Patroclus

• 1. Introduction

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  Patroclus, the Greek hero of the Trojan War, was once described by the ancient writer Philostratus down to the flare of his nostrils. Philostratus gave him an olive complexion, black eyes, fine eyebrows and moderately long hair. He said the hero breathed wide through his nose, the way eager horses do. That is an unusually physical portrait for a figure who appears in myth mostly as a loyal companion at someone else's side. Patroclus was the close friend of Achilles and a major presence in Homer's Iliad. Yet the Iliad never says outright what the two men were to each other. Later authors argued about it, borrowed it, and rewrote it. This documentary asks who Patroclus was, how his life and death shaped the war at Troy, and why a single friendship still prompts so much debate.

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• 2. Glory of the Father

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  Pátroklos is the Ancient Greek form of the name, and it means "glory of his father." It joins patḗr, the word for father, to kléos, the word for glory. Swap the two parts and you get Kleópatros, a close cousin of the name. The feminine version of that name is Cleopatra. English speakers have settled on three different ways to say Patroclus. The Latin stress would normally fall on the first syllable, as it does in Sophocles, but that version is rarely heard. Alexander Pope lengthened the middle o in his translation of Homer, following a convention of Greek and Latin verse, and that stressed o stuck. A third version comes from a mistake. Some speakers treated the second-to-last syllable as closed, which turns the o short. A name that praises a father invites an obvious question about who that father was, and the ancient sources answer it with surprising disagreement.

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• 3. A Contested Family Tree

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  Menoetius was the father of Patroclus, which is why the hero is sometimes called Menoetiades, meaning son of Menoetius. Menoetius was himself the son of Actor, king of Opus in Locris, and of Aegina, daughter of Asopus. His wife is where the sources part ways. Different ancient authors name the mother as Philomela, Polymele, Sthenele or Periopis. Patroclus had one sibling, a sister named Myrto, who became the mother of Eucleia by Heracles. Dares the Phrygian, in a Latin account, offered a character sketch rather than a pedigree. He called Patroclus handsome and powerfully built, with large, lively eyes. He also called him modest, dependable and wise. Those qualities matter, because Patroclus left his father's house as a boy and had to earn his place elsewhere.

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• 4. Exile in Phthia

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  A game of dice ended with a dead child. Patroclus, still a boy, accidentally killed his playmate Clysonymus over the game, and Opus could no longer keep him. Menoetius sent him to Peleus, king of Phthia and father of Achilles. Peleus named the newcomer Achilles's squire, and the two boys grew up side by side. Patroclus became a kind of male role model for Achilles, gentler than his friend and wiser in his counsel. The Iliad tells this early history late, through the ghost of Patroclus, who reminds Achilles of his flight to Peleus's house. Other writers added their own touches. Photius reports that Ptolemy Hephaestion, probably meaning Ptolemy Chennus, said the sea god Poseidon loved Patroclus and taught him to ride horses. A dispute in Laconia adds one more wrinkle. Local tradition said Achilles killed a man named Las while seeking the hand of Helen, daughter of Tyndareus. The geographer Pausanias disagreed, arguing that Patroclus killed Las, because Patroclus, not Achilles, was the suitor.

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• 5. The Day in Armor

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  The Trojans were threatening the Greek ships when Patroclus asked Achilles for permission to lead the Myrmidons into battle. Achilles agreed and lent him the armor he had received from his father, so that Patroclus could pass for him. His instruction was to drive the Trojans back from the ships and then return. Patroclus ignored the second half. He chased the Trojans all the way to the gates of Troy, killing many of them and their allies. Among the dead was Sarpedon, a son of Zeus. Then Apollo took away Patroclus's wits, and the spear of Euphorbos struck him. Hector finished the work by stabbing him in the stomach with a spear. Achilles had stayed out of the fighting until then, and the loss of his friend brought him back into it, with significant Greek victories to follow.

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• 6. Pyre and Urn

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  Hector stripped the armor from the body of Patroclus, and Menelaus and Ajax stood guard over it on the battlefield. Achilles retrieved it, but he would not allow a burial. That changed when the ghost of Patroclus appeared and demanded one, since without burial he could not pass into Hades. Patroclus was cremated on a funeral pyre covered with hair cut by his grieving companions. Cutting hair signaled grief and also marked the separation of the living from the dead, so the heap of hair suggests how well liked he was. The ashes were later said to lie with those of Achilles in a golden urn beside the Hellespont.

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• 7. Lovers or Companions

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  Aeschines, writing about the heroes, argued that no one needed to call their bond romantic, since such a thing "is manifest to such of his hearers as are educated men." Homer himself never describes a sexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. A few later Greek authors read one into the text. Aeschylus and Phaedrus both state that a relationship existed, though they disagree about roles. Aeschylus calls Achilles the erastes, the older partner, while Phaedrus calls him the eromenos, the beloved youth. Plato's Symposium discusses the pair as a model of romantic love. Xenophon's Symposium has Socrates argue that labeling it romantic was inaccurate. Their bond is also said to have inspired Alexander the Great in his close lifelong friendship with Hephaestion. Age complicates the question. In the Iliad, Achilles is the younger man, which fits Dowden's account of the eromenos as a youth in transition and the erastes as an older man who made the same transition recently. Dowden also notes that such relationships often served as a form of initiation. Statius, in the Achilleid, instead says the two were of the same age group or behaved as if they were. William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida takes the romantic reading furthest. In that play, Achilles has grown lazy and is besotted with Patroclus, and other characters grumble that the pair are too busy with each other to fight.

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• 8. Why the Iliad Needs Him

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  Ledbetter, writing in 1993, proposed that Patroclus embodies the compassionate side of Achilles, a man whose rage is named in the first line of the Iliad. He compared two scenes. In Book 1, Thetis comforts her weeping son Achilles. In Book 16, Achilles comforts the weeping Patroclus, using a simile of a young girl tearfully watching her mother. Ledbetter took this to put Patroclus in a subordinate position. The comparison does not prove anything about their ages or rank, however, because the text explicitly says Patroclus is the elder. James Hooker took a different view. He argued that another character could have served as Achilles's confidant, but only Patroclus gives Achilles a worthy reason for his wrath. In Hooker's account, a deep affection is what makes the tragedy profound, because the greater the love, the greater the loss. He rejected the idea that Patroclus is a stand-in for Achilles and saw a counterpart instead. For Hooker, the moment Patroclus pushes the Trojans back makes him a hero in his own right and foreshadows what Achilles himself will do.

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