anapæstic speech of the chorus, composed of the clansmen of Achilles, who upbraided him for staying idle in his tent while the Achaians suffered at the hands of Hector. Achilles replied with the metaphor of the eagle stricken by an arrow winged from one of his own feathers. Then the embassy of Phœnix arrived, and Patroclus was sent forth to battle. Achilles, meanwhile, engaged in a game of dice; and while he was thus employed Antilochus entered with the news of the death of Patroclus. The next fragment brings the whole scene vividly before our eyes.
"Wail for me, Antilochus, rather than for the dead man—for me, Achilles, who still live." After this, the corpse of Patroclus was brought upon the stage, and the son of Peleus poured forth a lamentation over his friend. The Threnos of Achilles on this occasion was very celebrated among the ancients. One passage of unmeasured passion, which described the love which subsisted between the two heroes, has been quoted, with varieties of reading, by Lucian, Plutarch, and Athenæus.[1] Lucian says: "Achilles, bewailing the death of Patroclus with unhusbanded passion, broke forth into the truth in self-abandonment to woe." Athenæus gives the text as follows:—
"Hadst thou no reverence for the unsullied holiness of thighs, O thou ungrateful for the showers of kisses given."
What we have here chiefly to notice is the change which the tale of Achilles had undergone since Homer.[2] Homer represented Patroclus as older in years than the son of Peleus, but inferior to him in station; nor did he hint which of the friends was the Erastes of the other. That view of their comradeship had not occurred to him. Æschylus makes Achilles the lover; and for this distortion of the Homeric legend he was severely criticised by Plato.[3] At the same time, as the two lines quoted from the Threnos prove, he treated their affection from the point of view of post-Homeric paiderastia.
Sophocles also wrote a play upon the legend of Achilles, which bears for its title Achilles' Loves. Very little is left of this drama; but Hesychius has preserved one phrase which illus-
- ↑ Lucian, Amores; Plutarch, Eroticus; Athenæus, xiii. 602 E.
- ↑ Possibly Æschylus drew his fable from a non-Homeric source, but if so, it is curious that Plato should only refer to Homer.
- ↑ Symph., 180 A. Xenophon, Symph., 8, 31, points out that in Homer Achilles avenged the death of Patroclus, not as his lover, but as his comrade in arms.
