cata

Thesis Project Part 2 including: Hades, Demeter, Zeus, Athena, Apollo, and Hermes.

That's the post. Sorry that some of these are mircowave quality.

- patroclus barely speaks for most of the book but EVERYBODY loves him. like he’s literally the entire greek camp’s precious meow meow. the ORIGINAL sweet little meow meow. even the GODS are sad and feel bad when he dies. even HOMER loves patroclus, always calling him “faultless patroclus” “my patroclus” “gentle patroclus” “sweet patroclus” WE GET IT. achilles, briseis, menelaus, ajax, literally every member of the greek camp is down ATROCIOUS for patroclus all bc he’s just one Really Nice Dude. just one very Sweet and Polite Fella. one Extra Special Guy <3 his whole narrative purpose is simply to be everyone’s special little scrunkly

- in one of the MANY passages where achilles is lamenting about how sad it is that patroclus is dead he promises patroclus’ corpse that he will have many deep-bosomed trojan and dardanian women weep for him. he tells his dead buddy “i will get the absolute THICKEST hoes with the BIGGEST mommy milkers for your funeral” honestly? id be honored

- all the arguments escalate so quickly. an old man very politely appeals to agamemnon to pretty please give his daughter back and offers him a huge fortune for her and agamemnon calls him a crotchety old bitch and tells him he’ll fucking kill him if he ever sees him again

- that same old man is a priest of apollo. you know, the plague god? anyway priest calls in a favor and apollo curses the greeks with a plague

- to address this, achilles decides to resolve it by calling all the greeks together and passive aggressively going “HM! i WONDER what could have caused a PLAGUE! it’s almost like we OFFENDED the PLAGUE GOD somehow. now WHAT could WE (cough agamemnon) done to offend the PLAGUE GOD?????” all in front of agamemnon

- zeus spends most of the book desperately trying to keep the gods OUT of the war. then once he’s finally had enough he just calls them all together and says “go nuts” and then they do

- artemis talks shit on the battlefield so hera calls her a bitch, steals her bow, and beats her with it. artemis then goes back to zeus and cries

- polydamas says to hector “hey you killed patroclus and achilles is gonna be fucking pissed. we should probably go back to the city while we can” and hector calls him a bitch and tells him to stfu. achilles then chases them back to the city and hector decides to stay outside and get killed by achilles instead of going in with the rest of the army bc he didn’t wanna hear polydamas say “i told you so”

- diomedes is about to fight with a guy called glaucus but then they realize their ancestors were friends or something so they decide not to kill each other, and diomedes says “hey! why don’t we even trade armor! :) just as a show of friendship! :))” and glaucus is like “yeah sure!” and gives diomedes his really nice gold plated armor while glaucus gets diomedes’ shitty plain bronze armor

- achilles makes a bitchy comment to his horses about leaving patroclus to die and the horse momentarily gains the ability to talk just to tell achilles it wasn’t THEIR goddamn fault, tells achilles he’s gonna die soon, and then goes back to being a normal horse.

- zeus with his daughters: oh child ❤️ oh my dear ❤️ oh there there i didn’t really mean it ❤️ sweetie why don’t you go help the greeks?❤️

- zeus with his sons: “ares you fucking donkey”

- everyone calling paris a stupid coward bitch every time they see him. all of troy fucking hates him. hector fucking hates him. helen fucking hates him.

Odysseus and Diomedes doing a little night raid where they kill a bunch of people in their beds and steal their horses and then go 'we probably shouldn't have done that, that was dishonourable'

Patroclus finally rolling his eyes at Achilles and taking the field, at which point he racks up the best kills-per-minute rate in the whole Iliad and like, the third highest body count despite only being there for maybe 15 minutes

Hell, if we go by the Achilleid, Achilles didn’t even know what the war was about until he was sailing to Troy. A young boy whose birth produced an unjust prophecy that dictated the rest of his life: Live long and die in obscurity, or die in war and live in the minds of the people forever. No greek man of his time could bear to die in obscurity, but it was especially impossible for Achilles to do so. His father Peleus, a legendary Argonaut whose adventures would be remembered for millenia, his mother Thetis, a towering goddess raised by the queen of the gods herself.

Their child had to be known.

At Aulis the greeks call for Achilles, a legend before he even steps into the battlefield, and he is forced to go to war. And he fights, he kills, he ravages the city of Troy. A boy who has never even seen a battle in his life, living in peaceful Pthia and later protected by mighty Chiron in Thessally, becomes a machine specifically created for one purpose: To destroy Troy.

This is the reason why Achilles refuses to fight after the taking of Briseis. Unlike Agamemnon, who lived before the Trojan War, who had a wife and family before the Trojan War, who will leave Troy. Or Odysseus who will tell his tales to his son and wife after 20 years away. Or Menelaus who after years regains his family and rules Sparta in peace. Achilles has no life, no future, he IS Troy, more than even Hektor, Paris, and Priam are. Thus, when his honor is threatened, everything he has ever lived for has been taken away from him. Realize that before the taking of Briseis, Agamemnon mentioned takingthe “bride prizes” from the other greek kings and despite this not going anywhere none of them attempted to argue. Would Odysseus attempt to kill Agamemnon if his bride prize were taken? Would Diomedes or Greater Ajax?