day dreamer, night thinker

CREATE THE WORLD YOU WANT TO LIVE IN, NO MATTER HOW SMALL

READ VORACIOUSLY, WIDELY, DEEPLY, FOR FUN

WRITE DOWN YOUR THOUGHTS, PEN ON PAPER, WORDS AND IMAGES

STOP BUYING SHIT YOU DON'T NEED

MOVE YOUR BODY IN NEW AND EXCITING WAYS

DANCE AND SING LIKE IT MIGHT SAVE YOU, BECAUSE IT MIGHT

THERE ARE TIMES FOR SOLEMN CONTEMPLATION AND THERE ARE TIMES FOR MINDLESS ACTION, LEARN THE DIFFERENCE

Fun Fact from TSOA: Achilles’ last words to Hector are “There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”

There are two aspects of Achilles in the Iliad. Before Patroclus dies, Achilles is mainly concerned with his own renown and honor ( κλέος  and τιμή ), and so, when his honor is slighted, he refuses to fight. This is his human side. Since Achilles is mortal and will die, his only claim to immortality is the honor given to him and the renown that will live on after him. By taking away his war prize and honor, Agamemnon effectively takes away the reasons Achilles has to fight. As a warrior, a human, Achilles cares most about his own honor. This can be seen before Patroclus goes off to fight too, when Achilles says to him: “you must not set your mind on fighting the Trojans, whose delight is in battle, without me. So you will diminish my honor.” ( Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, book 16 lines 89-90)

That was the first aspect, the second is after Patroclus dies. When Patroclus dies, human concerns don’t matter to Achilles anymore. As grief envelops him, Achilles ceases to eat and sleep, he ceases to hold his grudge against Agamemnon, he fights a river, he slaughters armies– “food and drink mean nothing to my heart but blood does, and slaughter…” ( Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, book 19 lines 13-14). In his grief and rage, in his refusal to eat for example, we the readers see that Achilles no longer behaves as humans should, but instead, as immortals do. Achilles breaks almost all human convention because of his grief, to the point that even the gods notice. His behavior is supposed to jar us, to let us see that humanity has departed from Achilles. The line he says to Hector saying that he wishes he could eat him, merely points out how far gone Achilles is, and how inhuman, but he is not immortal, and therefore, cannot eat another’s flesh.

This disregard for human customs and necessities means that Achilles’ death will come, he can’t go on behaving unlike a human forever. He knows he will die, and does not care. The moment Patroclus died, Achilles did so as well, in a sense. If death is to come to him, why shouldn’t Achilles behave like an immortal? He no longer cares for anything but revenge, and once revenge has been achieved and his unhappiness does not stop, he cares for killing other Trojans and reliving his revenge by attempting to defile Hector’s body. Achilles has lost what mattered to him most, which in the end, was not his glory but his Patroclus. It’s only after Priam appeals to him as a father and reminds Achilles of his own father Peleus, that Achilles regains some semblance of humanity.

musings on memory

hector's corpse is divinely protected so it can't be damaged by the greeks after death; all that effectively happens in the iliad is that his body gets dirty. but under normal circumstances (and i'm not gonna impose realism on mythology, but the iliad is famously detailed when it comes to bodily trauma), the physical reality of dragging a corpse along stony ground for miles would be severe disfigurement and dismemberment. first the skin would wear off, then soft tissues, then extremities would start to detach. i think the iliad's original audience would be aware of that as an intended outcome.