#than achilles

[leoisstillalive]

i finished the senna versus prost book and it left such a divot in me that i am now reading the fucking iliad to fill the void

[gay4elliew]

the way their relationship wasn’t just represented as platonic or romantic but just pure love is so beautiful to me. they’re not just soulmates but their souls were somehow made for each other. they’re are destined together in every timeline. EVERY TIMELINE. it was tragically beautiful and bittersweet. souls intertwined on a singular celestial level; an eternity together in the cosmos. not as lovers or friends or partners but as soulmates. everything was for them. and that truly was such a beautiful thing.

[doloneia]

we need to abolish the idea that ancient greek myths and legend have a coherent timeline. they do not. for any given myth there are like 10 heroes mentioned that feasibly could not have been adults or even alive. herakles keeps showing up in places where he should probably be dead. anyone could be a suitor of helen. even herakles. even theseus if you count that kidnapping stint he did. nestor is alive for 10 billion years. time is fake and anything beyond vague generational outlines is conjecture

[justvea18]

Phthia's new exile kid

[wolfythewitch]

redrew the old achilles painting and turned into a little gif :D

[bleeding-seraphic]

the SECOND I read this line this was in my head

[deadbaguette]

Achilles sketches……. I think I have a better idea now of what I want him to look like

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[froglover7789]

I LOVE TOXIC SHIPS!!!!! I LOVE SHIPS WHERE THOSE MFS FIGHT EACH OTHER ALL THE TIME!!!! I LOVE SHIPS THAT ARE EVIL AND WRONG GRAAAAAA I HAVE MENTAL PROBLEMS

[stardayzzing]

hades patrochilles for the soul please 🤲

When I tell you

I FOUGHT A WAR TO MAKE THIS SEMI-DECENT and its just a quick thing but I am so embarrassed bc for all the effort it took to pull this out of my ass this morning I still hate it 😭 But it's cute enough (also my laptop was dying and I decided that was my sign to stop touching up on it)

Nyways Hades Patrochilles <3

[nikoisme]

Sometimes instead of "achilles come down" i unintentionally hear "achilles calm down", and that's really the iliad from book 20 to 24

[jules-ln]

People should talk more about how Patroclus was unhinged

No, I don't mean rude, I mean he's crazy lmao

For example, he had 9 dogs, have you meet someone with 9 dogs? I have, and they're lovely people, very kind, but they're definitely not "normal" (I know that Achilles's tent smelled like dog)

Plus the fact that he was joking after killing someone, I know some people interpret this as him being rude or whatever, but no. Taunting your enemy after their death was very common in the iliad, but generally is a lot more meaner. Compare Patroclus's joke to what Agamemnon was doing, dismembering the bodies after he killed them, why? Idk he just wanted to be a jerk I guess?

So, Patroclus was out there, making jokes in the middle of the battlefield as if someone was listening. He was doing the marvel thing before marvel even existed lol

And then the fact that he tried climbing the wall of Troy, like??? Why??? No seriously whyy??? Lmao

First of all, where were the archers? A dude trying to climb a wall alone is a great target. Second, what was Patroclus's plan? Just climb; get in, then??? Like there were people inside Troy, and I know that Patroclus was an excellent warrior, but he couldn't take Troy alone, no; maybe it would've been a massacre of trojans, but at some point numbers outweighs strength and skill.

Or was he trying to get to Helen? Helen wouldn't have gone with him peacefully lmao

So really, not only was a bad crazy idea, he kept trying to do it after Apollo threw him off the wall three times 😅

If I had been him I would've gotten up after the first time I fell and walked away checking if somebody saw me lmao

So I have the theory that Patroclus only seems normal because he was with Achilles, so in comparison he's pretty calm lol

[mytho-maniac-108]

Wikipedia tells me one of the meanings of the name Andromache is "man-battler".

Andromache is named such that she fights against men. All the men in her family get killed. Her father, her brothers, her husband and even her son. IIRC, in contrast, her mother lives and dies naturally at her father's house. With the exception of Astynax, all the men are killed by Achilles.

I'M TEARING MY HAIR OUT!!!

Homer. Homer I'm shaking you by the shoulders. WHY DOES ANDROMACHE NOT KILL ANYONE WHYYYY??? SUCH HARDSHIP FOR MY GIRL AND SHE CAN'T EVEN KILL PEOPLE IN A WAR??? SHE SHOULD'VE BEEN ALLOWED TO STRANGLE ACHILLES!!!

[katerinaaqu]

Here is a little thing that came from the post of @deadbaguette which you can see here

Have you noticed how little dialog Achilles and Patroclus share in the Iliad? Achilles is a talkative man. He exchanges long and even philosophical dialogs with most people he encounters, with his peers and even his rivals and enemies. But his scenes that involve Patroclus hardly mention any dialog between them and yet their scenes are the most tender and most talkative.

They prepare food, they entertain their guests, they just sit by each other. They hardly speak. Homer was telling us all along; words were not needed between them. Their actions spoke for them; their closeness and their intimacy. Their scenes are peaceful amidst the war: silent amidst the loud noise and speeches. That is why the loss of Patroclus speaks so loud; the piece of peace in the flame of war was lost.

Which is why also Achilles found closeness to Antilochus next. Antilochus who also hardly exchanged a word with him and yet he was there in his lowest, just holding his hands to keep him alive out of fear that Achilles would try and kill himself. Achilles wanted someone to hold his hand. Antilochus did that both literally and metaphorically

They do not need to talk. Their closeness is enough. The absence of both of these silent yet close and intimate relationships so violently by war destroyed Achilles beyond repair. He lost Patroclus by violence and war while he was absent. He went on a lament and on absolute rampage by killing his enemies, performing human sacrifice and hubris against the dead. He lost Antilochus and he lost the last bits of his sanity, slaying Memnon and pushing carelessly the Trojans back uncovered and was killed by Paris. The strongest of Greeks fell from the hand of the arguably weakest Trojan because all that was left of his strength was gone; his strength, his will to live and his sanity. He was already tripping. At that moment he was beyond saving.

I am surprised I don't see more people talk about it

[wolfythewitch]

I can always hear you sing, I wanna hear you speak to me