The old king Nestor, who recruited Achilles and Patroclus to Agamemnon’s cause in the war, recalls Patroclus’s father telling him to give Achilles “sound advice, guide him, even in battle” (XI 941). Patroclus, for his part, is evidently comfortable with the characterization of himself as advice-giver to Achilles. Yet through this point in the Iliad, there is no scene in which we see Patroclus actually offering Achilles advice. In fact, apart from hanging out in the company of Achilles—that is, simply being there—what we see Patroclus doing is exactly what Achilles tells him to do.
Patroclus is older than Achilles—a detail that runs somewhat counter to the impression of Patroclus as more or less Achilles’s pet. In their youth, Patroclus perhaps played the role of an older brother to Achilles: role model and sparring partner. Yet there is no lingering trace of such a role depicted in the Iliad. Later Greeks and modern critics alike have speculated about a homoerotic attachment as an explanation for the depth of Achilles’s sentiment, notwithstanding the absence of a direct textual basis for such a conclusion.
What we have in Patroclus, in the end, is the slightly older best friend and amiable constant companion to a man superior to himself in all respects, but evidently not above the need or desire or wish for such companionship and friendship: Even a great hero, “best of the Achaeans,” wants a great friend.
Why Patroclus? We still know little. It’s possible that in the Iliad (in Hamlet as well, for that matter), the absence of the objective correlative for great emotion—notwithstanding Eliot’s judgment of artistic failure—is a deliberate attempt on the part of the author to draw our attention to something. We do not ultimately know why Achilles is so attached to Patroclus. Achilles may or may not himself be able to articulate an explanation, let alone one we would find adequate. We confront, therefore, the bare fact of the greatest warrior’s greatest friend, and we must not rationalize it or explain it away, but take it seriously on its own terms.
It’s not until Patroclus is dead at the hand of Hector that Achilles definitively chooses to stay at Troy, thus exposing himself to the inevitability of dying young in accordance with the second of the two possible paths before him. Achilles laments to his mother:
. . . “My dear comrade’s dead—
Patroclus—the man I loved beyond all other comrades,
loved as my own life—I’ve lost him— . . .
. . . the dearest life I know.” (XVIII 94–96, 136)
To put it perfectly bluntly, if Achilles, the greatest warrior, says Patroclus is worth the sacrifice of the life of the greatest warrior—not even to save Patroclus, mind you, but simply to avenge his death—then who are you to disagree? Achilles does not owe you an account. He, “great in his greatness,” has made his decision.
Patroclus gets himself killed as a result of a scheme to try to draw Achilles out of his tent, where he has been brooding over Agamemnon’s slight, and back into the fight, which has been going badly in his absence. Patroclus, Achilles has agreed, will lead the Myrmidon army into battle wearing Achilles’s armor. But Achilles has admonished Patroclus that if the tide of battle turns in their favor, Patroclus must not pursue the retreating Trojans back to their city walls. Achilles frankly tells Patroclus that if Patroclus advances on Troy without him, “You will only make my glory that much less . . .” (XVI 105). The terms of the friendship between Achilles and Patroclus belong to Achilles to set.
Addressing Patroclus on the eve of battle, he concludes his speech with an appeal to the gods that is extraordinarily apocalyptic:
“not one of these Trojans could flee his death, not one,
no Argive either, but we [Achilles and Patroclus] could stride from the slaughter
so we could bring Troy’s hallowed crown of towers
toppling down around us—you and I alone!” (XVI 116–119)
The chilling vision Achilles conjures is of himself and his comrade the conquering sole survivors striding out of fields of the Trojan and Argive dead (Achilles and Patroclus are Myrmidons, not Argives). Achilles has spoken of his honor and glory as things he values highly, and he has absented himself from battle because of an insult. But there is no acclaim to be discerned in his fantasy-vision here; no one is left to take in the destruction of Troy but Patroclus and himself. It is not for the acclaim of the Achaeans that Achilles will fight, but for himself, with his comrade at his side. Achilles proffers a vision of a perfected glory, enjoyed solely by himself and his friend, that requires nothing of others. The dead have no opinions. Achilles and his friend are ultimately the only ones worthy of apprehending the greatness of Achilles—and Patroclus for no reason other than that Achilles has chosen him. Everyone else is expendable.
The rampaging Patroclus does indeed succeed in turning back the Trojan attack. But he continues to advance on Troy. He does not do as Achilles told him. And he dies at the hand of Hector. His last words are of Achilles, an admonition to Hector that Achilles will cut Hector down in turn. Patroclus believes his own death will bring Achilles into the battle. He is right.
Achilles, back in his tent, is full of foreboding. He has seen the tide of battle turn twice: first, against the Trojans, at the eleventh hour, as they were on the verge of burning the Argive ships, thanks presumably to Patroclus; now, alarmingly, back against the Achaeans.
Moments later, when word arrives that his fears are justified, Achilles is devastated. Homer depicts him befouling himself with dirt and ash, pulling out his hair, weeping, crying out in anguish. Achilles is tops in grief as well. His mother the goddess comes to him, and he tells her that she too will know “unending sorrows” (XVIII 102), for he is determined to kill Hector—setting in motion the course that will inevitably result, by the prophecy, in Achilles dying young.
The apocalyptic vision Achilles proffered—he and Patroclus alone standing among the Argive and Trojan dead as the towers of Troy crumble—is now impossible. With Patroclus dead, Achilles’s affinity for the human is gone. His grievance with Agamemnon is now meaningless. Achilles desires only two things of the human world: First, he wants revenge, which he will soon exact in his climactic rampage by the pitiless killing of Trojan warriors, culminating in his pursuit of Hector, Hector’s death at his hands, and the desecration of Hector’s corpse, which Achilles takes back with him to the Myrmidon camp. Second, since he knows he will soon die, he wants his bones buried with those of Patroclus, for whom he has arranged an elaborate funeral, including the ghastly slaughter of twelve captive Trojans next to the pyre. Once he avenges Patroclus, it is only his mortality that continues to bind him to the human world.
Priam, the Trojan king, steals into the Myrmidon camp to beg for the return of his son’s body to mount a proper funeral. Achilles agrees, expressing some sympathy for the Trojan king’s loss. But it is not the human quality of the appeal from Priam that is decisive in persuading Achilles to give back the body. Rather, it is because Zeus himself has made clear to Achilles that the god-king himself wants Achilles to return Hector’s body to Priam. A request grounded in common human affinity would mean nothing to Achilles by this point. But when a god asks something of him, he can respond as a peer.
Though the Iliad concludes with the Trojans burying Hector, Homer is not altogether done with Achilles. He turns up again in the Odyssey, the story of the wily Ithacan king Odysseus’s complicated journey home following the sack of Troy. Odysseus spins a tale about a visit he paid to the underworld, where he encounters (among others) the shades of a number of illustrious figures from the Trojan War.
Circe, a goddess with whom Odysseus has been shacking up for a year, has directed Odysseus to go to the underworld to consult on his destiny with the ghost of Tiresias, the great seer of Thebes. Odysseus is to make a blood sacrifice; once Tiresias and the other shades drink from it, they will be able to talk to him. Circe describes Tiresias as “the great blind prophet whose mind remains unshaken” (X 542) even after death. He is unique in this regard. She notes chillingly, “The rest of the dead are empty, flitting shades” (X 545).
The underworld is a deeply ambiguous place in Homer’s telling.