"The Homeric narrator does not make the common modern assumption that the closest and most important relationships must be sexual and does not assume any particular connection between sex and intimacy. The most detailed sex scene in The Iliad — the vivid comic episode in Book 14 where Hera seduces Zeus to distract him from battle with a solid nap afterwards — shows how sex can be weaponized. Sex between Hera and Zeus measures their distance, not their closeness. We glimpse, in the brief sex scene in Book 3 between the impassioned Paris and the reluctant Helen, that sex can be both nonconsensual and anticlimactic; the buildup is full of drama and extraordinarily momentous (in that this scene serves as a replay of the original abduction of Helen), but the actual sex is formulaic and finished in a single line. The Iliad marks out its areas of interest, in the public sphere, communities, and warfare, and its relative lack of interest in the spheres presided over by Aphrodite, the weakest and most ridiculous deity on the battlefield. The marginalization of sexual desire (erōs) as a topic for poetry is part of The Iliad’s definition of its own generic identity, with its focus on grand, mythical wars, gods, heroes, and mortality — in contrast to the kinds of archaic Greek lyric poetry that focused on desire, love, marriage, or pleasure, of which we have extant examples in the fragmentary poems of Sappho, Alcaeus, and Mimnermus...
In the most extreme moments of his grief for his most beloved person, Achilles presents Patroclus not as his child, parent, or wife, but as himself.
The ultimate form of love is to see no difference between the self and the beloved. Patroclus’ journey into battle wearing the armor of Achilles transforms him into his friend, in the eyes of the Trojans. He becomes Achilles also, tragically, in his violent death before the walls of Troy, killed by Trojans through the help of Apollo, just as Achilles soon will be. Once Patroclus is dead, Achilles tries to transform himself into his dead friend, by rolling in the dust and, like a dead man, abstaining from food, sleep, or sex. He anticipates joining Patroclus again, and becoming indistinguishable from him in death, when their bones are together in one jar."
- Emily Wilson, from the introduction to her translation of The Iliad, 2023.
pixelskylines
discoholicmusic
kaledo-art
origamiaround
romaincrisis
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
