book The Greeks and Greek Love: a radical reappraisal of homosexuality in Ancient Greece, argues that the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus was homoerotic, and that the pair had a type of homosexual marriage.^[44]

Robin Lane Fox has written that "There is certainly no evidence in the text of the Iliad that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers. [...] Those contemporary critics who see all literary instances of male affection for males as proof of "repressed homosexuality" have the same problem as other conspiracy theorists: their hypothesis is invulnerable to disproof; we have no way of knowing if they are wrong".^[1]

Marco Fantuzzi, in the 2012 book Achilles in Love, argues that there was no homoerotic element to their relationship, and that they had a symbiotic bond, with Patroclus serving as Achilles' alter ego.^[45]

Celsiana Warwick argued in the 2019 article "We Two Alone: Conjugal Bonds and Homoerotic Subtext in the Iliad" that the relationship was homoerotic, taking the form of a conjugal bond rather than fitting into the norms of pederasty. Warwick argues that their bond, and that of Odysseus and Penelope, were presented by Homer as the ideal conjugal relationship, and that these ideals had subversive elements.^[6]

See also

• David and Jonathan
• Homosexuality in ancient Greece
• Homosexuality in the militaries of ancient Greece
• Nisus and Euryalus

Notes

1. Reading The Odyssey (Book XXIV), one discovers that Achilles' bones have indeed been placed in a vase with those of Patroclus, but also learns that Antilochus became closer than any other to Achilles following Patroclus' death, and that Antilochus' bones were also placed within the same vase, but separated from the bones of Achilles and Patroclus, which had been stirred together.