Achilles and Patroclus. Lovers or brothers in arms?

>>24554900 (OP)
Patroclus is the coolest fucking name in Greek mythology.

>>24554900 (OP)
Both.

>>24554900 (OP)
Achilles wants to kill himself when Patroclus died and Patroclus wanted their ashes mixed together. I think they were in love, as was the Gayreek way. If Patroclus was a woman I don't think people would view it as anything but lovers.

>>24554900 (OP)
>Lovers
sounds like left-wing propaganda

>>24554904
>glory to the father
agreed, but Greek names always sound cool as fuck

I am leaving

>>24554923
>left-wing propaganda
Aeschylus, Pindar, Plato, Aeschines, Theocritus, Chariton, Apollonius Rhodius, and Alexander the Great are left wing propaganda?

>tfw no Greek tragedy bf

>It was so epic when Achilles used his spear of +2 lightning to gank the trojans who killed his boyfriend

>>24554992
Saying they were gay is. I’d pinpoint it as jewish historical revisionism if anything but the point still stands. Go back in time and call any of the people you just named a homosexual to their face and they would beat the fuck out of you. Modern people’s obsession with saying influential people in history were gay is so weird. It reminds me of how people anthropomorphize animals.

>>24555180
So if they were described as lovers instead of gay, would that be less of "left wing propaganda" for you?
> I’d pinpoint it as jewish historical revisionism
Those names in the post you're replying to predate Judaism and they believed that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers.

>>24554900 (OP)
They were obviously in love

Why was Ancient Greece so fucking gay? I was told that families would hire guards around their sons being tutored because their tutors were usually pederasts.

Wasn’t there an army where everyone had to have a loyal twink partner at all times?

>>24555237
>Wasn’t there an army where everyone had to have a loyal twink partner at all times?
Isn't that the US army right now?

>>24555237
I’d sign up if that was the case. State mandated femboy twink comrade in arms will heal the world

>>24555262
>Femboy
Being gay is only based if you're attracted to masculinity. You're going to end up in a situation where your attraction to men can't grow with you. You have to let it grow with you

>>24554900 (OP)
They had more than enough respect for each other and I have enough respect for him. leave the labelling to the creeps with the "cock fetishes".

>>24555438
>Being gay is only based if you're attracted to masculinity.
based

>>24554900 (OP)
By the classical period, the institution of pederasty was normal among certain classes, and by a process really of anachronising, Aeschylus in his Myrmidons makes it absolutely explicit that there is a sexual relationship because it's the thighs of Patroclus that Achilles mentions, and that is a key part of homoerotic relationship in the classical notion of pederasty. It's not made explicit at all - not even alluded to - in Homer.

>>24554900 (OP)
There's nothing in the Iliad that suggests they're lovers. They surround themselves in their tent by female sex servants

>>24555478
chatgpt reply

>>24555489
there's no em dash

>>24555489
It's actually a quote from a classicist made before gipiti existed

>>24554900 (OP)
They're fictional with people saying they are, or they aren't, for 2000 years. Just pick what you think makes the most sense. Personally, I lean towards them being lovers.

>>24555509
You make the point well enough in your own reply, people have been speculating for 2000 years (a bit longer really), but the poems been around for 3000. The idea came much later, not from Homer himself.

>>24555529
Yes Homer did not imply that they were lovers, but there is also nothing in there that would imply they are not. The texts mention things such as the deep affection they have for each other, the grief Achilles felt (a grief that even Apollo viewed as excessive), the mixing of ashes, the burial together, the sleeping together in a tent etc. the list goes on and it is not a yes they were lovers, but at the same time it is not a no they were not. As >>24554911 says, if Patroclus was a woman it would be viewed as a romantic relationship. Regardless, they loved each other greatly whether platonically or romantically.

>>24555549
No, Homer did not frame it that way.

If Patroclus were a woman, it might read like a romance. But he’s not, and Homer doesn’t give us any indication to read it that way. That kind of interpretation mainly enters the tradition centuries later, once ideas of pederasty had become part of the cultural fabric. If Homer meant it that way, he absolutely could have said so, eg:

Paris and Helen are clearly lovers. Their relationship is described openly.
Odysseus and Calypso have a sexual relationship, stated outright.
Even Achilles’ relationship with Briseis is shown as possessive and intimate, with clear romantic overtones.

The romantic angle came later, shaped by Classical notions of pederasty - not Homeric ones. Reading it that way now says more about us than it does about the text.

>>24555578
Sometimes, the myth eclipses the man..

>>24555585
Not wrong. But if we’re actually talking about Homer, then we owe it to the text to separate what he wrote from what later readers wished he’d written.

>>24555482
You don't have to have sex to be lovers

What is with the modern propensity to label every close, sincere male relationship as "homoerotic?"

>>24555772
because, you see, everyone was gay back then, akschually

>>24555438
>>24555472
It’s true, though. This whole meme about “you’re gay if you fuck a trap” is not true, since you’re definitely not TRUE gay if you are attracted to femininity and not masculinity. Only TRUE gays go for the masculine.

>>24555772
>plato
>modern

>>24555837
Hey, anon your reading comprehension sucks. Every modern moron loves labeling every old male relationship of brotherhood in any work as "homoerotic" or make a YouTube video where they say "WERE JIM HAWKINS AND JOHN SILVER ACKCHUALLY GAY LOVERS!?!"

>>24555772
Wewuzing by gays to reinforce their worldview

>>24555845
No, you’re implying it’s a modern view to make them lovers. When it isn’t. It’s been a debate for thousands of years.

>>24555857
Nah, it's definitely a modern view. Disingenuous homosexual.

>>24555233
It was the natural way of life in Europe before evil semitic forces brainwashed them into bigotry and fear.

Women were for reproducing men were for building potentially lifelong emotional, intellectual and physical relationships with. We need to bring back pederasty

>>24555881
Was it a modern when Plato said they were lovers 2000 years ago?

>>24555916
Unironically yes. He was retroactively applying a contemporary standard nearly a thousand years after the fact.

>>24554900 (OP)
It was taken as so obvious that they were lovers in antiquity, that the primary debate about their relationship was actually which one was the top, and which one was the bottom. This is an excerpt from Plato's Symposium, where he argues that Achilles must have been the bottom, in contrast to Aeschylus' position that Patroclus must have been the bottom.

>>24555932
I've thought about it and also lean towards achilles being the bottom

>>24554900 (OP)
they wasn't no faggots bruh ong

>>24555941
Homosexual warriors, not faggots

>>24555932
That’s exactly the point - by Plato’s time (Symposium was written ~380 BC), Athenian pederasty was deeply institutionalized. So naturally, they read Achilles and Patroclus through their own cultural lens.
But Homer was writing centuries earlier, in a world without that framework. The fact that later Greeks debated “top or bottom” just shows how far they’d strayed from the original text. Homer didn’t sexualize it. They did.

Whether gays were tolerated really depended on the culture. It wasn’t the same everywhere, and I’m tired of pretending the ancient world was some gay paradise. It wasn’t.

>>24555993
>It wasn’t the same everywhere
We're talking about Ancient Greece, not Ancient Israel. And yes, in Greece it was essentially a gay paradise.

>>24555482
>They surround themselves in their tent by female sex servants
They not only surround themselves, they also have sex with them. It's not like a lot of people have sex in the Iliad either. Others being Paris and possibly Hector.

>>24555988
>Homer didn’t sexualize it
But he didn't rule out sex either. In fact, sex is present everywhere in the subtext. Remember that Homer was writing in the Iron Age about Bronze Age heroes. The extent to their actual relationship probably wasn't widely known, or at least was lost to time. But the circumstances of the events of the stories leads to only one likely explanation, and the Athenians immediately picked up on it. The Athenians may have tried to apply pederasty in their interpretation of the events because of their contemporary culture, when in reality Achilles and Patroclus probably had a pure homosexual relationship (as equal partners), which follows most closely with what is represented in the text. Even though that would have been unusual in Athenian times.

>>24556009
>And yes, in Greece it was essentially a gay paradise.
No it fucking wasn’t. It depended from state to state. Some were accepting and some just weren’t. You can’t expect acceptance to travel quickly in a time like that.

people have called Frodo and Sam's relationship homosexual despite being written not even 200 years ago and by a staunch catholic, it's what it is, your average normgroid can only judge things by the limited verbal categories they are equipped with

>>24556062
No one seriously views Frodo and Sam as homosexual outside of tiktok fujoshis. That’s a ridiculous false equivalent and a stupid comment. When a modern Alexander the Great starts discussing Frodo and Sam as a homosexual relationship, we can discuss this further.

>>24556049
>But he didn't rule out sex either. In fact, sex is present everywhere in the subtext.
You haven't read the Iliad

>>24556049
Homer doesn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to any sexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus - that’s silence, not subtext. Reading that silence as ‘pure homosexual relationship’ is speculation, not textual evidence.

Actually, intimate relationships between older and younger males were quite usual in Classical Athens. So to say a
>pure homosexual relationship (as equal partners)
would have been unusual there overlooks how ingrained and normalised such relationships were in Athenian society.

>>24555764
>You don't have to have sex to be lovers
Faggots have dozens of sexual partners every year. Don't pretend like those faggots supporting this fabrication are any different.
It's the typical fantasy of gay men worshiping masculinity. They hyper masculine, which Achilles embodies, is exactly what they lust after.

>>24556087
>he sleeps with him together in his tent
>Achilles obsession with Patroclus' physical body, fighting over it, not wanting to burn it, etc.
>he grieves over him in the manner of a woman grieving her husband
>a lot of the text describing both of their physical beauty
>also Achilles just generally having a stereotypically "queen"-y personality

Their relationship and greek pederasty transcends the word homosexuality. Sorry jews.

>>24556099
>Homer doesn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to any sexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus - that’s silence, not subtext
We both agree it's not explicit. That doesn't address the very real subtext.
>Reading that silence as ‘pure homosexual relationship’ is speculation
No, I am not reading the silence, but rather all the other context present in the text regarding their relationship which you choose to ignore.
>Actually, intimate relationships between older and younger males were quite usual in Classical Athens
What was usual was a pederastic top and bottom relationship, whereas Achilles and Patroclus were likely engaged in both roles with each other, hence the brotherly descriptions of them rather than one as the dom and the other as the sub.
>would have been unusual there overlooks how ingrained and normalised such relationships were in Athenian society
A relationship where both male partners were involved in giving and receiving would have been taboo, although in reality probably not that unusual.

>>24556116
>he sleeps with him together in his tent
Each with his own slave girl kek.
YOU HAVEN"T READ THE ILIAD

>Achilles obsession with Patroclus' physical body, fighting over it,
Hector wanted to chop Patroclus' head off and display it outside Troy. It was Menelaus who fought over it.
YOU HAVEN'T READ THE ILIAD

>not wanting to burn it, etc.
>he grieves over him in the manner of a woman grieving her husband
You may find this shocking but mourning over the dead body of those you care about is still common in many European cultures.
BUT YOU ARE A FAGGOT THAT ONLY CARES ABOUT HIS OWN ASS

>a lot of the text describing both of their physical beauty
Indeed, Achilles represents the ideal masculine, off course he is beautiful and strong.
NOT DISGUSTING LIKE YOU

>also Achilles just generally having a stereotypically "queen"-y personality
IF YOU SAY SO

>>24556141
You don't think it's gay to watch your bro having sex in your tent every night?

>>24556157
I think you are a massive faggot that has no conception of military expeditions and "tents".

AND WHO OFF COURSE HAS NOT READ THE ILIAD

>>24556169
Just to be clear, others in the Iliad all had separate tents. Achilles and Patroclus chose to bunk together and fuck their slaves in front of each other every night and this is not gay in your opinion?

>>24556141
holy crash out

>>24556197
>Crash out
Zoomer

>>24556130
You're still framing this through a later lens & reading back later Athenian ideas of homosexuality (pederasty, active/passive roles, etc.) into a much earlier epic, when those social frameworks simply didn’t exist in the same way - if at all.

>whereas Achilles and Patroclus were likely engaged in both roles with each other
that’s speculation layered on top of speculation. Homer doesn’t present them in pederastic terms at all - there’s no age gap dynamic, no overt mentorship, no erotised tension. That’s why Classical Athenians reframed the relationship according to their own norms: because Homer didn’t make it explicit, and it had to be made to fit a later worldview.

>A relationship where both male partners were involved in giving and receiving would have been taboo
Achilles and Patroclus don’t fit into that either. Homer doesn’t give us erotic language for their relationship - no seduction, no coupling, no romantic jealousy. Just mythic camaraderie and shared fate.

In short: you’re reading in between lines that aren’t there. The relationship is powerful, intimate, and central to the poem - but not sexual. The silence isn’t subtext; it’s ambiguity. And ambiguity is not a blank cheque for projection.

>>24556062
Don’t get me started on Sauron x Melkor

>>24556312
>Achilles and Patroclus don’t fit into that either. Homer doesn’t give us erotic language for their relationship - no seduction, no coupling, no romantic jealousy. Just mythic camaraderie and shared fate.
Of course he does. Sharing a tent (not out of need mind you, but pure preference), obsessing over his physical body, lamenting him as a woman would, etc, etc. Their fate wasn't shared at all. Achilles was outright given the choice to go home and living to old age. He chose to die instead as a grand romantic gesture. In fact, his wrath with Agamemnon over the taking of his slave Briseis which results in him stubbornly sitting on a beach is contrasted with his flaming erotic passion for Patroclus that stirs him into battle. It's there to show the contrast between his love for Briseis which is built on mainly his own ego and pride with his love for Patroclus which is his true love and erotic passion.

>>24556141
The demonic revisionist globohomo homunculi did NOT like this one

>>24556389
>obsessing over his physical body
we get it, you didn't even read the poem, no need to make the point more clear
literally every other line of battle is people fighting like wolves over the body of the fallen enemy, to despoil it and worse maim it

>>24556396
not him but I think you're being a bit disingenuous about it too, the fight for patroclus' body is an entire book

>>24554900 (OP)
It’s not really up for debate

>>24555180
moron

>>24556396
>And clasp my hand, I beg you, for once you’ve given me to the fire, I shall not return. You and I will never sit apart from our dear friends and talk as we once did, now that mortal fate has consumed me: that fate appointed for me at my birth. You too, godlike Achilles, are doomed to die beneath the walls of Troy. One more thing I ask of you, if you will. Don’t bury my ashes far from yours, Achilles. Let them be as one, just as we were when we grew up together. Menoetius brought me, to your house, a child from Opoeis, because I killed Amphidamus’ son, accidentally, in a foolish quarrel over a game. Peleus, the horseman, welcomed me to his palace, showed me loving care, and made me your squire. So let one urn enclose our ashes, the golden urn your royal mother gave you.’
Fleet-footed Achilles answered: ‘Why, when you are here, dear heart, do you come only to ask such things? I will see to it all, just as you wish, but now come closer, so that, if only for a moment, we might clasp our arms round one another, and sate ourselves with sad lament.’
So saying, he stretched out his hands in vain. The spirit vanished like smoke beneath the earth, gibbering faintly. Achilles sprang up in turmoil, and beat his hands together, crying sadly: ‘There now! Even in Hades’ House something of us survives, spirit and semblance, but no power of response: for all night long poor Patroclus’ shade, his very likeness, stood over me, weeping, lamenting, saying what I must do.’
Absolutely no gay subtext here. Just two homies commingling their ashes like complete hetero bros.

>>24556415
no shit, it's almost like the book is focused on some characters! I think Priam too wanted to fuck Hector, given how the poem focuses on getting his body back

>>24556389
>Achilles was outright given the choice to go home and living to old age. He chose to die instead as a grand romantic gesture.
The choice was reiterated in context of Briseis but had otherwise been made long before. If you‘d read the Iliad (which you haven‘t) you‘d be aware that the decision to die was a matter of Kleos which permeates the entire work and not a "grand romantic gesture.“ Lol. Lmao.

>>24556428
I'm sorry you never had anything close to a friendship and all your interactions with other people are either sexual or ephemeral

>"friends" with a coworker who was about 30 years older than me maybe
>We go to the bar one weekend during the winter
>He gets absolutely fucking hammered, can't even stay on his feet because it's been snowing all week, slippery frozen
>Keeps falling on his bum ass, can't walk home
>He's a scrawny heavy smoker, will probably freeze to death if I leave him there
>Physically drag his drunk ass the multiple blocks back to his apartment
>He keeps calling me a fucking faggot the entire way back, laughing
>Managed to get him home safe
>He pisses on the floor in his apartment
>Keeps calling me a gay faggot until he passes out because I'm apparently gay for bodily dragging his dumb ass home

Sometimes I think I should have just fucking left him there laying in the snow but I know I never would have forgiven myself had I done that.

I haven't talked to him in a couple years now since we went to different jobs, he totally switched up on me after that night. I think he actually hated me for dragging his ass home.

>>24556444
He was trying to goad you into fucking him. He resents you because you rejected his invitation, not because you saved his life.

>>24556442
I'm sorry you never had sex or touched grass

>>24556455
Deranged faggot. He did however bring over this dog of a woman around his age one time and it was almost like he wanted me to tag team her with him.

I got so fucking weirded out I had to fucking leave when we were supposed to smoke pot and watch movies. He had even made the note to me "she's a redhead" because I think he remembered that somewhere along the line I had said I dug redheads.

People are fucking weird.

>>24556455
Alcibiades moment

>>24556141
Forget it bro, the entire ancient world all happened at once. Views didn't change, Athenians liked to molest little boys so some characters from the bronze age were getting all village people in their tent.

>>24554900 (OP)
just buddies

>>24555472
Not this.
>>24555835
Except traps aren't feminine. They're hypermasculine. The sharp, angular features, the dark, defined shadows..they're beautiful..not like feminine bodies which are sort of, porcine and distended..

>>24554900 (OP)
They were lovers, but probably bisexual ones

>>24554900 (OP)
The answer to this question is that sometimes the Myth eclipses the Man. The story is more important than whatever "facts" there might have ever been about this situation, which we will never know. They're gay because we like it.

>>24554911
>If Patroclus was a woman
Patroclus was the older man, while Achilles was the younger and thus more twinkish male (he has been described as beautiful, beardless, and a fantastic crossdresser) who was devoted solely to him.
Achilles would have been a bottom, thus the more effeminate of the two.

>but le hecking plato therefore gay

>>24554900 (OP)
Modern opinion of them probably leans more in favour of lovers. The original texts are vague with their relationship and don't imply they are, but they also do not imply they aren't. What is clear is that there was love between them both.

>>24554904
Diomedes name mogs

>>24556062
>Normgroid

Im adding this to my vocabulary

>>24557938
Diomedes, Ajax, Odysseus, Agamemnon and the list goes on. Greek names sound so cool

>>24554900 (OP)
is picrel the reason why so many people view them as lovers now?

>>24554900 (OP)
It's hard to put it in modern terms because the concept of being 'gay' didn't exist.
You were always heterosexual, you had a primary wife and some people meddled in homosexuality as an extra if they wanted to.

Achilles was married with a son in a loving relationship. He was perfectly within his rights at the time to play around with other lovers (which he does with female slaves during the Trojan war).
If he had a relationship with Patroclus, even a sexual one, his love was always primarily with his wife and child as per Greek custom and he says as much in the Odyssey.

People get confused these days because the word love is attributed too much to romantic feelings. Achilles could love Patroclus as a friend very strongly and weep over his death, but it still doesn't necessarily mean he was his actual lover and probably wasn't intended to be.

>>24559175
>he says as much in the Odyssey
There is no mention of Achilles having a wife and child in Homer’s works.
That's a much later invention.

>>24558821
no i'm pretty sure it's picrel

>>24556116
>>also Achilles just generally having a stereotypically "queen"-y personality

Log out anon, you're done.

>>24556428
I'm not just saying this to be flippant but this doesn't really read all that gay to me at all.
This just reads like two friends who love each other deeply and are joined at the hip, have known each other since they were young children and are lamenting over the coming end.
You can definitely make it sound gay if you want but if you can't recognise a strong friendship either that is sad.

>>24557938
Diomedes mogged every other character for over half of the Illiad.

>>24559252
one l

>>24559199
To be fair it wasn't that long after that the story about his son and legacy was written so it's still more credible than modern writings. He was married with a kid long before he was ever called 'gay'.

>>24559286
to clarify, the Iliad and Odyssey don’t mention him having a wife or child at all. Not sure where you got the notion that he says it in the Odyssey. Deidamia shows up in much later traditions, centuries after.

>>24559268
The Illin‘-ad

>>24559199
>That's a much later invention.
Unless you care to dispute the only source we have in them, the iliupursis and the nostoi both feature neoptolemus as a character.

>>24554900 (OP)
>>24556141

Everyone here is being a dumbass, (especially the READ THE BOOK bros) so it's time to supply some historical context that's obviously been overlooked.

The Iliad did not begin as a written text, but an oral tradition. Some have even argued that Homer is not even the name of a person, but the word for an ancient bardic profession. Additionally, any good literary historian will tell you different parts were added at different times, some centuries apart.

The nature of their relationship, classically, probably depended on the teller. There were almost certainly tellers who intended them to read as romantic partners whose additions survive in the modern text, in the same way more fraternal interpretations probably do as well. Arguments about "whether they were meant to read that way" are stupid for precisely that reason, even if we're going to set aside widely accepted literary critique principles such as the death of the author.

>>24554900 (OP)
Show me in the text where it states that they are lovers.

>>24555578
based reader

>>24560000
Actual based reader.

>>24554992
Yes

>>24560205
Sounds like a good excuse not to study history. Have fun with that

There's something genuinely demonic about Song of Achilles and the praise surrounding it. Some highly educated white liberal woman takes the most celebrated literary work in Western culture, subtly scores all the timeless elements that have secured its reverence in the collective consciousness, and instead focuses on the artifical beauty of political revisionism. The critics are in on it of course, and I'm not sure if these people actually lack the ability to appreciate great literature and thus rely on-virtue signaling and consensus to dictate their tastes, or if they're deliberate subverters. Or if I'm delusional. Either way, it appears very insidious and, again, demonic. [Spoiler] I haven't read it btw [/spoiler]

>>24560209
Oh did you mention a historian among your list of populist demagogues?

Achilles is extremely emotional during the entire iliad, like a woman

>>24560265
Didn’t Plato say he was the bottom out of the two? Achilles confirmed emotional fem

>>24560000
Imagine kicking the door down with 'everyone here is a dumbass,' just to drop the bomb of ... the Wikipedia intro paragraph. The Iliad was oral. The Homeric question. Everyone knows.

>Some have even argued that Homer is not even the name of a person, but the word for an ancient bardic profession.
doesn't hold water.

Your whole point seems set up just to avoid dealing with the Iliad on literary terms.
>different parts were added at different times so who knows what it means
the text still exists, and we can still analyse what’s there.

>>24560617
>everyone knows
Evidently not. This thread is full of people arguing the historic context of specific details of a text composed over hundreds of years, and then received from a middle ages transcription.

I do, however, agree with you on the point that we can still argue on the text we did inherit; its historicity being commented on when useful, but without being overly reliant on it.
Now, let's actually examine the text and subsequent arguments revolving around it. The main arguments for the relationship being romantic are the acknowledgement that Briseis' grief for Achilles and Achilles' for Patroclus are mirrors, as well as Achilles' grief being fairly openly described as being "like someone mourning their wife."
From this, we can fairly safely assert that their relationship is at least meant to read as "romantic-like."
This opens a whole can of worms, primarily "why describe a relationship that's romantic as being 'like a romance?' Personally, I actually fall on the side of this meaning that it's not romantic, as there's not much of a reason to try and hide behind "romantic-like" if there's actual romance. That said, we don't have any explicit homosexuality in the book to cross compare it to, and it's naive to assume homo and hetero love would be treated the same way in classical society, even if we (rightly, imo) assume homophobia wasn't a factor.
Additionally, many have argued that they did have a romantic relationship, just not an intimately sexual one. While I find this a little more convincing, it's worth mentioning that the idea that male-male relationships are inherently more intellectual and less focused on the physical is a philosophy first described later, but again we veer a little to close to over-historicization for comfort.

Tl;dr, I probably ultimately stand on the platonic reading if the text is strictly adhered to, but to deny with such extreme certainty that there are convincing romantic readings of it is asinine.

>>24555196
>Those names in the post you're replying to predate Judaism

They don't. Homer doesn't even. But they do predate any significant Jewish interaction with the Greeks.

It's a stupid point anyhow because by "Jewish," Anon obviously means modern leftism, but the ancient Hebrews were far more antagonistic towards homosexuality than the Greeks or other Meds.

>>24560816
That's misleading. The most authoritative manuscript is from the 10th century, but it’s based on a text that had been stable since at least the 6th century BC.

>we can fairly safely assert that their relationship is at least meant to read as "romantic-like."
We can’t fairly safely assert that at all. Briseis mourns Patroclus, not Achilles.
The text never describes Achilles and Patroclus engaging in romantic behaviour. What does 'romantic-like' even mean here? Emotionally intense? Glaucus weeps and prays to Apollo to help him defend Sarpedon’s body, should we take another look at those two heroes?

Hector and Andromache, by contrast, are romantic - and Homer makes the difference clear: their parting scene is domestic, tender, full of tactile emotion, a family unit. A and P don't share this register.

>naive to assume homo and hetero love would be treated the same way in classical society
The Iliad is an Archaic poem, not Classical. The Classical period actually gives us lots of evidence for how same-sex relationships were treated.

If it’s asinine to doubt a romantic reading, what does that make Homer’s own audience, who never read it that way? They overwhelmingly read the relationship as intense friendship or loyalty. Until the Classical period, there’s no evidence that the relationship was interpreted sexually or romantically.

>>24554992
>>24555932
>>24555988
>>24560413
It was the character of Phædrus, not Plato, who spoke about them. Are we suppose to believe that the other speeches are Plato’s beliefs?

>>24554992
Yes, only Xenophon was the true based Greek

I wonder if there was an adaption of the Iliad like there is for the Odyssey would the director go for it or not. I can see it being 50/50

>>24561624
know what i was thinking about recently? nothing happens in the iliad.

no trojan horse
achilles doesn't die
no judgement of paris
no helen stolen

all the pop culture ideas about troy ... don't happen inside homer's greatest epic.

>>24561700
it's a psychological story about honour, what makes a man great, destiny and gay love. Odyssey is the more action filled story but Illad is the story of humans being humans.

>>24561719
not quite. what it's about is told in the first line. the wrath of achilles. it starts with that slight against him and ends with his moment of forgiveness towards priam.