Little Wandering Soul

[theogonyofbeauty]

Embassy in the camp of Achilles.

[flaviafulvia]

Pat and often Achilles are usually pretty naked in these, even in antiquity. Maybe because the next time either of them puts something on it gets Patroclus killed?

[hayhaysbigday]

Patroclus and Achilles were cousins, not lovers!

[flaviafulvia]

That didn’t stop anyone from anything until like 1950. This is such an inane argument

[theodysseyofhomer]

every time someone refers to penelope's suitors as having been hanging around for 10-20 years i laugh. in the odyssey they are explicitly in their 4th year camped out at the palace, so they waited until odysseus had been well and truly MIA to come a-courtin'. they did not come the moment odysseus left for troy; for one thing they would not have been old enough. eurymachus says that odysseus used to bounce him on his knee. because he was a toddler

[flaviafulvia]

The way I was just thinking about how many of the suitors were likely the sons of the crew Odysseus got killed. Two generations wiped out because of one man

[johaerys-writes]

"Menoetius was a good dad and Patroclus was not abandoned or neglected by him, and if you think otherwise you're tsoa-pilled" is such a batshit wild take lmao.

Like, sure he does show up in the Iliad, and yes he seems to be concerned for his son! He tells him to look after Achilles and to give him sound counsel, so that they may both profit from his glory. This could be interpreted in a number of different ways: that yes, he still cares about his son and didn't wash his hands off him, but at the same time that scene always came across to me like Menoetius basically reminding Patroclus not to dishonour himself and his family further, enforcing on him the fact that even though Patroclus is older, Achilles will always be a better and nobler man than he, and instructing him on how to reap as much glory as he can through Achilles despite his own disgraced standing.

Sorry if that doesn’t strike me as a particularly loving and tender father-son moment lol.

I do still believe that Menoetius didn't willingly give him up. Despite what Patroclus did, he was still a prince, was still his heir, and of course Menoetius as the king of Opus had a vested interest in his one offspring that was next in line for the throne. Undoubtedly Amphidamas, whose son Patroclus killed, was someone powerful and Patroclus couldn't be left unpunished for his crime, and Menoetius had been obligated by law to send his son into exile.

Yes it royally sucked that Patroclus was stripped of his title and his right to the throne! But consider this: a child who killed another child has ALWAYS been bad news, no matter the time period. A child that kills another child accidentally, "in a fit of rage" over a game of dice, was never acceptable, never normal. We don't know enough about Patroclus' upbringing or his relationship with Menoetius, but I don’t think it would far fetched to assume that Patroclus struggled with extreme childhood aggression, which could be traced back to Menoetius' treatment of him or some other kind of trauma.

TL;DR: Patroclus' bad relationship with Menoetius is NOT an invention of TSOA, it doesn't take away from his character in any way, and there is as much evidence to support that Patroclus might have had a problematic upbringing and that Menoetius was a shitty dad as there is to the contrary.

[flaviafulvia]

I don’t think we can possibly glean too much about their relationship from the Iliad, but I think there are a few modern assumptions that float around we need to nix. I am speaking pretty broadly using historical examples across centuries because a lot of this is just not stuff we are going to know about Bronze Age Greeks, but a lot of it is likely true to them.

A big thing to know about Ancient Greeks is that primogeniture, rule and/or property passing automatically from father to son was not a thing and would not be for another few millennia. This keeps clearly incompetent people from inheriting the throne, but there was also generally more tension and violence surrounding a king’s death, and more parties jockeying for influence in the lead up tot it. Patroclus was not necessarily Meneotius’s heir or next in line to to anything! We don’t even know if he was the oldest, but the father of the boy he killed could be a rival or could ally himself with rival and put Actor’s whole clan in danger. Furthermore, there were definitely times where there were just too many men about, and societal safety valves to get rid of them. War was good, but you also see cases like Menelaus marrying Helen and ruling Sparta, her birth place and not his (incidentally Patroclus, someone who learned at one point or the other that he would not be king, was also among her suitors). Exile pops up a lot too, and it’s easy enough to believe that a violent society would have quite a few of them floating around. Patroclus could have been one of several people who might rule Opus after his father died and violence and threat of violence was just in the air, and Patroclus’s actions certainly made it worse.

It’s also just not historically weird to send your child away, especially for the rich and powerful. Spartans gave their sons to the state at seven, and that is the age European knights started to train. Many European nobles would send their children to some court or another and maybe wealthy family members for refinement or to get them in proximity to the more powerful. Younger or lesser sons were often married off, shunted into business, or (later) sent to the church. We still send kids to boarding school. I don’t think it was easy to exile Patrolcus, but sending a kid with a target on his back to stay with an old friend you are distantly related to was an extremely normal thing to do. No one would judge him for it. And apparently Patroclus and Menoetius still have regular contact after, so it’s even less extreme to us than it might seem at first glance.

As for childhood violence—boys in these types of environments were often encouraged to be violent. Shoving and fighting were normal, and it’s biased but by Patroclus’s own account it was also a mistake, a hit that landed in the wrong spot or led to his victim falling in exactly the wrong way. Maybe that is what happened, maybe it wasn’t. Yet I have to think these kinds of accidents happened a lot, especially when you consider that a minor cut we would wipe down with hydrogen peroxide might get infected and kill someone. Enough exiles certainly pop up in mythology.

Finally, I don’t think anyone modern would call what we see of the relationship between father and son as particularly tender (except when Achilles wonders if Patroclus is weeping because his father died), but they live in an honor-bound society where the future was uncertain for even the well-born and there was violence galore. That conversation Menoetius always seemed like a warning to me, a father cautioning his son that he should not make himself an enemy of the people housing him by reacting inappropriately to his own loss of status. It’s his best chance at a good life at that point, one where Patroclus would have been most vulnerable.

I’m not even necessarily disagreeing with prev, but while the tenderness we expect between parents and children certainly existed in some circumstances, sometimes it didn’t, and I think when you consider the type of world their children are being prepared for, some hardassness is to be expected. And I do think there is room for Menoetious to be a bad parent, but nothing in the Iliad stands out to me as abnormal or particularly bad in a pre-modern world with nobles and royalty.

[flaviafulvia]

I love thinking about Achilles and Patroclus being teenage boys at the start of the war and all that entails. They sleep a lot and eat even more. Achilles has a growth spurt or two in him. At their camp there is a smell. They keep trying to grow beards and the results are risible. They are disgusting, living in a Bronze Age-frat house.

[patnchilles]

"Aren't you overstating Patroclus's importance in the Iliad? He was just plot device for Achilles."

No, I'm not, and no, he was not. If you read closely you'll realize Patroclus didn't actually ask Achilles to rejoin the war. He supplicated with Achilles to lend him his armor so Patroclus could impersonate him on the battlefield.

I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me you believe Achilles would have agreed to this had literally anyone else asked him.

Read the Iliad and tell me to my face Achilles would have given this honor or trusted literally anyone else to do this.

Patroclus is central to the plot because he was the only warrior who had enough personal strength of character AND an exclusive bond to Achilles to stand in for him, fail at the task, and still contribute to both the tragedy and Achilles's character growth. The story isn't set up for anyone else to matter enough, in physical strength and in social standing vis-à-vis the hero, to accomplish both. Patroclus's importance can hardly be overstated.

[flaviafulvia]

Btw Patroclus is one of the two people Homer speaks to in the second person in the Iliad. The other is Menelaus,

And he’s such an interesting character. His presence is strongest in the shape of his absence. We learn a lot of things about him on only after he dies, and he and Achilles do not exchange a single word until Patroclus begs to go into the field, with Patroclus hovering sorta out of frame while cooking and serving for the embassy. Meanwhile, in a short poem that compresses the emotional and thematic course of the Trojan war into just a few weeks, he is also a stand-in for Achilles, literally in his armor, but also to the audience who has been hearing how good Achilles is at fighting and finally, after 15 books, gets a taste of what it means to have him on the battlefield, and then later he gets a grand funeral that would render any depiction of Achilles’s redundant. And yet because it’s the only grand funeral he is a stand-in for all the heroic Achaean war dead, those who died outside the narrow limits of the Iliad’s narrative. And those bodies, mostly of other young men in Patroclus’s generation, are about to start piling up and Homer’s original audience knew it.

And on top of that he is a good man. To modern audiences, really only he and Hector come off as sympathetic (with both being problematic sometimes), and of course they both end up dead. And with Patroclus, again, we learn a lot about him after he is gone, getting attached after it is already too late, which really brings home how wasteful all this death is.

[imperatrice21]

Tired of people pretending Achilles hates Neoptolemus

[flaviafulvia]

Tbh I don’t think Achilles knew him. His little fantasy of Patrolcus taking Pyrrhus to Phthia from Skyros after his death seems a little half-assed and pretty indicative of the fact that Neoptolemus has not been folded into Achilles’s life or world at that point. Neoptolemus goes on to rule Epirus and does not seem to be associated with Phthia at all after Troy.

There’s nothing particularly weird or neglectful about that and I do think Achilles wanted what was best for his son, and also it would not have been his job to be raising him like we would conceive of it, but he hasn’t gone out of his way for him either.

[patnchilles]

I've never enjoyed portrayals of "woe is me I was abandoned and neglected by my own parents and cast away I'm so useless" Patroclus.

I think there's enough in the Iliad to suggest this isn't likely to be the case and reading it thus is either a deliberate choice to deviate from the source material or a gross misunderstanding of the context of the time. The first I have no problems with. The second I find myself more critical of.

In the Iliad, Menoetius was there when Achilles and Patroclus were called upon to war. Menoetius handed off his son the same way Peleus did Achilles.

In the Odyssey, after Odysseus and Telemachus kill the suitors, they must then deal with the fallout of what that means to their relationships with neighboring influential families, whose sons they just murdered, and who will likely come ask for compensation (or forcibly TAKE compensation, if they're strong enough to mount a resistance). Telemachus, famously, also kills a dozen female slaves... and has to worry about nothing on that front.

Combine these two facts and you get a very different picture of Patroclus's past. My suspicion has always been that Patroclus accidentally killing his playmate wasn't the problem, it's WHO THAT PLAYMATE'S PARENTS WERE in relation to Menoetius's land and power, that caused the trouble. Killing during this time period isn't problematic if you're the judge, jury, and executioner, at least until someone else of importance has a stake in proving you wrong. Had Patroclus's playmate just been some slave, his accidental murder wouldn't have mattered in the least.

Menoetius probably could have had Patroclus killed to compensate Amphidamas, a life for a life, a son for a son. But he chose instead to exile him to Peleus, which strips him of his princehood but preserves his life (and therefore his chance of distinguishing himself in the future). There, Patroclus does indeed live up to his father's hopes, distinguishing himself enough to be chosen as Achilles's therapon. Given these were times where warriors were glorified, I wouldn't even be surprised if Patroclus's history of violence was seen positively: he has the guts to grow into a fighter and just needs to channel that energy more strategically. I can certainly see a young Achilles thinking Patroclus, who was older and courageous, was so cool.

[flaviafulvia]

Worth pointing out too that Achilles sent away the commoners and just kept the commanders and some higher-ranking Phthians around at Patroclus’s funeral, and either he or the poet says that they were the ones Patroclus was closest to. There were scenarios where a prince could fall close to the bottom of the world (it happened to someone in the Odyssey!) and I am sure proximity to Achilles helped, but I do get the feeling that Patroclus was very much treated as One of Them, someone with status and occasional agency in the world even if second (or worse) to another. Menoetious probably still has some pull and the elites probably did circle their wagons for their own children to make sure none of them lost too much status.

[fionaneedsamango]

"But what if Apollo killed Achilles to reunite him with Patroclus because they reminded him of his relationship with Hyacinthus?!" Cool theory. What if, what if Apollo actually didn't like Achilles at all and wanted to avenge Hector & Troilus? What if?

[flaviafulvia]

I’ve mentioned this before but I swear Hyacinthus as Apollo’s One True Love only started with Percy Jackson. There’s nothing wrong with it, except that we don’t see too many depictions of gods hung up on mortals like that however many years later (outside of grudges). They didn’t really move like that.

Also if you ever think “maybe the god wanted to be nice” no they didn’t. They have faves they help but no mercy for their opps. And even with their faves they still mostly acting for themselves. Someone like Helen probably wished she escaped Aphrodite’s notice entirely.

[richard-eeee]

A little thought but if Patroclus had survived, I suppose he would've taken Iphis as his wife...?

[flaviafulvia]

The thing I am endlessly curious about is a living Patroclus’s status after the death of Achilles. Achilles has this hopeful plan for Patroclus to take Pyrrhus to Phthia from Skyros but how much authority over him would he actually have? Could Neoptolemus give him the boot if got a little older, maybe Peleus dies, and he wants his own people around him and not the friend of his dead, absentee father? Would someone else take him in? Would his status as a king’s son still matter or is he just anyone? How much wealth does Patroclus actually have (outside of Iphis, a clear gift) that is his and that he can take with him? Who is he to the Myrmidons without Achilles?

My hunch is that Achilles took steps to provide materially for Patroclus after his own inevitable death (his little plan supports that), but I could also see someone being born into the privileged center of his kingdom not quite understanding how tenuous things might be for those outside of that exact position. Achilles really doesn’t know much about his son—maybe he gets turned out by Pyrrus who wants stuff to be his. Patroclus also seems to be well-liked by the other commanders, but maybe after Achilles dies they would smell blood in the water and try to take stuff that Achilles intended to be Patrolcus’s. Or maybe one actually would take him in, or he could get some of his own men and found or conquer a city or whatever.

[badpunktakes]

stop trying to convince people that taylor swift is punk. it's not happening

[the-haiku-bot]

stop trying to convince

people that taylor swift is

punk. it’s not happening

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[flaviafulvia]

I saw the yellow plaid and thought it was Cher Horowitz and she is more convincingly punk.

[flaviafulvia]

Imagining a Greek god popping into Trader Joe’s for a $14.99 bouquet or two, some chocolate, and maybe some Henry and David pears if it’s the holidays and traveling back 3000 years to give to a mortal lover. They pair the gifts with a tripod so there is some gold involved but it’s just the nicest, most exotic thing that mortal or even anyone in their family has ever seen. It charms me, this thought.

[flaviafulvia]

Thinking about the person I talked to on Reddit who said that someone wasn’t a nepo baby because it was their uncle who was famous.

[flaviafulvia]

I’m apartment hunting in Chicago (a nightmare I have gone through already) but it’s worse now because of AI. I emailed a building and set up a time last Saturday at 10:30. A little line in their email signature said it was all assisted by AI. I get a call from the building asking if I can reschedule FROM Monday at 4:30. That was neither the time nor the date. We reschedule to 12:30 on Saturday and I know the name of the person I am meeting. I show up and there is no person. I email and get something back about setting up a virtual id but have no way of making an account. I bounce and later get an email thanking me for touring the building and asking if I would like to apply to an apartment. I think the only human involved with that was the phone call but I’m not sure.

Right now I am also in a loop with a chatbot where I keep saying I need a one bedroom (I work from home) and it keeps offering me studios. I hate it here.

[fionaneedsamango]

"If hector and patroclus met eachother in the underworld, they'd be friends!"

"they'd make peace!"

They'd diss each other's asses the second they meet, wdym peace?

[flaviafulvia]

I’m working on a modem au where Patroclus lowkey hates Hector because of the way he rides horses. It’s stupid and he thinks it’s one-sided but they both compete internationally and, because their style of riding is actually very similar, whenever Hector does something Patroclus wouldn’t the latter thinks the former is a stupid asshole. So now Patroclus has this little rivalry that makes him grind his teeth.

Anyway, Hector is vaguely aware and thinks he is bigger than that, but quietly feels the same way. They want to kill each other and it is all really embarrassing.

[flaviafulvia]

WIP Wednesday

Ooooooh I almost forgot

———////———

It was a glorious morning. It had to be.

Achilles couldn’t quite know for sure, at least at first. He kept his eyes closed as he awoke, blocking out the sun, but the sounds of the sea were mild, the breeze sweet, and he got to listen to Patroclus pitter-patter around their room. Achilles didn’t need to open his eyes to see what he was doing.

Splash of water? He was washing his face.

A dull thud on the ground? Patroclus was discarding his nightgown.

See? Glorious!

A hushed silence, a change of breathing, and the sound of cloth unfolding? Patroclus was putting on his special tunic.

“The festival for Poseidon is not until tomorrow,” said Achilles. He kept his eyes closed. Patroclus couldn’t go. Achilles had <em>plans</em>.

“Yes, but Priest needs the help. Sweeping and such.”

If he was putting on his tunic he was planning on being there all day.

“Do you need your white tunic for sweeping?”

“I will be in the house of a god; it is nice to look nice.”

Achilles sighed. It was pointless to argue. Patroclus had never been particularly pious, but he was proper, determined to be everything the son of a king should be, even though he was exiled and would never be king himself. And in their lands proper sons and daughters of kings and nobles served the gods like their own people served them. Achilles himself had swept the floors of a temple, chased out small animals, and even once cleaned the pen for sacrificial animals, albeit in the house of Zeus and not Poseidon.

(Years earlier, Achilles had been miffed to see Patroclus drifting towards focusing on a different god than the one his father chose for himself—if they both went to Zeus they could spend more time together—but Achilles decided that Patroclus just liked horses that much. Later, when Patroclus became the chief attendant among the boys, something that would never happen if he served alongside Achilles, he understood.)

Metal clanged on the table as Patroclus stripped off his jewelry. There was a quiet gap in the noise as he took off his necklace. Attendants were to be unadorned except for their youthfulness, as Achilles’s father said, but Patroclus loved jewelry and that was always the last thing off of him. He was almost ready to leave.

The bed sagged as Patroclus sat down, turning Achilles face up towards his. He started playing with Achilles’s hair, blond and straight and so unlike his own. Achilles kept his eyes shut.

“I used to dream about this,” he said.

“Touching my hair?”

“Touching you,” Patroclus responded before stopping, embarrassed. Achilles laughed at the implication but understood. How often had he wanted to sit flush against Patroclus, hold his hand, play with his hair? Achilles had desired Patroclus, deeply, especially as Patroclus did fool around with boys his age where Achilles could hear him, but since consummating their relationship he had enjoyed the physical intimacy that never quite turned sexual.

“I mean—“ said Patroclus, “just being able to play with your hair or take your head into my hands or—“

“I knew what you meant,” said Achilles, opening his eyes as if to emphasize that he briefly got the better of Patroclus.

That was a mistake. They had been back at Phthia and away from Pelion for some months now, and, as much as they both missed their centaur teacher and his wild home, civilization definitely agreed with Patroclus. His hair had recently been cut and Achilles had noticed his dark curls were more even and shiny, as was Patroclus’s skin. Regular meals they didn’t have to catch or grow themselves had put on a layer of softness across his flesh. And, while he had foregone kohl that day, Achilles still saw evidence of careful grooming that was never possible on Pelion; Patroclus’s brows were neat and well-shaped, his nails buffed and without breakage, and his hands and feet scrubbed of most of their callouses.

And of course there was the softness from being in the heated baths every day, letting his pores open up before slathering on lotion and oils. A cold stream could not compare. Patroclus had only splashed his face that morning, but he was still clean from the night before.

“You do look nice,” Achilles said.

“See,” said Patroclus before swooping down to give him a light kiss.

And then he was up and the bed felt emptier than ever.

“Stay for a bit,” said Achilles. As much as he loved non-sexual intimacy, he suddenly wanted quite a bit more than that.

Patroclus was gathering a few small things into a bag. He paused for a moment on bringing a hairbrush.

“And what?” he asked.

“And fool around with me,” Achilles answered.

Patroclus stopped, flustered. He was now holding a hat, and began fiddling with its strings, when he responded “you would have me do that before I visit a god? After I’ve abstained from meat, made my ablutions, and am all ready to go?”

“Yes, absolutely.” Achilles sat up, looking at Patroclus with interest. “Is that a joke?”

“No,” Patroclus said, a familiar line appearing between his eyes. He had that searching look that could only mean one thing.

“Is that not a normal thing to think?” Achilles asked.

“Not quite,” Patroclus said kindly. “It seems like something some people might get off on, but few mortals would dare say it and even fewer dare do it. It seems almost akin to defilement.”

<em>Few mortals.</em> Achilles was indeed like few mortals and every once in a while something like this happened to remind him of that. He suspected it was the godliness in him and that this kind of thinking might be more appropriate for an Olympian, but it seemed so normal to want a piece of Patroclus for himself when he spent so long getting ready to be in the house of another.

“You just look so nice, is all.”

Patroclus shrugged and fastened his hat, taking one last look in the mirror before turning to leave.

“Poseidon isn’t your rival.”

Achilles burrowed back under his blankets. The god certainly felt like one and Achilles had a sinking feeling the god might agree.

[hylian-prosecutor]

Every day is a struggle between my serious deeply ingrained respect for internet safety and the dangerous whimsical urge to keep dropping little hints to who I am and where I live and see if anyone solves it like a little puzzle

[flaviafulvia]

The trick here is to lie and say something spiritually true but factually wrong, and to make it seem like something that happened months ago just happened now or vice versa. If you were somewhere two months ago you are there now. Muss up those timelines.

There was a point where my grandmother was in the hospital (she’s fine!) and my mother visited her very often so I spent a lot of time in the suburbs taking care of her dogs. My coworkers fully thought my suburban bedroom was my city one and vice versa. Also I spent 11/24-1/25 at the Jersey Shore cooling off after the election, not 1/25-3/25 after the inauguration when I kept posting pictures. I’m working remotely now but bike downtown some mornings and post my dad’s old building and the place I took my GREs like I am commuting to it once I am either back home or getting coffee.