Patroclus

so that it is unclear to no one, even of those having little sense, that Patroclus is well-nigh a substitute, and Homer exchanged this man for Achilles, wishing to hide what concerns him.

And suspecting lest someone seek a tomb of Patroclus too—as, I think, the tombs of the other heroes who died at Troy are plain—for this reason, forestalling, he said that there was no tomb of him by himself, but that he was laid with Achilles.

Yet besides, about Patroclus he happened to have heard from his mother, whom he says he honored equal to his own head, and would not even himself wish to live when that man had died.

Indeed, they say he will not even spare the poems of Homer or the names of the heroes, but will celebrate the friendship between Patroclus and Achilles, which, we are told, had its source in passion.

Now read what Patroclus says in the dream about their common burial and about the intercourse that they once had with one another.

And when he was sleeping by the funeral pyre, as the poet says, the ghost of Patroclus stood before him, and stirred such memories and laid upon Achilles such injunctions, that one may well weep, and envy the virtue and the friendship of these men.

of all men to me is Sarpedon the dearest, Fated to fall by the hands of Patroclus, Menoitius’ offspring.

And again the trailings of Hector’s body round the grave of Patroclus and the slaughter of the living captives upon his pyre, all these we will affirm to be lies, nor will we suffer our youth to believe that Achilles, the son of a goddess and of Peleus the most chaste of men, grandson of Zeus, and himself bred under the care of the most sage Cheiron, was of so perturbed a spirit as to be affected …

I infer this from the fact that at Troy his sons did not find fault with the damsel who gave to the wounded Eurypylus to drink a posset of Pramnian wine plentifully sprinkled with barley and gratings of cheese, inflammatory ingredients of a surety, nor did they censure Patroclus, who was in charge of the case.

whereas Achilles, son of Thetis, they honored and sent to his place in the Isles of the Blest, because having learnt from his mother that he would die as surely as he slew Hector, but if he slew him not, would return home and end his days an aged man, he bravely chose to go and rescue his lover Patroclus, avenged him, and sought death not merely in his behalf but in haste to be joined with him whom death had taken.

And Aeschylus talks nonsense when he says that it was Achilles who was in love with Patroclus;

Do you suppose, she asked, that Alcestis would have died for Admetus, or Achilles have sought death on the corpse of Patroclus, or your own Codrus have welcomed it to save the children of his queen, if they had not expected to win a deathless memory for valor, which now we keep?

\" Patroclus, I suppose, will lead him away to lay him on a couch, to bind his wound — if indeed he were a man;

Nay, we even often see the wounded carried from the line, and that raw and unpracticed one, at however slight a blow, raising the most shameful wailings;

"Ah, woe is me, that Sarpedon, dearest of men, is doomed to be slain by Patroclus son of Menoetius.

For according to your argument all the demigods would be bad who died at Troy, including the son of Thetis, who so despised danger, in comparison with enduring any disgrace, that when his mother (and she was a goddess) said to him, as he was eager to slay Hector, something like this, I believe, My son, if you avenge the death of your friend Patroclus and kill Hector, you yourself shall die;

And Patroclus, taking Lycaon to Lemnos, sells him there.

Do you think it belongs to the matter to inquire into the ages of Patroclus and Achilles?

It has been believed that the unburied are not brought down to the lower regions before they have received their due rites — according to the Homeric Patroclus, demanding his funeral in dreams of Achilles, because he could not otherwise approach the gates of the lower world, the souls of the buried keeping him afar.

Or again, Niceratus, 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.