Patroklos, Achilleus, and Peleus: Fathers and Sons in the "Iliad"

Author(s): Robert Finlay

Source: The Classical World , Feb., 1980, Vol. 73, No. 5 (Feb., 1980), pp. 267-273
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Classical Association
of the Atlantic States

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/4349196

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 PATROKLOS, ACHILLEUS, AND PELEUS:
FATHERS AND SONS IN THE ILIAD

The figure of Patroklos in the Iliad poses a dilemma. On the one hand,
his importance is undeniable: his death ends the wrath of Achilleus, leads
to the latter's return to battle and, hence, to the death of Hektor. On the
other hand, Achilleus' reaction to Patroklos' death seems incommensu-
rate with what has been shown of the relationship between the two men.
The champion who refuses Agamemnon's many gifts in Book 9 returns
to battle when he hears of Patroklos' death at the hands of Hektor. Yet
little is seen of Patroklos before Book 11, and in carrying out Achilleus'
commands, Patroklos, the "beloved companion" (1.345;9.205), remains
silent.' Intimacy between the two is merely hinted at in the scene when
the embassy comes on Patroklos silently listening to Achilleus playing a
lyre and "singing of men's fame" (9.185-191).2 Before sending Patroklos
to battle in his place, Achilleus prays to the gods (16.97-100):

Father Zeus, Athene and Apollo, if only

not one of all the Trojans could escape destruction, not one
of the Argives, but you and I could emerge from the slaughter
so that we two alone could break Troy's hallowed coronal.

The wish itself is perhaps less startling than Achilleus' association with
Patroklos in his desire for complete victory and vindication. Achilleus
has already displayed an absolutist temperament coupled with rhetorical
eXtravagance;3 but the relationship between Achilleus and Patroklos has
not been shown to be of sufficient depth or intensity to warrant Patrok-
los' inclusion in Achilleus' prayer. In short, that relationship, on which
the turning point of the Iliad is based, cannot apparently by itself bear
the weight the poet assigns to it.
Critics have been understandably reluctant to consider the death of
Patroklos as a mere device by Homer to return Achilleus to battle. In-
stead, they regard Patroklos as Achilleus' "alter ego," as an expression
of the human nature of the godlike hero, "a reflection and a proof of his
own identity."4 Such interpretation has the advantage of converting an
apparent flaw-the lack of depth given to both the character of Patrok-
los and to the relationship between Patroklos and Achilleus-into a vir-
tue. The figure of Patroklos thereby grows in significance in proportion

I Patroklos escorts Briseis to Agamemnon's heralds (1.345-348), roasts meat for the em-
bassy from Agamemnon (9.205-217), and prepares a bed for Phoinix (9.620-621, 658-659).
2 The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore (Chicago 1951).
3 Cf. Martin Mueller, "Knowledge and Delusion in the Iliad," Essays on the Iliad,
edited by John Wright (Bloomington and London 1978) 116-19.
4 Paolo Vivante, The Homeric Imagination: A Study of Homer's Poetic Perception of
Reality (Bloomington and London 1970) 56-57; see also, Cedric H. Whitman, Homer and
the Heroic Tradition (New York 1958) 199, 202; Kenneth J. Atchity, Homer's Iliad: The
Shield of Memory (London and Amsterdam 1978) 162, 229; James M. Redfield, Nature
and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector (Chicago 1975) 107.
267

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 268 ROBERT FINLAY
to his lack of definition, and the prof
and Patroklos stems from the complex character of the hero, not from
the meager personal qualities of his friend.
It is the argument of this essay that Patroklos has significance within
the "emotional pattern"5 of the Iliad not as a "reflection" of Achilleus
but as a representative of and spokesman for the patriarchal and com-
munal values that Achilleus rejects in refusing to aid the Achaians. Inso-
far as Patroklos may be said to reflect anyone, it is not Achilleus but his
father Peleus, a very significant figure in the Iliad, even though he does
not himself appear in the poem. Although Achilleus was the mightiest
warrior among the Achaians, he was still part of his father's household,
and as "a mere child" (9.440) he was sent to Troy by Peleus, who gave
him his armor and horses to use, as well as his warriors to command. It
was Peleus' responsibility to introduce Achilleus to a world beyond his
household in Phthia, to the realm of words and deeds (9.438-443), and
the son represented his father's household in assemblies and on the bat-
tlefield. The heroes of the Iliad are frequently identified by their filial
status; thus Achilleus is "son of Peleus" (or "Peleides") and Agamem-
non is "son of Atreus" (or "Atreides"). In Homeric society, the rela-
tionship between father and son was fundamental.6 The patriarchal
household was the basic unit of society, and communal institutions were
shaped in the image of the household. Zeus, the monarch of Olympus,
was also called "the father of the gods" (1.544), and Agamemnon acted
as patriarch of the Achaian princes, displaying "the sceptre of his fa-
thers" as symbol of his authority and asserting that Achilleus should
yield to him because "I am the kinglier and inasmuch as I can call myself
born the elder" (2.46;9.160-161). The force of paternal affection an-
chored individual loyalty to communal responsibility, while fatherhood
and fame established modes of continuity against mutability and mor-
tality. The dignity and sorrow of fatherhood provide significant features
in the tragic backdrop of the Trojan war-Zeus weeping for Sarpedon,
Neleus' concern for Nestor, Hektor saying farewell to his son, Priam
mourning Hektor, and Peleus sending Achilleus to aid the Achaians. As
Thomas Greene suggests, the Iliad is "a great poem of fatherhood."7
Midway through the battle in Book 11, Achilleus dispatches Patroklos
to discover the identity of a wounded warrior in Nestor's chariot (11.601-
616). With this action Patroklos begins moving toward a confrontation
with Achilleus in Book 16, as well as to his own death. He commences his
errand as a dutiful servant of Achilleus, the only role he has so far played
in the poem; he ends it by condemning Achilleus for obduracy and piti-
lessness. When Patroklos arrives at Nestor's shelter, he refuses a seat,
fearful that he might anger Achilleus by dallying on his mission (11.644-
654). Undeterred, Nestor launches into a lengthy discourse on his youth-

5 E. T. Owen, The Story of the Iliad (Ann Arbor 1946) 69.

6 For what follows, see Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad, 1 1 1; M. 1. Finley, The
World of Odysseus (London 1964) 67, 90,103; Thomas Greene, TheDescentfrom Heaven:
A Study in Epic Continuity (New Haven 1963) 47-48.
7 Greene, The Descentfrom Heaven, 47.

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 PATROKLOS, ACHILLEUS, AND PELEUS 269

ful exploits in battle between the Pylians and Epeians (11.669-761). How-
ever, the aged Nestor is far from rambling, for a major theme of his tale
is the pride and concern that his father Neleus felt for him as a youthful
warrior, in contrast with Achilleus, "who knows nothing of the sorrow
that has arisen along the host" and who "will enjoy his own valour in
loneliness" (11.655-658,761-764). Nestor reminds Patroklos that his own
father Menoitios had charged him with guiding Achilleus when Odysseus
and Nestor came to Peleus' house recruiting for the Trojan war (11.781-
790). Finally, Nestor makes his fateful suggestion to Patroklos: if Achil-
leus cannot be persuaded to fight, then Patroklos might wear his com-
panion's armor into battle and gain a "breathing space" for the
Achaians (1 1.795-802).
Clearly, Nestor's words "stirred the feeling in the breast of Patroklos"
( 11.803), for after leaving the old man, Patroklos responds to the
wounded Eurypylos' plea for help, despite his continued anxiety to re-
turn to Achilleus (11.805-835). But the focus of his anxiety has shifted:
earlier he was concerned to fulfill Achilleus' command, while now he is
anxious to carry Nestor's message to Achilleus (11.836-839). And
whereas Patroklos' extended stay at Nestor's shelter could be pardoned
on the grounds of the proper respect due an elder, Patroklos' decision to
aid Eurypylos is a deliberate movement beyond Achilleus' order, a step
toward questioning his companion's refusal to aid the Achaians. Fur-
ther, Patroklos tends Eurypylos' wound with lore learned from Achilleus
(1 1.830-831), a foreshadowing of Patroklos replacing Achilleus in battle.
Odysseus, Nestor's companion at Peleus' house before the war, also
evokes the scene of the fathers advising their sons when he tries to per-
suade Achilleus to accept Agamemnon's gifts in Book 9 (252-260). Fol-
lowing Odysseus, Phoinix attempts to persuade Achilleus to aid the
Achaians; and, though he does not refer to it, Phoinix was surely present
at the same scene recalled by Nestor and Odysseus (9.438-443):
Peleus the aged horseman sent me forth with you
on that day when he sent you from Phthia to Agamemnon
a mere child, who knew nothing yet of the joining of battle
nor of debate where men are made pre-eminent. Therefore
he sent me along with you to teach you all of these matters,
to make you a speaker of words and one who accomplished in
action.

Phoinix further recalls that Peleus gave him shelter and possessions when
as a young man he fled his father's house-"and gave him his love, even
as a father loves his own son. . . ." (9.480-481). In exchange for this af-
fection, Phoinix cared for Achilleus as if he were his own son, cutting his
meat into little pieces, tolerating his childish expectorations (9.494-497).
In fact, Phoinix's story of his adoption by Peleus is designed to induce
Achilleus to accept adoption by Agamemnon.8 The most remarkable of
the king's offers to Achilleus is one of his daughters, a cunning attempt

8 Judith A. Rosner, "The Speech of Phoenix: Iliad 9.434-605," Phoenix 30(1976) 318.

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 270 ROBERT FINLAY

to use a gift as an instrument of submission (9.144-148): Agamemnon,

"born the elder," would make Achilleus his son-in-law.
Patroklos was also Achilleus' companion in his youth, for, like Phoi-
nix, Peleus gave him shelter when he had to leave his father's house
(23.83-90).9 Achilleus, then, had three counselors or father figures in
Phthia: Peleus, Phoinix, and Patroklos. Peleus treated Phoinix and
Patroklos as if they were his own sons, and they in turn shared some of
Peleus' responsibility for raising Achilleus. Patroklos was much younger
than Phoinix yet older than Achilleus; hence he could be both a com-
panion and advisor to the future hero, both older brother and father.
Phoinix and Patroklos were sent by Peleus to accompany Achilleus to
war, an indication that the latter sorely needed some paternal supervi-
sion. Both were to give "good counsel" to their youthful charge, for
even Achilleus admitted that he excelled more on the battlefield than in
assemblies (18.105-106). While not Achilleus' peer in strength, Patroklos
was regarded as "the equal of the immortals in counsel" (17.477). No
doubt because of Patroklos' exceptional judgment and because of their
unique relationship, Achilleus looked to his older friend to carry out two
vital paternal tasks. In Book 9 Achilleus argues that he could return to
Phthia and forget Briseis, the woman taken from him by Agamemnon,
for "Peleus himself will presently arrange a wife for me" (9.394); yet in
Book 19, after Patroklos' death, Briseis reveals that Patroklos had
promised to "make me godlike Achilleus' wedded lawful wife" (19.297-
299). Moreover, knowing that he was fated not to return home, and fear-
ing that Peleus "must altogether have perished" of old age and sorrow,
Achilleus had been counting on Patroklos to care for his son and proper-
ty in Phthia (19.330-337). Substituting for Peleus as marriage maker and
guardian, Patroklos was to insure the continuity of generations in
Phthia. Without someone in the place of a father, a household and its
heir would be destroyed. Indeed, Achilleus' concern for the future of his
son Neoptolemos is a muted echo of Andromache's lament for the future
of Hektor's son, Astyanax (22.484-490). Neoptolemos and Astyanax are
as doomed as Achilleus and Hektor: their patrimony will be despoiled,
and they will become social outcasts, poor, weak, and abused, without
prospects for either fame or an honorable burial (22.491-507;24.725-
739).
When Achilleus left Phthia for Troy, Peleus vowed that his son would
cut his hair and make sacrifice to Sperchios, a Phthian river, when he re-
turned home. But at Patroklos' funeral, Achilleus commemorated his
filial relationship with his dead companion by giving his hair "into the
keeping of the hero Patroklos" (23.140-151). For Achilleus, then, the
death of Patroklos was tantamount to the death of Peleus (19.321-324):

There is nothing worse than this I could suffer

not even if I were to hear of the death of my father
who now, I think, in Phthia somewhere lets fall a soft tear
for bereavement of such a son....

9 Cf. Atchity, Homer's Iliad, 284.

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 PATROKLOS, ACHILLEUS, AND PELEUS 271

Achilleus' grief over Peleus and Patroklos stemmed from his recognition
that in both cases he was (or would be) the agent of their destruction:
Peleus would die of sorrow on "the day he hears I have been killed"
(19.336-338), whereas Patroklos was killed after being sent into battle by
Achilleus. Achilleus' extraordinary and uncontrollable grief over the
death of Patroklos partakes of the horror a parricide might feel at his
deed. Doomed to die away from home, and thereby doomed to be the
cause of his father's death, Achilleus unwittingly and unnecessarily sent
his best friend and substitute father to his destruction.
This perspective gives added poignance and meaning to Patroklos' en-
counter with Achilleus on returning from the mission to Nestor. Achil-
leus' motive in sending Patroklos to inquire about the wounded warrior
was clearly idle curiosity, for he never asks Patroklos for an answer to his
query. For his part, Patroklos also forgets about the warrior, but this is
because his journey across the battlefield and his encounters with Nestor
and Eurypylos have awakened his compassion for all the Achaians. Per-
haps, too, his experience revived his sense of responsibility for giving
Achilleus good counsel; it is notable that Patroklos was the only man
who remained silent during the crucial embassy encounter in Book 9. The
newly different attitudes of the two friends regarding the suffering of the
Achaians account for the subsequent decision which leads to Patroklos'
death. Seeing Patroklos weeping, Achilleus greets him with strange
mockery (16.6-1 1):

Why then
are you crying like some poor little girl, Patroklos,
who runs after her mother and begs to be picked up and carried,
and clings to her dress, and holds her back when she tries to hurry,
and gazes tearfully into her face, until she is picked up?
You are like such a one, Patroklos, dropping these soft tears.

By these words Achilleus attempts to reverse his relationship with

Patroklos by denying his friend's greater maturity: no longer the older
and wiser figure, Patroklos is seen as an emotional child who needs the
protection of a strong parent. Significantly, Achilleus' mockery extends
to refer to the very men whom Nestor had invoked with Patroklos
(16.13-16):

Have you, and nobody else, received some message from Phthia?
Yet they tell me Aktor's son Menoitios lives still
and Aiakos' son Peleus lives still among the Myrmidons.
If either of these died we should take it hard.

Achilleus' reference to the fathers is designed to forestall Patroklos' plea

for pity by implying that compassion need not extend beyond the realm
of the household, a notion that Peleus himself denied in sending his son
to aid the Achaians.'0 Finally, Achilleus drops his distasteful pose and
criticizes Patroklos for mourning over the "arrogant" Achaians (16.16-
10 Atchity (Homer's Iliad, 197) incorrectly assumes that Achilleus' concern about Peleus
and Menoitios is serious; cf. Owen, The Story of the Iliad, 146-47.

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 272 ROBERT FINLAY

19). Patroklos replies in the words of Nestor (11.659-661) and Eurypylos

(11.824-825) concerning the wounds of the Achaians (16.23-28). Then
"Patroklos the rider" (16.20) bursts out with the most far-reaching and
heartfelt condemnation of Achilleus expressed by any of the hero's com-
rades (16.29-35):

But you, Achilleus; who can do anything

with you? May no such anger take me as this that you cherish!
Cursed courage. What other man born hereafter shall be
advantaged
unless you beat aside from the Argives this shameful destruction?
Pitiless: the rider Peleus was never your father
nor Thetis was your mother, but it was the grey sea that bore you
and the towering rocks, so sheer the heart in you is turned from us.

Patroklos is reasserting Peleus' values." And that reassertion com-

pletes the isolation of Achilleus: the movement begun by Achilleus away
from the demands of fellowship and communal responsibility is in fact
completed when he is rejected by Patroklos. The only full interchange
between Achilleus and Patroklos in the Iliad is marked by mockery and
criticism, a consideration which highlights Achilleus' loss of humanity at
this crucial point. The leitmotifs of the father Peleus and the necessity
for pity are linked most compellingly in this scene: Phoinix, Odysseus,
and Nestor urged Achilleus to pity his comrades, and behind them all, in-
voked by them all, was the figure of Peleus. It is finally left to Patroklos
to reprove Achilleus' inhumanity by denying his paternity. Moreover,
Patroklos also voices the sentiments of the Myrmidons, Peleus' Phthian
troops, who had been muttering against Achilleus' pitilessness (16.200-
209). In this situation-and still intent on fulfilling his oath not to aid the
Achaians-Achilleus takes the advice of Nestor, "best of them all in
counsel" (11.626), and Patroklos, "equal to the immortals in counsel"
(17.477), to send a surrogate to battle (16.36-45). The only advice offered
by Patroklos turns out to be disastrous for both himself and Achilleus.
Patroklos dons the armor of Peleus and harnesses the horses of Peleus
(16.130-150), while Achilleus prays for the destruction of the Trojans
and the Achaians.'2 Ironically, Achilleus implores the gods to apportion
his glory with the man who has just broken with him and who could nev-
er-no more than could Peleus-accept Achilleus' mad desire. As he
leads the Myrmidons into battle, Patroklos surely reflects the patriarchal
and communal values of his society rather than any aspect of the man to
whom he fails to say farewell.
Achilleus' grief over the death of Patroklos drives him to thoughts of
self-destruction and to the wish that Peleus had not been his father
(18.23-24, 82-87). Yet he must avenge Patroklos' death and recover Pe-
leus' armor, achievements that leave him still disconsolate (23.43-47).
Nor does the funeral ceremony for his friend give Achilleus comfort, for
I Cf. Atchity, Homer's Iliad, 200.
12 Cf. John R. Wilson, "The Wedding Gifts of Peleus," Phoenix 38 (1974) 385-89; John
A. Scott, "The Armor of Patroclus," CJ 13(1918)682-86.

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 PATROKLOS, ACHILLEUS, AND PELEUS 273

it accentuates his recognition of the disorderly nature of Patroklos'

death: Patroklos had acted as a substitute father for Achilleus, but now
the latter must perform that function for Patroklos (23.221-225):

And as
a father mourns as he burns the bones of a son, who was married
only now, and died to grieve his unhappy parents,
so Achilleus was mourning as he burned his companion's
bones, and dragged himself by the fire in close lamentation.

It requires the intercession of another father to assuage Achilleus' sor-

row, and, in effect, to revoke Patroklos' condemnation: "Pitiless: the
rider Peleus was never your father. . . ." Priam comes to Achilleus and
begs for the return of Hektor's corpse by twice imploring the hero to
"Remember your father," old, lonely, and grief-stricken in Phthia
(24.486-504). In Achilleus' eyes, Priam and Peleus thus unite, and this
identification enables him to remove his own grief for Patroklos to a
more humane and healing context. "There is not any advantage," Achil-
leus tells Priam, "to be won from grim lamentation" (24.523-524)-a
truth, indeed, that Achilleus has just learned from the supplication of
Hektor's father. By heeding Priam's appeal for pity, Achilleus is thereby
reunited with the human community in the name of the values repre-
sented and handed on by its fathers: "and Achilleus wept now for his
own father, now again for Patroklos" (24.511-512).

Ithaca, New York ROBERT FINLAY

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