*wakes up in a cold sweat* Philtatos.
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@phi-lat-os
*wakes up in a cold sweat* Philtatos.
If there's any character in this world who suffers from literary Ken-ification it's Patroclus. Especially in the zeitgeist of today (thanks tsoa), it's always Achilles AND Patroclus, never just Patroclus. Who is he? Why does he exist? He is Achilles' boyfriend! What's his job? Death! In the sense that he just. Dies. That's just his job now. Death. Death and Achilles' boyfriend. That's it.
I read the thing
I am a changed woman. Sorry for even making this post when Victor Hugo said it 150ish years before me
I would know him in death, at the end of the world
"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.
yoo imma fight a river god
....the Iliad doesn’t have anything explicit, or even implicit, about our heroes having sex. Patroclus and Achilles sleep in the same tent, but the narrator tells us that each of the men has an enslaved woman at his side. I felt I had to respond to the reader’s possible expectations and possible disappointment in two ways. One was to discuss the Patrochilles relationship fairly extensively in the introduction and notes, and make clear the ways that it’s taken absolutely seriously, and is at the emotional heart of Achilles’ narrative arc. In the introduction, I also discuss the fact that the Iliad doesn’t treat sex as a measure of closeness or love—so the fact that the poem doesn’t tell us that Achilles and Patroclus had sex is in no way a sign that they’re less than everything to each other. The characters who do have sex in the Iliad—Helen and Paris, Hera and Zeus, and various warriors with the enslaved women whom they regularly rape—are not exactly doing so out of “love.”
Within the translation itself, I knew that I had to convey the profound intimacy and love of Achilles and Patroclus; the reader or listener has to understand on a deep emotional level that Patroclus is Achilles’ person, and that without him, he is all but dead himself—and he also knows that his death is at least partly his own fault. You, the reader or listener, should feel his devastation.
“My friend Patroclus, whom I loved, is dead.
I loved him more than any other comrade.
I loved him like my head, my life, myself.
I lost him, killed him…. “
By the time you get to Book 18, if you don’t feel the full horror of that moment with your whole being, I’ve failed.
Excerpt from Enduring Epics: Emily Wilson and Madeline Miller on Breathing New Life Into Ancient Classics on Literary Hub
little sketch
wanted to see them side by side
sing, o muse, of the rage of achilles
“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”-
Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles⚱️☀️✨ My piece for the most recent @ourfavoritescene_zine ! One of my favorite books and a piece I’m very proud of 😭 thank you to everyone who bought a copy, contributed art or just shared the info around ! I love getting to be part of these and help raise for charity 🙌✨ can’t wait for the next one ☺️
@fictiondaily event 1: minimalistic
The Song of Achilles by Madelline Miller
I enjoy drawing this bitter sea nymph
Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
Patrochilles as Maurice (1987)
Achilles.
“achiles and patroclus were great friends” my brother in christ achilles had their ashes mixed together