Patroclus & Achilles

Book 16 begins with a condensed version of the Embassy to Achilles from Book 9. Instead of three picked envoys sent by Agamemnon, however, the “embassy” consists only of Patroclus. The latter’s argument closely mirrors that of Ajax’s from Book 9 if his manner does not:

The fact that Achilles feels pity in this encounter is in stark contrast to Book 9 wherein Ajax condemned Achilles as “pitiless.” Pity is deployed throughout the Iliad as a counteragent or antidote for rage because they engender opposite actions. Anger moves one to harm or do violence to another, while pity moves one to give aid to or succor another. By conspicuously noting Achilles’ pity for Patroclus, the poem signals a meaningful shift in Achilles’ attitude from Book 9.

Patroclus begins his plea to bring Achilles back into the fray by listing all the Greek warriors who have been wounded and driven from the battlefield. Then he shifts to Achilles’ own wound:

In other words, the rest of the Greek heroes suffer physical ailments that can be treated, but Achilles’ problem is not physical. The anger or spite that he “nurses” in his heart is characterized as a poison and has driven him to disregard his own people or community. This is the same criticism Ajax leveled at Achilles in Book 9 when he accused the latter of being pitiless and savage. Ajax’s words, “Achilles has made his great heart savage” (9.647-8) and “The gods have replaced your heart with flint and malice” (9.658-9), are echoed by Patroclus:

In this metaphor, Achilles has no place in human civilization; he is not human. He lacks the familial relationships of a mother and father. Instead, he’s the product of violent and raw nature, spat out of the sea as it crashes into the rocky coast. Like Ajax before him, Patroclus laments the absence of pity in Achilles’ heart, an emotion for which there is no place while the hero “swells with rage.”

Yet we noted the presence of pity in Achilles during the opening lines of Book 16. That is significant, and it is reflected in Achilles’ reply to Patroclus, for he indicates that he will relent his anger and rejoin the army after all, but only after receiving the timē that was promised him in Book 9. Unfortunately, the army is in no position to honor that bargain. The ships are under attack, and the army fights for its very life. Thus, we are presented with one of the two rationales that the poem contrives to send Patroclus to the battlefield as Achilles’ proxy. Once the ships are safe, Achilles will formally rejoin the army, receive his promised honors from Agamemnon, and the Greek host will operate at full strength again. At any rate, that is Achilles’ plan. His instructions to Patroclus on this matter are telling:

In driving the Trojans away from the Greek ships, Patroclus will earn honor for Achilles, specifically the honors that were promised him in Book 9. For, as we noted above, in order to make good on those promises, Agamemnon needs to be alive and to command an army for which Achilles can fight. However, if Patroclus goes beyond simply preventing the Greek ships from being burned, it will be “at the expense of [Achilles’] honor.” In other words, Achilles would lose honor. The rationale is simple: any heroic feats Patroclus accomplishes, any Trojan heroes he kills, are feats and kills that Achilles cannot accomplish once he has returned to the army.

The problem with Achilles’ order is similar to the dilemma in which Hector will find himself outside the walls of Troy in Book 22: it requires the hero to act in a decidedly unheroic manner, to retreat. In Book 5, Diomedes held back because Athena ordered him to avoid conflict with the gods and because he saw that he would have faced off against a god, Ares. Achilles is mighty, but his order to Patroclus does not carry the weight of Athena’s to Achilles (Book 1) and Diomedes (Book 2) respectively. Nor does Patroclus have the ability to distinguish gods from men on the battlefield that Diomedes enjoyed earlier. Thus, the circumstances that allowed Diomedes to restrain his bloodlust and the unflinching pursuit of glory in Book 5 do not exist for Patroclus in Book 16. Nor is he in direct and conscious conversation with a god as both Achilles (Book 1) and Diomedes (Book 5) were.

Patroclus’ Aristeia & the Death of Sarpedon

Armed with the god-forged armor of Achilles[1] and backed by the Myrmidons,[2] Patroclus sets forth wreaking havoc on the Trojans and their allies, sending them fleeing from the ships. It is during this retreat that Sarpedon turns to confront Patroclus: 

We last encountered Sarpedon in Book 12 where he played a crucial role in breaking through the Greek fortifications and delivered a speech that embodies the heroic ethos of both Greek and Trojan forces in the poem. In keeping with the Homeric ideal that Sarpedon represents, the Lycian lord shames his own men for running away from a fight, similar to the corrective actions we saw Hector take with Paris in Books 3 and 6. Sarpedon expresses a wish to ‘know’ Patroclus, to test his mettle in combat and gauge his skill as a warrior. Indeed, in the Iliad, to know a person’s quality is to meet him in combat. One’s warrior prowess functions as much as a test of one’s character as of one’s ability with spear, sword, and shield.[3]

But before Sarpedon can test Patroclus’ quality, the scene abruptly shifts to Olympos, and we find Zeus in the uncharacteristic role of a perturbed father whose child is on the cusp of death:

Zeus’ dilemma is thus: should he save his son in the way Aphrodite rescued Paris from certain death during his duel with Menelaus in Book 3? Or should he not intervene, allowing his mortal child to die in honorable combat, and thus secure the glory (kleos) for his bravery and sacrifice that Sarpedon championed in his own speech to Glaukos in Book 12?

In a sense, to save Sarpedon from death is to kill him, for it would destroy his reputation and strip him of the kleos that accompanies a heroic death. Allowing him to fight and die would secure for him a kind of immortality (kleos, fame, a place in the stories of his people). Recall that according to Sarpedon’s speech in Book 12, it is the very fact that mortals can die that gives their heroic activity meaning and grants them glory on the battlefield. Hera’s reply to Zeus is quick and tinged with incredulity:

Hera is quick to point out that Sarpedon is mortal. He is fated to die as all mortals must. If Zeus were to rescue his son from death, then the other gods would feel entitled to do the same for their own children, and the natural order of the cosmos would be thrown out of balance. Fate, the ordering principle of the universe, would hold no sway, and that is key. What separates Zeus from his father, Kronos, is his dedication to cosmic justice embodied by Fate. Kronos sought to circumvent Fate by devouring his children, thus cementing his rule of the cosmos. Zeus, by contrast, works in communion with the Fates, ensuring an ordered and just cosmos. Here, we see that Zeus has the power to save his child from death, but he bears the obligation to allow Sarpedon to die. Failure to do so would turn the cosmic order on its head. As Hera suggests, it would open a floodgate from which mortals, literally “those who die,” would not die. But Zeus is not his not Kronos. He will not act out of self-interest against the order of the cosmos that he has so diligently championed. Sarpedon must die at the hands of Patroclus.

Indeed, Sarpedon would arguably prefer to die in combat rather than be whisked away as Paris was. Paris is viewed with disdain by the Trojan warriors and suffers constant beratement from Hector for his unheroic actions in the Iliad. Such actions and the shame that accompanies them are anathema to proud warriors such as Sarpedon, Glaucus, Hector, Ajax, and Achilles. Even Paris, whose cowardice is reviled by Greeks and Trojans alike, feels great shame for such actions, and that shame motivated him to act courageously.

In her reply to Zeus, Hera suggests that Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death) carry Sarpedon’s corpse back to Lycia for burial, Zeus agrees, and the treatment of the dead becomes a more pressing concern in the Iliad.

Patroclus slays Sarpedon, and with his dying breath, Sarpedon expresses concern for his body: he exhorts Glaucus to fight for his corpse. Treatment of the dead is a critical element in the Iliad specifically and the Greek world generally. Funeral ceremonies and burial rituals are formulaic means by which society memorializes the deceased. Another term for the gravestone is a “memorial.” Proper treatment of the corpse (i.e., burial) is essential to the memory of a fallen warrior. The place of one’s burial is also important. It’s better to be buried in one’s homeland because it places the memorial closer to community and family members who are more likely to visit the site and remember the deceased. This is the great honor Zeus bestows on Sarpedon by having his child’s corpse borne safely to his homeland (Lycia); it will maximize the memory and, thus, the kleos that surrounds his son.

Sarpedon, of course, is unaware of Zeus’ plans for his corpse, but he is very mindful of the importance of preserving its integrity so that he will maximize society’s memory of him. With that in mind, he calls upon Glaucus to defend and retrieve his corpse so that his name will enjoy the honors heaped upon it in burial services and monuments:

The threat of disfigurement of the corpse underlies Sarpedon’s anxiety over the treatment of his body. At this point, he mentions only the humiliation of being stripped of his armor at the Greek ships. However, if his body is possessed by the Greeks, then it remains unmourned and unburied by the Lycians and Trojans. He does not suggest that the Greeks will actively disfigure his corpse, but the humiliation entailed in its capture is still a blow to his kleos (memory in heroic tales, fame). Thus, he calls upon Glaucus with the threat of shame should the Greeks gain possession of his corpse. As we have seen in numerous instances throughout the poem, shame is a motivating factor, encouraging warriors to act honorably (in pursuit of honor and avoidance of shame).

In turn, Glaucus calls upon Hector to rally the Trojans in the battle for Sarpedon’s corpse:

Glaucus’ speech can be viewed as a tempered mirror of Sarpedon’s from a few lines earlier. It prods Hector to act honorably or incur shame, and it emphasizes the value of one’s armor as a form of timē, a trophy to be seized from the corpse by the victor. Glaucus directly addresses the possibility of disfigurement of the corpse for the first time. It has been a constant fear throughout the Iliad, evidenced by Aeneas risking his life in Book 5 to defend the corpse of Pandarus against Diomedes’ onslaught. And so a pitched battle erupts over the corpse of Sarpedon; the bodies of the living and dying make for a morbid burial mound dedicated to the dead hero whose actual body has been transported back to his homeland in Lycia in accordance with Zeus’ will:

Patroclus’ victory over Sarpedon is his greatest martial achievement. Sarpedon was second only to Hector amongst the Trojans and their allies, and he was a mortal son of mighty Zeus. However, Patroclus’ aristeia is not the same that we have witnessed in the case of Diomedes or Agamemnon. Patroclus will not return to the ships to revel in his victory. We turn now to the death of Patroclus, the event that rekindles the rage of Achilles, dooming Hector and, presumably, Troy itself.

The Death of Patroklos

The gods manipulate mortals in many ways. We have seen them do so via dreams, prophecies, direct conversation, in disguise as familiar acquaintances, imbuing them with supernatural powers, and physically restraining them. Yet perhaps the most common way the gods manipulate mortals is by stoking their emotions. The Iliad is, after all, the story of the devastating effects of one such emotion, and we have witnessed the effects of rage on multiple figures in the poem. So too does Apollo manipulate Patroclus via emotion. After slaying Sarpedon,

This “fury” overwhelms reason, making Patroclus “mindless,” and like Achilles and Agamemnon before him, Patroclus takes action that he knows he should not, disobeying Achilles’ orders. The poem affirms this in Apollo’s cautionary words to the mortal warrior:

The poem affirms the impropriety of Patroclus’ action by having him ignore the direct command of a god. Patroclus is, of course, fated to die during this encounter. So in a sense, he has no choice or free will in the matter. It is important to note, however, that the poem provides a rationale for his misfortune so that the cultural values of the poem are clearly affirmed. In other words, Patroclus is made culpable for his own death at the same time that his fate is clearly out of his control. This is not an unusual situation by any stretch. In fact, this episode is one of many that affirms the tragic world view of Homeric poetry.

Patroclus successfully kills Hector’s half-brother and charioteer, Cebriones, and after a pitched struggle against forces led by Hector, comes away with the corpse and strips the armor from the dead man’s body. This is the last battlefield victory for Patroclus, and it ties into the ethnocentrism of the poem. In this encounter, Patroclus is able to defeat Hector through the mediation of a struggle for Cebriones’ corpse. This struggle immediately precedes Patroclus’ death, ultimately at the hands of Hector, but even though Hector strikes the mortal blow to Patroclus, it is the Trojan who will come out “third at best.”

After stripping the armor from Cebriones’ corpse, Patroclus launches himself back into the fray:

Notes

[1] Achilles’ armor was passed down to him from his father, Peleus. Hephaistos, the smith of the gods, forged it as a gift to Peleus upon his wedding to the nymph Thetis. Hephaistos was particularly fond of Thetis because she served as a surrogate mother to him after he was cast out of Olympos as an infant by Hera.   

[2] The Myrmidons are the warriors from Phthia whom Achilles commands.  

[3] In Book 22, Hector will know Achilles in this way. 

 [4] Hypnos. 

[5] Thanatos.   

[6] Etymology is fun! The word “demon” is Greek but comes into English through Latin. The original word is daimōn, meaning supernatural spirit. So a daimonic charge is an attack influenced by supernatural forces. In Latin, the Greek dipthong ai is spelled ae, hence the Latin version of daimōn is daemon. As is often the case when adopting Latin words, the English version drops the a in the dipthong ae, resulting in the word “demon.” Over the course of time, particularly in monotheistic Europe, such pagan supernatural spirits were associated with devilry and evil. Thus we arrive, in broad strokes, at the modern meaning of the word demon and how it is related to, but significantly different from, the Greek daimōn.