Achilles and Patroclus - in The Iliad

In The Iliad

Due to this strong relationship, the death of Patroclus becomes the prime motivation for Achilles to return to battle. The friendship of Achilles and Patroclus is mentioned explicitly in the Iliad. Whether in the context of a tender friendship or military excellence, Homer makes their strong connection clear.

The death of Patroclus underpins a great deal of Achilles' actions and emotions toward the Trojan war for the rest of the poem. Achilles' strongest interpersonal bond is with Patroclus, whom he loves dearly. As Gregory Nagy points out,

For Achilles ... in his own ascending scale of affection as dramatized by the entire composition of the Iliad, the highest place must belong to Patroklos.... In fact Patroklos is for Achilles the πολὺ φίλτατος ... ἑταῖρος — the ‘hetaîros who is the most phílos by far’ (XVII 411, 655).

Hetaîros meant companion or comrade; in Homer it is usually used of soldiers under the same commander. While its feminine form (hetaîra) would be used for courtesans, an hetaîros was still a form of soldier in Hellenistic and Byzantine times. In ancient texts, philos denoted a general type of love, used for love between family, between friends, a desire or enjoyment of an activity, as well as between lovers.

Although most warriors fought for personal fame or their city-state (including, at times, Achilles), at certain junctures in the Iliad, Achilles fights for Patroclus. He dreams that all Greeks would die so that he and Patroclus might gain the fame of conquering Troy alone. After Patroclus dies, Achilles agonizes touching his dead body, smearing himself with ash, and fasting. He laments Patroclus' death using language very similar to that later used by Andromache of Hector. For a brief moment Achilles' character shifts from a strong and unbreakable warrior to an emotional and vulnerable character. However, Thetis motivates Achilles to return to the battlefield. Achilles returns to the battlefield with the sole aim of avenging Patroclus' death by killing Hector, Patroclus' killer, even though the gods had warned him that it would cost him his life.

Achilles' attachment to Patroclus is an archetypal male bond that occurs elsewhere in Greek culture: Damon and Pythias, Orestes and Pylades, Harmodius and Aristogeiton are pairs of comrades who gladly face danger and death for and beside each other.

In the Oxford Classical Dictionary, David M. Halperin writes,

Homer, to be sure, does not portray Achilles and Patroclus as lovers (although some Classical Athenians thought he implied as much (Aeschylus fragments 135, 136 Radt; Plato Symposium 179e–180b; Aeschines Against Timarchus 133, 141–50) ), but he also did little to rule out such an interpretation.