#Anyway that's definitely my own opinion on the matter - I also agree that Hermes/Crocus is defo more triggering for Apollo lmao

[gingermintpepper]

It's always a toss up whether or not I directly add things to posts I like in reblogs, but I wasn't able to throw my hat into the ring for Troilus Memorial Hour, so I absolutely want to do so now for Patrochilles/Hyapollo comparison conversations. OP - as always, you make fantastic, salient and really poignant points but I do want to bring something else to the table that I generally see go unaccounted for when we talk of Apollo's feelings on Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad.

And that's, very vitally, that Apollo does not recognise what Achilles feels for Patroclus as grief.

No doubt, at some point it was. But Achilles, like he tends to do, completely oversteps the bounds of grief and Apollo calls those feelings something more like anger.

No doubt, a man can suffer loss of someone even closer than a friend— a brother born from the same mother or even a son. He pays his tribute with his tears and his laments—then stops. For Fates have put in men resilient hearts.

(Iliad, Book 24. Apollo speaks on the nature of human grief. trans Johnston)

And just like OP says - the Iliad is a war story, companions are expected to die. Who was Achilles to think Patroclus so special that he would be exempt from death when the whole business of this war is blood and violence? Furthermore, Apollo argues that the grief Achilles has inflicted on Priam and Hecuba is worse than that which he and Hector inflicted on him by killing Patroclus - in Apollo's eyes, a mother who loses her son suffers a greater loss than that of a man who loses a friend. Who is Achilles to want the world to stop for his tears when he has done nothing but take sons from mothers and kill brothers before their brothers?

Most importantly though, grief, in Apollo's eyes, must come with some measure of compassion.

...Achilles, whose heart has no restraint. In that chest his mind cannot be changed. Like some lion, he thinks savage thoughts, a beast which follows only its own power, its own proud heart, as it goes out against men’s flocks, seeking a feast of cattle—that’s how Achilles destroys compassion. And in his heart there's no sense of shame,...

(Iliad, Book 24. Apollo on the nature of Achilles' anger. trans. Johnston)

Even if you want to put aside that Apollo personally and very emphatically hates Achilles, I think something that's worth keeping in mind is that the Iliad is not a story about Achilles' grief, it is a story about Achilles wrath. No matter what emotion Achilles starts off with after the point of Patroclus' death, ultimately, it is not grief which makes him drag Hector's corpse through the mud on the back of his chariot day after day and it is certainly not grief which makes him snap at Priam for bringing up Hector to him when they spend an evening weeping for all they've lost.

At the end of the day, Achilles emotions are a fair bit more complex than straight grief for Patroclus and the divide between Apollo's perspective on grief and Achilles' performance of grief are different enough that it's difficult to see where Apollo would ever see himself in a portrait of Achilles' grief-anger.

is it only me, who goes like "Apollo must have flashback to hyacinth dying , when he saw Achilles and dead Patroclus,

Am I the only one who thinks of this? Okay

If that’s your personal head canon, go right ahead. Believe what you want to, nobody will stop you. 👍😉 I think its definitely a sweet sentiment, and a fun little brain worm.

But, I don’t think Apollo would react that way for for quite a few reasons. The first is mythology and the second is psychology and the third is genre.

The mythological reason is that Apollo is directly and purposefully responsible for Patroclus’s death, and he definitely hates Achilles. Like actually. The List of Top Ten People Apollo hates has Achilles twice on it. If he was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Achilles, and he had a gun with two bullets in it, he would shoot Achilles twice. He wants Achilles to suffer, and when Patroclus dies he tells Hector that he’s the third guy to kill him, but Apollo was the first to kill him. Because I think everyone in the Trojan war knows Apollo and Achilles hate each other. Apollo because Achilles murdered his sons (plural) and Achilles because he knows Apollo’s going to kill him. Reasons for their bitter rivalry can be found in this post here. There are more probably too.

As far as the psychological aspect, let’s assume Apollo’s psyche is like a human’s (which I do not think it totally is, but that’s another post). Trauma and Grief are two completely separate experiences. Grief is a normal human thing which we are given excellent coping skills to overcome by nature. People die. It’s a fact of life. But, HOW people die can be traumatic. For example, if your in a war and you watch your buddy die from a mine exploding and he doesn’t die right away, that’s traumatic. The grief is still separate from the trauma. Its closely aligned, but its separate. Trauma on the other hand is a situation that humans are not equipped to handle—its a situation outside the psychological norm. So our brain adapts normally to an abnormal situation.

I think the only true similarity between Patrochilles/Hyapollo deaths is that they were gay and one of them died before the other. If anything, Apollo was feeling a little vindictive when Patroclus died. He was the arm of fate that killed Patroclus, and Achilles absolutely deserved the death and destruction of everything he held dear in my POV. He was a serial assaulter and a war criminal.

Another reason why flashbacks just don’t work is because flashbacks are a trauma response. I think there’s a separate issue where one might live in the memories of a loved one’s passing, but that’s separate from a flashbacks. Flashbacks from PTSD are when the subconscious fear overwhelms the conscious. It requires a trigger, which can be anything and sinister—subtle and terrible. We know from the ancient authors that one of Apollo’s trigger is a westerly wind. @gingermintpepper had an excellent post providing several sources about Apollo’s approach to Hyacinthus and Asclepius’s deaths.

A flashback is a fear response in a situation that does not require this response based off of a trigger that puts the sub-conscious into a flight/fight mode and makes someone relive a previous traumatic experience. So for example Apollo might feel a western wind and relive Hyacinthus’s death or fear that Zephyrus is about to hurt him or the person he is with. This also depends on coping skills, and whether the person has developed grounding skills to put them back in the present.

I don’t believe that the situation with Patroclus/Achilles is triggering in the right way to elicit a flashback in Apollo. Patroclus and Achilles deaths are pretty different from Hyacinthus’s. So even if he had a grief response it would be minimal. At least from my perspective, one of my parents died when I was a child, and I had to take care of them while they were sick. I take care of a lot of sick people in my day to day, and I will say I rarely ever experience something that puts me back into the mode I was in when my parent died. I walk past the room my parent died in sometimes, cause I work in the hospital that they died in, and I am alright because I recognize the situation and I’m able to accept they died there. Alternatively, what does illicit a response in me is a certain smell my parent had when they were dying. I recognize it in patients sometimes, and I can have a visceral response to that, but again, I have learned how to appropriately deal with these sorts of things because “improve, adapt, overcome.”

Trauma is absolutely just a part of living in the world. Everyone has their own life story and troubles and triggers and struggles. But I don’t think Apollo/Hyacinthus connects to Patroclus/Achilles in any intense way.

Alternatively, I think perhaps something Apollo might have a more visceral response to is Hermes and Crocus, who are quite nearly the same dang story. That’s Apollo’s brother, and he loses someone the same way Apollo lost someone. That would open up gateways of intense suffering.

As far as genre goes, Apollo and Hyacinthus have a horror story parading as a romance story. Zephyrus is a sinister, invisible monster—he causes violence in a place where violence does not belong. On the other hand, Patroclus/Achilles is a war story—violence is expected. They both absolutely knew they were going to fie in that war, so their agony is expected from the beginning. Hyacinthus’s loss is unexpected and therefore, grievous. Not that losing your lover/cousin in a war is less horrific—it’s just prepared for, while losing your lover in a meadow while playing discus is…not.

I don’t mean that your personal view is wrong in anyway. Apollo is a divine character and anybody can have any view of him they would like. A lot of people view him as the antagonist of the Iliad and Achilles’ story, which to me, he just isn’t. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love perspectives and opinions. I like sharing mine, so I love it when people share theirs.