Were Achilles and Patroklos Lovers?

In twenty-first-century adaptations of the story of the Trojan War, Achilles and Patroklos are often portrayed as gay lovers. This is how they are portrayed, for instance, in Madeline Miller’s novel The Song of Achilles (published in 2012) and in the BBC television series Troy: Fall of a City (released in 2018). Many people have wondered how faithful these portrayals are to the ancient sources. In other words, were Achilles and Patroklos really in a sexual relationship?

As it turns out, the debate over whether Achilles and Patroklos were lovers goes all the way back to antiquity. There are some surviving ancient sources that unambiguously portray them as lovers—but there are also ancient sources that explicitly deny that their relationship was ever sexual.

Did Achilles and Patroklos really exist?

Before I even begin to discuss whether Achilles and Patroklos were lovers, I suppose I should answer the question of whether they really existed to begin with. The answer to this question, as far as I am concerned, is firmly “no.”

The Iliad and the Odyssey were most likely composed sometime around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, but the Trojan War is traditionally said to have happened sometime in around the early twelfth century BCE. This means that the earliest sources we have about the war come from around five hundred years after it supposedly happened.

Moreover, the Iliad and the Odyssey are clearly both works of fiction, utterly detached from whatever historical basis they may have. In the Iliad, Achilles’s horses can talk, his mother is a literal goddess, and, in one scene, he literally fights a river. Only someone who was extraordinarily naïve could take this as a work of accurate history.

As I discuss in greater depth in this article from March 2019, it is certainly true that Troy (or, as it is perhaps more accurately known, Wilusa) was a real city. This does not, however, mean that the Trojan War as we think of it really happened.

We have no evidence that any of the characters described in any of the works of ancient Greek literature about the Trojan War ever existed or that any of the specific events described in those works ever happened. There is no evidence for the existence of Achilles, Patroklos, Odysseus, Agamemnon, the Trojan Horse, Priamos, Hektor, or any of the rest.

While I do think that it is likely that there was some kind of military conflict at some point between some Mycenaean Greek kingdoms and the city of Wilusa, this war must have been so utterly different from what modern people think of when they hear the phrase “Trojan War” that it is not worth even calling it that.

Even if there really were historical figures of some kind on whom the characters of Achilles and Patroklos in the Iliad are based, we cannot possibly know anything reliable about them. The only Achilles and Patroklos we can possibly know about are the fictional ones who appear in Greek literature.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the walls of the acropolis of Troy VII

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a portion of the walls of Troy VII

Breaking out of the “gay” versus “straight” dichotomy

Today we generally tend to think of people as being either “gay” or “straight,” but this is not how the ancient Greeks generally thought of sexuality. The Greeks generally recognized that being attracted to women and being attracted to men are not mutually exclusive and that a very large percentage of people are, to varying extents, attracted to both men and women.

The Greeks did, of course, recognize that most people have some kind of sexual preference for one sex or the other. Plato, for instance, addresses this idea in his Symposion through his myth of the primeval human being. These preferences, however, were not generally thought of as being written in stone.

I mention this because it is well known that, in the Iliad, Achilles has a strong attachment to—and apparent sexual desire for—Briseïs, the woman whom he has captured and forced to become his personal sex-slave. Although Achilles’s treatment of Briseïs is certainly questionable, there is little reason to doubt that his attachment to her is genuine. After all, his angry refusal to fight after Agamemnon forces him to give him Briseïs is a central focus of the poem.

Nonetheless, the fact that Achilles is clearly portrayed as being sexually attracted to Briseïs does not mean he cannot also be sexually attracted to Patroklos. We should not impose spurious modern dichotomies on texts from 2,800 years ago.

ABOVE: First-century CE Roman fresco of Achilles surrendering Briseïs to Agamemnon from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii

Achilles and Patroklos in the Iliad

The Iliad does not at any point explicitly describe Achilles and Patroklos as lovers. It does not mention them kissing or having sex. Nonetheless, there are certainly a lot of passages in the poem that seem to heavily suggest that they are more than just really good friends.

Achilles describes Patroklos several times as his “πολὺ φίλτατος . . . ἑταῖρος,” which means “by far most beloved companion.” When Achilles learns that Patroklos has died, he is utterly devastated, far beyond how devastated we would expect someone to be at the death of a mere friend. He refuses to eat or drink until he has avenged Patroklos’s death and he declares that, when he dies, he wants his ashes to be mixed with those of Patroklos so they can be together for eternity, inseparable from one another.

It is hard to say whether the author of the Iliad intended his audience to interpret Achilles and Patroklos’s relationship as sexual. The author’s intentions in this case, however, are probably irrelevant, since we do know for certain that many later Greek writers did interpret Achilles and Patroklos as being in a sexual relationship.

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix dated to c. 500 BC depicting Achilles seated on the chair wrapped tightly in a himation, mourning for Patroklos

Aischylos’s Myrmidons

The Athenian tragic playwright Aischylos (lived c. 525 – c. 455 BCE) is known to have explicitly portrayed Achilles and Patroklos as sexually intimate in his now-lost tragedy The Myrmidons. Aischylos portrayed Achilles as the erastes, or active partner, and Patroklos as the eromenos, or passive partner. In fragment 135, an unknown character apparently reproaches Achilles for his treatment of Patroklos, declaring:

“σέβας δὲ μηρῶν ἁγνὸν οὐ κατῃδέσω,
ὦ δυσχάριστε τῶν πυκνῶν φιλημάτων”

This means, in my own translation:

“But you did not feel shame for the sacred wonder of the thighs,
oh man most ungrateful for the multitudinous kisses!”

When Aischylos uses the phrase “sacred wonder of the thighs,” he is alluding to intercrural sex, which is a form of non-penetrative intercourse in which a man rubs his penis between the thighs of his partner. This is known to have been an extremely common practice between male partners in ancient Greece.

In fragment 136, Achilles himself declares while mourning Patroklos’s death:

“μηρῶν τε τῶν σῶν ηὐσέβησ᾿ ὁμιλίαν
κλαίων”

This means:

“And I have respected the intercourse of your thighs
by weeping.”

Once again, Aischylos is clearly alluding to intercrural sex.

ABOVE: Attic red-figure hydria dated to c. 480 BCE or thereabouts depicting Achilles receiving the ambassadors from Agamemnon while Patroklos stands behind him, as described in Book Nine of the Iliad

Plato’s Symposion

The Athenian philosopher Plato (lived c. 429 – c. 347 BCE) has the speaker Phaidros in his dialogue The Symposion say that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers. Contrary to Aischylos, however, Phaidros insists that Achilles was the eromenos and Patroklos was the erastes. Here is what Phaidros says, as translated by Benjamin Jowett:

“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroklos—his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroklos was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aischylos has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far). And greatly as the gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover is more divine; because he is inspired by God.”

“Now Achilles was quite aware, for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid death and return home, and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hektor. Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not only in his defence, but after he was dead. Wherefore the gods honoured him even above Alkestis, and sent him to the Islands of the Blest. These are my reasons for affirming that Love is the eldest and noblest and mightiest of the gods; and the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life, and of happiness after death.”

Thus, in The Symposion, Achilles and Patroklos are clearly portrayed as lovers and their love for each other is clearly portrayed as a good thing.

Xenophon’s Symposion

Not everyone in classical Athens, however, agreed with the view that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers. Notably, the writer Xenophon (lived c. 430 – 354 BCE) wrote a response to Plato’s Symposion in which he makes the speaker Socrates specifically argue that Achilles and Patroklos were not lovers. Here is what Xenophon portrays Socrates as saying, as translated by Hugh Tredennick:

“Besides, Nikeratos, Homer has made Achilles exact his famous vengeance for Patroklos not because Patroklos was his lover, but because he was his friend and was killed. Also, Orestes and Pylades, and Theseus and Peirithous, and many others among the greatest heroes are celebrated in song for having jointly performed the greatest and noblest exploits, not because they slept together, but out of mutual admiration.”

Here, Achilles and Patroklos are not portrayed as lovers, but their relationship is still portrayed as a model for men to emulate.

ABOVE: Sketch by the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres for a larger painting, depicting Achilles and Patroklos nude together when the ambassadors of Agamemnon arrive

Aischines’s Against Timarchos

The Athenian orator Aischines (lived 389 – 314 BCE) says in his oration Against Timarchos that, although Homer does not explicitly describe Achilles and Patroklos as lovers in the Iliad, the poet clearly knew and intended for educated audiences to understand that they were lovers. Aischines declares, as translated by Konstantinos Kapparis:

“First I will talk about Homer, whom we count among the oldest and wisest poets. Although he has mentioned Achilles and Patroklos many times, he hides their love and the name of their relationship because he believes that the abundance of their affection will make this clear to the educated members of the audience.”

“Achilles says somewhere, mourning the death of Patroklos, as he remembers one of the saddest things—that unintentionally he did not keep the promise he made to the father of Patroklos, Menoitios. He promised to bring Patroklos safely back to Opous if Menoitios sent him to Troy with Achilles and entrusted him to his care. At this point it becomes apparent that Achilles took charge of him because of love.”

Aischines goes on to use Achilles and Patroklos’s relationship as a model for how an appropriate sexual relationship between two men should be, contrasting it with the kinds of relationships that he alleges that his rival Timarchos has engaged in. He declares that Achilles and Patroklos’s relationship is loving and monogamous; whereas Timarchos has been prostituting himself, selling his own body to all sorts of other men in exchange for money.

The fact that Aischines could treat it as axiomatic that Achilles and Patroklos were in a homosexual relationship in a speech that was meant to be delivered in front of an Athenian jury clearly demonstrates that, by the time Aischines was writing in the late fourth century BCE, this must have been a fairly widely accepted interpretation.

Pseudo-Loukianos’s Erotes

The idea that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers did not die out after the fourth century BCE; it persisted even after Greece was conquered by the Roman Empire. The Erotes is a dialogue written in the Greek language that is traditionally attributed to the Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 CE), but it is often thought to have actually been written by a later imitator of Loukianos, probably in around the late third or early fourth century CE. Scholars generally refer to the author of the dialogue as “Pseudo-Loukianos.”

The dialogue is primarily a debate between two men over which are better: sexual relationships with women or sexual relationships with boys. In the dialogue, a speaker named Theomnestos cites Aischylos’s Myrmidons to support his argument that Achilles and Patroklos were indeed “nothing but ostentatious lovers.” He remarks, as translated by A. M. Harmon for the Loeb Classical Library:

“Perhaps someone will assert this is a shameful thing to say, but, by Aphrodite of Knidos, it’s the truth.”

This comment is interesting because it reveals that, by the time the author of the Erotes was writing in around the late third or early fourth century CE, there was some degree of prejudice against the idea that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers.

ABOVE: Painting from 1815 by the French painter Léon Cogniet depicting Achilles and Briseïs mourning the death of Patroklos

Klaudios Ailianos’s Miscellaneous Histories

On the other hand, the Roman orator Klaudios Ailianos (lived c. 175 – c. 235 CE), who wrote exclusively in Greek a few decades after Loukianos’s death, simply takes the view that Achilles and Patroklos were definitely lovers as axiomatic and uses this assumption to argue that Alexander the Great and Hephaistion were lovers also. He writes in his Miscellaneous History 12.7, as translated by N. G. Wilson for the Loeb Classical Library:

“Note that Alexander laid a wreath on Achilles’ tomb and Hephaestion on Patroclus’, hinting that he was the object of Alexander’s love, as Patroclus was of Achilles.”

William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida

The idea that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers mostly died out during the Middle Ages, but it does notably reappear in the tragedy Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare, which is thought to have been written in around 1602. In Act I, Scene 3, the character Ulysses complains about how Achilles has been spending all his time in his tent in bed with Patroclus. He declares:

“The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns
the sinew and the forehand of our host,
having his ear full of his airy fame,
grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
lies mocking our designs: with him Patroclus
upon a lazy bed the livelong day
breaks scurril jests;
and with ridiculous and awkward action,
which, slanderer, he imitation calls,
he pageants us.”

Shakespeare does not explicitly say that Achilles and Patroclus are having sex when they are in bed together alone in Achilles’s tent, but he certainly implies it and modern performances of the play generally do portray Achilles and Patroclus as explicitly lovers.

ABOVE: Image from this review article of a scene with Achilles, Patroclus, and Thersites in a performance of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Troilus and Cressida from 2018

Conclusion

Ultimately, both the interpretation of Achilles and Patroklos as lovers and the interpretation of them as merely loving friends are legitimate, since Achilles and Patroklos are fictional characters and fictional characters can be adapted and reinterpreted in all sorts of different ways that are all equally legitimate.

Personally, though, I’m going to probably go with the interpretation that they are lovers—an interpretation that has been embraced by the likes of Aischylos, Plato, and Shakespeare.