The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all. The sudden swoop of my stomach, the coursing anger. I was like a fish eyeing the hook.

“Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost.”

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?” “Perhaps,” Achilles admitted. I listened and did not speak. Achilles’ eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know it in dark or disguise, I told myself. I would know it even in madness.

“I wish I had known,” I said the first day, when he had showed it to me. “I almost did not come, because I did not want to leave it.” He smiled. “Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere.”

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.

We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

He paused now, considering. I loved this about him. No matter how many times I had asked, he answered me as if it were the first time.

His eyes opened. “Name one hero who was happy.” I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason’s children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus’ back. “You can’t.” He was sitting up now, leaning forward. “I can’t.” “I know. They never let you be famous and happy.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you a secret.” “Tell me.” I loved it when he was like this. “I’m going to be the first.” He took my palm and held it to his. “Swear it.”

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

“I wish I had your mother’s lyre,” he said. “Me too.” But it was in Phthia, left behind with everything else. We were silent a moment, remembering the sweetness of its strings.

Our people reserved their ugliest names for men who acted like women; lives were lost over such insults.

Who was he if not miraculous and radiant? Who was he if not destined for fame? “I would not care,” I said. The words scrabbled from my mouth. “Whatever you became. It would not matter to me. We would be together.” “I know,” he said quietly, but did not look at me. He knew, but it was not enough.

When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.

“Will you come with me?” he asked. The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”

“She wishes to raise him herself. She—” Achilles faltered before the look on the old man’s face. “The child will be a boy, she says. When he is weaned, she will claim him.” Silence. Then Lycomedes closed his eyes. I knew he was thinking of his daughter, arms empty of both husband and child. “I wish you had never come,” he said.

Thetis is a bitchhhhhh

A marriage for love, rare as cedars from the East. It almost made me want to like him. But I had seen his smiles too often now.

“See?” Odysseus shook his head. “Sour.” Achilles laughed, delighted by them both. He seemed to have forgiven their part in his unmasking, and all that came after.

I watched him hang on the other man’s words. He is too trusting. But I would not be the raven on his shoulder all the time, predicting gloom.

Odysseus smiled in return, teeth white against his dark beard. “Excellent. One tent’s enough, I hope? I’ve heard that you prefer to share. Rooms and bedrolls both, they say.” Heat and shock rushed through my face. Beside me, I heard Achilles’ breath stop. “Come now, there’s no need for shame—it’s a common enough thing among boys.” He scratched his jaw, contemplated. “Though you’re not really boys any longer. How old are you?”

As Odysseus said, many boys took each other for lovers. But such things were given up as they grew older, unless it was with slaves or hired boys. Our men liked conquest; they did not trust a man who was conquered himself.

“Your honor could be darkened by it.” “Then it is darkened.” His jaw shot forward, stubborn. “They are fools if they let my glory rise or fall on this.” “But Odysseus—” His eyes, green as spring leaves, met mine. “Patroclus. I have given enough to them. I will not give them this.”

His success had made him proud, and having bested all men who came before him, he sought next to best the gods themselves. Not with weapons, for no man may match the gods in battle. But in trickery. He wished to prove that the gods do not know all, as they say they do. “So he called his son to him, Pelops, and asked him if he wanted to help his father. ‘Of course,’ Pelops said. His father smiled and drew his sword. With a single blow he slit his son’s throat clean across. He carved the body into careful pieces and spitted them over the fire.”

“When the boy was cooked, Tantalus called to his father Zeus on Olympus. ‘Father!’ he said. ‘I have prepared a feast to honor you and all your kin. Hurry, for the meat is tender still, and fresh.’ The gods love such feasting and came quickly to Tantalus’ hall. But when they arrived, the smell of the cooking meat, normally so dear, seemed to choke them. At once Zeus knew what had been done. He seized Tantalus by the legs and threw him into Tartarus, to suffer his eternal punishment.”

“Zeus then drew the pieces of the boy back together and breathed a second life into him. Pelops, though only a boy, became king of Mycenae. He was a good king, distinguished in piety and wisdom, yet many miseries afflicted his reign. Some said that the gods had cursed Tantalus’ line, condemning them all to violence and disaster. Pelops’ sons, Atreus and Thyestes, were born with their grandfather’s ambition, and their crimes were dark and bloody, as his had been.

“There is this, too.” His hand was ceaseless now. “I know I have told you of this.” I closed my eyes. “Tell me again,” I said.

ACHILLES GOT RIZZ

He stirs and the air stirs with him, bearing the musk-sweet smell of his body. I think: This is what I will miss. I think: I will kill myself rather than miss it. I think: How long do we have?

He would be expected to know them all, their names and armor and stories. He no longer belongs to me alone.

Then the girl stumbled. I remember Achilles frowning. I remember him shift, to catch her. But she wasn’t falling. She was being dragged backwards, to the altar behind her. No one had seen Diomedes move, but his hand was on her now, huge against her slender collarbone, bearing her down to the stone surface. She was too shocked to struggle, to know even what was happening. Agamemnon yanked something from his belt. It flashed in the sun as he swung it. The knife’s edge fell onto her throat, and blood spurted over the altar, spilled down her dress. She choked, tried to speak, could not. Her body thrashed and writhed, but the hands of the king pinned her down. At last her struggles grew weaker, her kicking less; at last she lay still. Blood slicked Agamemnon’s hands. He spoke into the silence: “The goddess is appeased.”

WTF

Wind. The wind has come. Jaws unclenched, and muscles loosened. The goddess is appeased.

Dude sacrificed his daughter for some wind smh

You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”

I reached for his hand and took it. “I have no need to forgive you. You cannot offend me.”

And I wanted to be able to listen, to digest the bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and make him Achilles again.

Protroclus losing his man to war :,(

Agamemnon named himself first and Achilles second. I was surprised that Achilles only shrugged. “Everyone knows I am better. This only makes Agamemnon look greedy.” He was right, of course. And it made it all the sweeter when the men cheered for us, tottering beneath our pile of treasure, and not for Agamemnon. Only his own Mycenaeans applauded him.

Lolol fuck Agamemnon

“So which of the suitors would you have picked?” I shoved him, and he laughed.

Silly Achilles with the jokes

Except for the time she turned and saw me. Her face twisted in disgust, and her lips pulled back from her teeth. She hissed like a snake, and vanished.

You Jealous mommy ??

I never tried to get closer to him, and neither did Achilles, who carefully turned from his glimpsed figure to face other Trojans, to wade off to other shoals. Afterwards, when Agamemnon would ask him when he would confront the prince of Troy, he would smile his most guileless, maddening smile. “What has Hector ever done to me?”

“I’m sure you’re right. After all, Hector hasn’t done anything to you.” He smiled then, as I had hoped he would. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve heard that.”

Hehehaha

“It is strange,” he said. “I have always said that Hector’s done nothing to offend me. But he cannot say the same, now.”

“Is this how a man begs? You are lucky I do not kill you where you stand. I am this army’s commander,” he spat. “And you have no leave to speak before my men. Here is your answer: no. There will be no ransom. She is my prize, and I will not give her up now or ever. Not for this trash, or any other you can bring.” His fingers clenched, only inches from the priest’s throat. “You will depart now, and let me not ever catch you in my camps again, priest, or even your garlands will not save you.”

Can someone kill Agamemnon already

Those at the end of the beach said that he was crying out and shaking his staff at the sky. That night, slipping among us like a snake, quick and silent and flickering, the plague began.

YAASSSSS CURSE THEM

Hector’s eyes are wide, but he will run no longer. He says, “Grant me this. Give my body to my family, when you have killed me.” Achilles makes a sound like choking. “There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.” His spearpoint flies in a dark whirlwind, bright as the evening-star, to catch the hollow at Hector’s throat.

Savage

“You have triumphed today, Achilles,” Agamemnon says. “Bathe and rest yourself, and then we shall feast in your honor.” “I will have no feast.” He pushes through them, dragging Hector after.

:(

For the first time since my death, he falls into a fitful, trembling sleep. Achilles. I cannot bear to see you grieving. His limbs twitch and shudder. Give us both peace. Burn me and bury me. I will wait for you among the shades. I will— But already he is waking. “Patroclus! Wait! I am here!” He shakes the body beside him. When I do not answer, he weeps again.

:,(

“He will come, and Troy will fall. The city cannot be taken without him, the Fates say.” Her face glows. Achilles stares. “You would bring him here?” “He is the next Aristos Achaion.” “I am not dead yet.” “You may as well be.” The words are a lash. “Do you know what I have borne to make you great? And now you would destroy it for this?” She points at my festering body, her face tight with disgust. “I am done. There is no more I can do to save you.” Her black eyes seem to contract, like dying stars. “I am glad that he is dead,” she says. It is the last thing she will ever say to him.

BITCHHHHHHH

The next day he carries me to the pyre. Briseis and the Myrmidons watch as he places me on the wood and strikes the flint. The flames surround me, and I feel myself slipping further from life, thinning to only the faintest shiver in the air. I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest. He collects my ashes himself, though this is a woman’s duty. He puts them in a golden urn, the finest in our camp, and turns to the watching Greeks. “When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.”

Achilles smiles as his face strikes the earth.

Peace atlast

Thetis, her spine straight, black hair loose and snaky in the wind.

Bitch

he is the one who kills Priam. He is the one who hunts down Hector’s wife, Andromache, hiding in a cellar with her son. He plucks the child from her arms and dashes his head against the stone of the walls, so hard the skull shatters like a rotted fruit. Even Agamemnon blanched when he heard.

WTF

achilles, it reads. And beside it, patroclus. “Go,” she says. “He waits for you.” 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 the sun.

AWWWWW

Achilles’ most famous myth—his fatally vulnerable heel—is actually a very late story. In the Iliad and Odyssey Achilles isn’t invincible, just extraordinarily gifted in battle. But in the years after Homer, myths began popping up to explain and elaborate upon Achilles’ seeming invincibility. In one popular version, the goddess Thetis dips Achilles in the river Styx to try to make him immortal; it works, everywhere but the place on his heel where she holds him. Since the Iliad and Odyssey were my primary sources of inspiration, and since their interpretation seemed more realistic, I chose to follow the older tradition.