Patroclus

and to whom Agamemnon outright said that Achilles too feared and did not wish to engage.

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.

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.

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.

For Achilles says somewhere in the course of his lament for the death of Patroclus, as recalling one of the greatest of sorrows, that unwillingly he has broken the promise he had given to Menoetius, the father of Patroclus;

Locrus gave him a city and a people to govern, and strangers came to him from Argos and Thebes, from Arcadia and Pisa, But among the settlers he chiefly honored the son of Actor and Aegina, Menoetius, whose son went with the Atreidae to the plain of Teuthras, and stood alone beside Achilles, when Telephus turned to flight the mighty Danaans, and attacked their ships beside the sea, to reveal to a …

let Hagesidamus, victorious as a boxer at Olympia, offer thanks to Ilas, just as Patroclus did to Achilles.

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.

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

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.

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.