#muses. [ achilles. ]

[simsim54]

i want someone to love me so much that when i die the gods have to intervene in order to save the world from my lover’s wrath

[authorafterhours]

For all that Hannibal compared the two of them to Greek heroes, Will did become Hannibal's Achilles heel.

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

"You may sit upon my lap." - Jay to Archie

"W..w..what!?" Archie blushed red hearing the words from Jay's mouth. Though, he didn't know how to react towards it feeling all nervous now.

[androgynouspenguinexpert]

Golden feathers touch the ground

He tears his hair, 'Who made this mess?'

[virgils-muse]

Achilles looking at Hector’s corpse like “is anyone gonna desecrate that” and not wait for an answer

[johannestevans]

let's do it

[flaviafulvia]

Thinking about how Patroclus is loved so much. All the men at least weep for Patroclus, until Achilles sends the bulk away and only his most intimate friends, the other commanders, stay and mourn. Thinking about how hard Menelaus and Ajax fought for him, the latter protecting him under his shield. Thinking about Zeus himself loving him even after he killed his favorite son. Thinking about how Peleus raised him “kindly,” and thinking about how apparently Achilles promised Meneotious he would bring him back from Troy, as his father still loved him too. Thinking about how Homer himself refers to him as “Lord Patroclus.” Thinking about how he gets his aristeia only when he leaves Achilles’s side in battle for the first time, racking up the highest death count in the Iliad until the narrative himself has to stop him from doing more.

Also thinking about how so much of this is not in the common perception of him. I don’t blame any one work for not going into it, but god I wish I saw it more elsewhere. His absence was felt by Achilles, but it’s so important that it was felt elsewhere too. For an afternoon the whole war turned on his little body. In the Iliad, he is among the best and the best-loved among there, but he is taken first among the major players and among the first of any non-red shirts in the war in general. He’s a stand-in on one hand for Achilles and on another for the youth, goodness, innocence etc. of so many unnamed soldiers, but to the extent he is Patroclus you mostly see how he is missed. How he won’t care for the horses, how he won’t feed his dogs from the table anymore, how he won’t shoot the shit with Achilles again next to a late night fire, stuff you never see him do alive. (He does cook, wordlessly)

But also…

Did Patroclus ever resent Achilles? He disobeys him, going further than his commander told him to, and tries to take Troy himself, which would rob Achilles of his glory. Unfortunately for him, Achilles’s story is more important and he’s not *allowed* to be more than a part of it.

Of course after he dies he says he will miss their late night chats more than anything. He loved Achilles enough to trade whatever other destiny he could have had without him.

[beemintty]

so I've discovered there are lots of epic the musical lovers on here and therefore lots of greek mythology lovers on here.

so, tell me your favourite god, goddess, nymph, giant, titan, hero or creature!!

what other mythologies are we into?

[mechanica1-hands]

[emerges from a pool of blood and viscera]

hi i just wrote a paper on manhood in the iliad and i didn't get to write about everything i wanted to because me and my project partner were too mentally ill about the iliad already and there was a page limit so now i have so many words about the way men will define themselves in times of war and how those aspects which are most important to their character get amplified and how their relationships to their fathers are so defining of how they view themselves as men and also how men will form bonds beyond simple companionship and how they need each other and AURGHHHHHAHFA AFLAJD [explodes]

[melancholic-frog]

i find it fascinating how we’ve adopted achilles as a gay sad little man which is true, but he’s also a pathetic wet cat who’s full of rage and said to hector “i’d skin and eat your corpse if the gods would allow it” and proceeded to maim his corpse for twelve days. he was unhinged and full of rage and the modern perception of him hilariously excludes a lot of it

[doombringcr]

// Family reunions during the war of Troy must have been hilarious

[simsim54]

There’s something incredibly endearing and heartwarming about the taller person in the relationship being the little spoon.

Like Achilles may be hailed as Aristos Achaion on the battlefield, but in the quiet of the night, behind all that bravado, there is left a man who felt safe only in the arms of his therapon, his beloved, Patroclus.

[ecoamerica]

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[godblooded]

@tlacehualli

the cat’s a vision as per in enormous black sunglasses, black jeans, a charcoal grey tshirt. her lipstick is deep burgundy, a differing shade from her general cherry red. she'd agreed to it -- something silly, something stupid. traveling for her birthday. lina, i will literally be fine. i'm gonna stay with tio! we'll have fun. you and tia go have fun! you never do anything for your birthday. you won't even let me.

they're always low-key, anyway. meant to be quiet. another year is supposed to pass in obscurity and whatever the fuck the cat is, she's too timeless to age. she can't. ( and maybe selina's forgot how to cleave them in half. maybe selina doesn't exist near as much as the cat does, and the cat is no one. )

the problem is selina doesn't even know how to pack for these things. she isn't going to take out a diplomat, no dead world leaders, no human trafficking evidence to dig up. just... a week in mexico. a week in mexico. she's staring at an open suitcase, heels, heels, heels -- and she doesn't have anything else. there are clothes strewn across her huge bed. sombra's going to get here and she's still going to be trying to pack.

she doesn't have any idea what to take. and holly's at the manor, so she can't ask her.

maybe outfits to go with heels would be a great idea. what does she have that isn't black....?

[possiblu]

the tragedy of achilles

Achilles is caught in a vicious trap. He is part god: his godly parentage, Thetis, his immense power and skill, his petty and grudge-holding nature, his beauty, his parentage. and yet he is also a mortal for one reason: his ability to die. Not many people would call death and ‘ability’, and yet it appears the Greeks did. The most glorious thing to a Greek was called kleos, and this meant death. Not just any death, but a fiery, sacrificial, blaze of glory in a battle sort of death. So while being a god in nearly every sense, this ability to die places Achilles firmly within the mortal realm, within you and I exist. Dionysus is a god, yet he has one godly parent (Zeus) and one mortal parent (Semele) - look for examples of gods with mortal fathers but immortal mothers, or something or other, look to Aphrodite's children and so on - in some sense, this is a gift for Achilles, since he can achieve mortal kleos far more easily. but yet.

Imagine being in a primary school class of mythology or ancient Greece. You, of course, know all of the answers to the questions, yet if you answered them with the truth, you would not be marked correctly. If a primary school student explained the story of Aphrodite's birth, this would probably lead to disciplinary action! And this is the situation in which Achilles is in. It is the fact that he exists within the mortal realm at all that kills him. Gods can prefer mortals, take Athena and Odysseus, yet they do not love them in the same way mortals can love one another. One could even argue that gods cannot love one another in the same way that mortals can. Achilles exists within this mortal realm and is driven to death by his (godly) need to avenge the death of Patroclus who, whether interpreted as a brotherly friend or lover, was certainly beloved by Achilles. It is his death that drives Achilles to kill Hector, hence ending the Trojan War, and leading to his prophesied death.

It is easy for a modern audience to say that Achilles should have simply accepted that Agamemnon as his superior at least in the traditional hierarchical sense had taken his concubine, Briseis, and that he should have returned to the battle, even if after a little while, but certainly at least after the war turns. And he does not, and we still discuss if this is an overreaction. Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix approach and supplication him, offering him gifts and so on and so forth, which he still refuses. Yet I would argue that for Achilles to return to the battle would have been for him to sacrifice his pride, and hence his kleos. For a mortal, pride does not equate to kleos, but the gods, μεν δε, are characterised by their pride, they live on it, literally, because if it is not sufficiently fed they do not continue. This may seem fantastical but it is also a literal interpretation, look at Helios and Selene, gods of sun and moon later blended into Apollo and Artemis. look at any older god blended into another for simplicity, to reduce the cost of sacrifice and worship and so on. Ao Achilles cannot forgive Agamemnon. It is only when Patroclus goes into battle, wearing Achilles’ clothes I might add, in an attempt to don the physical and literal armour of a god, that Achilles is roused to fight. Patroclus, up until this point, has not been characterised as a great warrior. And yet this armour, this disguise almost, imbued with the divine power of Achilles, leads him into one of, if not the most incredible aristeia in the Iliad or even the Greek canon. Slaughter was a part of Greek life in battle, and yet it was not mindless, we can see this in Homer’s biographies of each felled soldier - and then he killed so and so, wife of so and so with four children, five goats, and a very good credit score. There is a remorse in his death. Only in an aristeia does one kill as a weapon themselves, rather than wielding it. Achilles has the powers of a god which he is not allowed to truly exercise, essentially, and I will elaborate better when I am less sleepy and more sober. The weight and gravity of his tragedy or role as a tragic figure, is deeply underestimated.

[excerptum]

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

[theoi-crow]

The Iliad was told by a possessed man.

[ecoamerica]

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