The Essential Iliad (Hackett Classics)

by Homer

The death of Achilles is expressed symbolically in the death of Patroclus, who represents for Achilles a kind of second self.

Part of what makes heroic combat so breathtaking is this head-on response to mortality. Instead of evading death, heroes make it their own, inflicting it on others and courting it for themselves.

Do lions make peace treaties with men? Do wolves and lambs agree to get along? No, they hate each other to the core, And that’s how it is between you and me. No talk of agreements until one of us Falls and gluts Ares with his blood. (22.287–93)

I don’t care how bell-toned an orator you are, You’re nothing but trash.

That was how Patroclus, like a child [50] Begging for a toy, begged for death.

O Patroclus, I wish to Father Zeus And to Athena and Apollo That all of them, Greeks and Trojans alike, [105] Every last man on Troy’s dusty plain, Were dead, and only you and I were left To rip Ilion down, stone by sacred stone.”

This is the gayest shit i've heard in a long time someone call up the fic writers lmao

But when you made your fourth, demonic charge, Then—did you feel it, Patroclus?—out of the mist, Your death coming to meet you.