I donât think we can possibly glean too much about their relationship from the Iliad, but I think there are a few modern assumptions that float around we need to nix. I am speaking pretty broadly using historical examples across centuries because a lot of this is just not stuff we are going to know about Bronze Age Greeks, but a lot of it is likely true to them.
A big thing to know about Ancient Greeks is that primogeniture, rule and/or property passing automatically from father to son was not a thing and would not be for another few millennia. This keeps clearly incompetent people from inheriting the throne, but there was also generally more tension and violence surrounding a kingâs death, and more parties jockeying for influence in the lead up tot it. Patroclus was not necessarily Meneotiusâs heir or next in line to to anything! We donât even know if he was the oldest, but the father of the boy he killed could be a rival or could ally himself with rival and put Actorâs whole clan in danger. Furthermore, there were definitely times where there were just too many men about, and societal safety valves to get rid of them. War was good, but you also see cases like Menelaus marrying Helen and ruling Sparta, her birth place and not his (incidentally Patroclus, someone who learned at one point or the other that he would not be king, was also among her suitors). Exile pops up a lot too, and itâs easy enough to believe that a violent society would have quite a few of them floating around. Patroclus could have been one of several people who might rule Opus after his father died and violence and threat of violence was just in the air, and Patroclusâs actions certainly made it worse.
Itâs also just not historically weird to send your child away, especially for the rich and powerful. Spartans gave their sons to the state at seven, and that is the age European knights started to train. Many European nobles would send their children to some court or another and maybe wealthy family members for refinement or to get them in proximity to the more powerful. Younger or lesser sons were often married off, shunted into business, or (later) sent to the church. We still send kids to boarding school. I donât think it was easy to exile Patrolcus, but sending a kid with a target on his back to stay with an old friend you are distantly related to was an extremely normal thing to do. No one would judge him for it. And apparently Patroclus and Menoetius still have regular contact after, so itâs even less extreme to us than it might seem at first glance.
As for childhood violenceâboys in these types of environments were often encouraged to be violent. Shoving and fighting were normal, and itâs biased but by Patroclusâs own account it was also a mistake, a hit that landed in the wrong spot or led to his victim falling in exactly the wrong way. Maybe that is what happened, maybe it wasnât. Yet I have to think these kinds of accidents happened a lot, especially when you consider that a minor cut we would wipe down with hydrogen peroxide might get infected and kill someone. Enough exiles certainly pop up in mythology.
Finally, I donât think anyone modern would call what we see of the relationship between father and son as particularly tender (except when Achilles wonders if Patroclus is weeping because his father died), but they live in an honor-bound society where the future was uncertain for even the well-born and there was violence galore. That conversation Menoetius always seemed like a warning to me, a father cautioning his son that he should not make himself an enemy of the people housing him by reacting inappropriately to his own loss of status. Itâs his best chance at a good life at that point, one where Patroclus would have been most vulnerable.
Iâm not even necessarily disagreeing with prev, but while the tenderness we expect between parents and children certainly existed in some circumstances, sometimes it didnât, and I think when you consider the type of world their children are being prepared for, some hardassness is to be expected. And I do think there is room for Menoetious to be a bad parent, but nothing in the Iliad stands out to me as abnormal or particularly bad in a pre-modern world with nobles and royalty.
