#akhilleus

The pivot around which the Iliad turns is the death of Patroklos. The poem begins in media res during the Trojan War because the opening scenes - Agamemnon's initial refusal to return Khryseis to her father and his resulting argument with Akhilleus over Briseis - provide the initial impetus to the events which culminate in Patroklos' death.

The death of Patroklos serves to return Akhilleus to the battlefield after he had removed himself from it in protest at his treatment by Agamemnon. Not only this, it shifts Akhilleus out of the adolescent mardiness he exhibits in the first two-thirds of the poem in response to his perceived slighting, and into what we might more readily understand as the rage of which the goddess is exhorted to sing in the poem's opening line. Leaving aside the hermeneutic difficulties of interpreting ancient texts, Akhilleus behaviour in the first fifteen books barely qualifies as rage, and if Akhilleus' rage is the subject of the Iliad, then what is the purpose of the first two-thirds if not to serve as the counterbalance to the horrors of the majority of the last eight books?

It is difficult to untangle the threads of the poem to the extent that it becomes possible to say that it is the story of any one man. Ultimately, the Iliad is a story about fate, and its inevitability, and in that story Akhilleus' rage - which in itself is one of the poem's main actors, Akhilleus himself often appearing to be a scaffold for emotion, rather than a character in himself - is as much at himself as it is at anyone. Although he vents his rage on Hektor, and on the twelve unfortunate Trojan boys, and on Lykaon and a whole host of other people, why he is raging and wrathful and furious is because he is responsible for Patroklos' death, who he loved (18: 78-93).

If the Iliad is about the inevitability of fate, why does Akhilleus rage at himself? Unlike most of the main actors, Akhilleus has a choice, and he chooses glory over long life, not only his own long life, but also Hektor's, and Patroklos', and he knows it. He, alone of all the Greeks, could have averted the tragedy that befalls him, his "dear friend" (23: 94) Patroklos.

It's possible to suggest that Homer amplifies the tragedy of Patroklos' death through his portrayal and treatment of him. Throughout, Patroklos is presented as gentle, kind, sympathetic (the opening of book 16) and comforting - traits that are granted to very few other characters in the poem. More so, throughout book 16, Homer apostrophises Patroklos, addressing him directly in the second person, for instance at the very beginning of Book 16 where Homer says "Then groaning deeply you addressed him, rider Patroclus: "O, Achilles…."" (16: 20-21). This almost never happens with other characters (of the 16 cases of apostrophe, eight are to Patroklos, with only Menelaos (seven) and Phoibos (two) being apostrophised more than once; Melanippos and Akhilleus are apostrophised once each) but Homer addresses Patroklos directly in this manner throughout Book 16. The effect is to humanise him in a way that most of the other main actors are never humanised, and thus to exacerbate the tragedy of his death and its aftermath.

anyway. i've seen a strange rumor claiming that achilles didn't demand a human sacrifice; he just asked for compensation, and the living achaean commanders decided what form that should take. but achilles 100% asks for the sacrifice of polyxena in the hecuba. polydorus says as much in the prologue (lines 35-45), and when hecuba begs to die in her place, odysseus' counterpoint is that achilles asked for polyxena specifically.

οὐ σ᾽, ὦ γεραιά, κατθανεῖν Ἀχιλλέως φάντασμ᾽ Ἀχαιούς, ἀλλὰ τήνδ᾽, ᾐτήσατο. (lines 389-90)

It is not your death, my lady, that Achilles’ ghost has demanded of the Achaeans, but hers. (coleridge translation, since that's what was on perseus)

mainly inspired by these (hateful) lines spoken by poseidon in the iliad:

“Idomeneus—may that man, that coward never get home from Troy—let him linger here, ripping sport for the dogs, whoever shirks the fight while this day lasts.” (book 13)