24.1–21

Achilles, so genial earlier among his fellow warriors, is alone again:

λῦτο δ᾽ ἀγών, λαοὶ δὲ θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας ἕκαστοι
ἐσκίδναντ᾽ ἰέναι. τοὶ μὲν δόρποιο μέδοντο
ὕπνου τε γλυκεροῦ ταρπήμεναι: αὐτὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς…

The games broke up, and the people scattered to go,
each to his own ship. They were thinking of dinner,
and enjoying sweet sleep. But Achilles…

Iliad 24.1–3

Isolated by his pain, Achilles is once again separated from his friends, as he has been for most of the poem. The third iteration of the narrative pattern, “withdrawal, destruction, and return,” began with his savagery in Books 19–22 and continued with the pitiless killing of Hector. The funeral games then seemed to signal Achilles’s return to his community as the final element of the pattern. But the man we see now, sleepless, obsessively dragging Hector’s corpse around the tomb of Patroclus, is still far apart from his friends. The high concentration of “iterative” verb forms, emphasizing repeated action, that describe his behavior (δινεύεσκ᾽, 12; λήθεσκεν, 13; παυέσκετο … ἔασκεν, 17) underscores the fact that he is trapped in his self-imposed prison, endlessly circling.

The pattern here, separation from the group, repeated circular motion, and grieving for Patroclus, has appeared not long before the present passage, at the beginning of Book 23 after the death of Hector and the dirges of the Trojan women:

ὣς οἳ μὲν στενάχοντο κατὰ πτόλιν: αὐτὰρ Ἀχαιοὶ
ἐπεὶ δὴ νῆάς τε καὶ Ἑλλήσποντον ἵκοντο,
οἳ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ἐσκίδναντο ἑὴν ἐπὶ νῆα ἕκαστος,
Μυρμιδόνας δ᾽ οὐκ εἴα ἀποσκίδνασθαι Ἀχιλλεύς,
ἀλλ᾽ ὅ γε οἷς ἑτάροισι φιλοπτολέμοισι μετηύδα:
“Μυρμιδόνες ταχύπωλοι ἐμοὶ ἐρίηρες ἑταῖροι
μὴ δή πω ὑπ᾽ ὄχεσφι λυώμεθα μώνυχας ἵππους,
ἀλλ᾽ αὐτοῖς ἵπποισι καὶ ἅρμασιν ἆσσον ἰόντες
Πάτροκλον κλαίωμεν: ὃ γὰρ γέρας ἐστὶ θανόντων.
αὐτὰρ ἐπεί κ᾽ ὀλοοῖο τεταρπώμεσθα γόοιο,
ἵππους λυσάμενοι δορπήσομεν ἐνθάδε πάντες.”
ὣς ἔφαθ᾽, οἳ δ᾽ ᾤμωξαν ἀολλέες, ἦρχε δ᾽ Ἀχιλλεύς.
οἳ δὲ τρὶς περὶ νεκρὸν ἐΰτριχας ἤλασαν ἵππους
μυρόμενοι: μετὰ δέ σφι Θέτις γόου ἵμερον ὦρσε.
δεύοντο ψάμαθοι, δεύοντο δὲ τεύχεα φωτῶν
δάκρυσι: τοῖον γὰρ πόθεον μήστωρα φόβοιο.

So they [the Trojans] mourned throughout the city. The Achaeans,
after they went back to the ships and the Hellespont,
scattered to go, each to his own ship, but
Achilles would not allow the Myrmidons to be released;
instead, he spoke to his own companions, who delighted in battle:
“Myrmidons, drivers of swift horses, my steady companions,
we must not yet release from the chariots our single-footed horses,
but drawing closer with our horses and chariots,
let us weep for Patroclus; this is the gift of honor for the dead.
But when we have satisfied our desire for the woeful dirge,
then we will let our horses go and eat a meal here.”
So he spoke, and all the assembled moaned, and Achilles led them.
Three times they drove their horses with flowing manes around the dead body,
mourning; and Thetis stirred in them a desire for weeping.
The sands were wet, and the armor of the men was soaked
with tears, so much did they long for Patroclus, who inspired terror in battle.

Iliad 23.1–16

For the Myrmidons, Achilles’s private troops from Thessaly, the scattering must wait a little longer, until the men “have taken their satisfaction” (τεταρπώμεσθα, 23.10) from grieving. That the verb τέρπω—often used in Homeric poetry of the pleasure in eating, sleeping, and sex—appears in this context may challenge our assumptions about grief (e.g., Od. 5.227; 23.346; Il. 24.3). The word will recur with the same meaning at the end of the poem in the climactic encounter between Achilles and Priam, when the two men console each other for their losses (24.513). The implication here as there is that, like sex, food, and sleep, grief is something that humans need in the midst of loss. Achilles will not let his men go until they and he are finished honoring Patroclus and taking what they need. Then, after the “gloomy feast” (στυγερῇ … δαιτί, 23.48) held before burning Patroclus’s body, Achilles again goes to sleep apart from his fellow warriors and the ghost (ψυχὴ, 23.65) of Patroclus comes to him in a dream and begs to be buried so his soul can find rest. The burial that follows suggests that at least Achilles’s friend has found some relief. The communal games honoring Patroclus then extend the healing to all the Greeks, closing the separation from others that grief brings—all the Greeks except Achilles.

The actions repeated at the beginning of Book 24 signal some connecting threads between the funeral rites for Patroclus and Achilles’s obsessive gestures. Familiar music sounds again, but against a much darker background. Separation from others is, as we have noted, often the result of grieving in the poem. That Achilles is now further isolated, entirely alone with his pain, signals that whatever relief the funeral rituals may have brought for the other Greeks has not come to him yet. Likewise, the chariots circling Patroclus’s body in Book 23 are meant to honor the fallen warrior, a gesture found in other ancient funerals. Here Patroclus’s remains are again the center of the circle, perhaps suggesting that Achilles somehow sees his actions as honoring his friend. But dragging the corpse of Hector makes the action a grotesque parody of any “gift of honor for the dead” (23.9), with hatred replacing love as the motivation. He has said goodbye to his friend but cannot let go of his enemy.

What, then, is keeping Achilles’s soul in torment? Answering this question will take us to the central meaning of the poem.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 303–304. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Nagler, M. 1974. Spontaneity and Tradition: The Oral Art of Homer, 167–173. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Segal, C. 1973. The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad, 48–56. Mnemosyne 17. Leiden: Brill.

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic, 75–76. New York: Oxford University Press.