The Characterizations of a Hero Across Time

Achilles in Intimate Relationships

Catherine Xu, Yale University, Pauli Murray, Class of 2024

The figure of Achilles has been reimagined and reinterpreted by both ancient and modern artists drawing from Homer’s Iliad. In fact, instead of picturing Achilles as valiant and skillful in battle scenes, artists often characterize him with an interesting emphasis on his intimate relationship with a second figure in their artworks. In this essay, Xu compares two concrete items that fall under this category: a kylix drinking cup from Greek antiquity portraying Achilles’ male comradeship with Patroclus, and a brief movie clip from the contemporary production Troy highlighting Achilles’ heterosexual romance with Briseis. By giving detailed visual analysis and comparisons of the two, this essay presents the expressive qualities of each artwork while exploring the vastly different ways in which Achilles the hero has been viewed throughout time due to the artists’ and film producers’ divergent visions and motives.

Achilles is one of the most notable heroes, warriors, and demigods in ancient Greek mythology. The storyline of this heroic character centers around the mythical Trojan war, which Homer narrates in the Iliad. While classical literature depicts a nuanced picture of Achilles as having both strengths and flaws, the resulting impression of the hero that extends to today falls more on the physical features: his glorious feats and his fatal weakness known as Achilles’ heel. Nevertheless, audiences get to encounter the hero as a more sentimental and even romanticized character in works of art and media. This paper will compare and contrast the portrayal of Achilles’ close bond with Patroclus on a kylix drinking cup created by Sosias c. 500 BCE with his romantic love for Briseis in the 2004 historical war movie Troy. Both artistic productions focus on featuring the emotional aspect of Achilles under the same historical context, yet they differ in how they present their respective embodiments of Achilles in intimate relationships of different pathos, or their respective emotional tone and appeal. The differences between the two representations cause Achilles to undergo a sexual metamorphosis across time, leaving viewers to untangle the complicated web of the hero’s sexual identity for themselves. The artists’ divergent motivations to engage with target audiences play a pivotal role in generating these differences, which then associates with the medium and contextual factors of each artistic item. To begin, while Homer makes no explicit suggestions or references to Achilles and Patroclus as a homosexual pair in the Iliad, the red-figure kylix drinking cup (Fig. 1) made by Sosias of ca. 500 BCE features the strong bond between these two on a more explicit and physical level, as it depicts a scene of Achilles bandaging the wounds of Patroclus. This vessel is relatively small in size—with a height and width of 10 cm. and 32 cm., respectively—and the painting is framed in a circle in the middle of the vessel, which accounts for less than half of the flat surface on the interior. Yet despite the small scale of this image, the figural representations demonstrate exquisite details, as the artist used nearly the entirety of the circled space in portraying the close interactions between Achilles and Patroclus.

This structural feature reveals the artist’s intention to illustrate the significance and intimacy of the two’s relationship while paving the way for introducing the tenderness and nurturing qualities of Achilles that are rare for viewers to encounter in the Iliad. This depiction of Achilles bandaging Patroclus is a post-battle scene of the Trojan war imagined by the artist, for there is no description of such a moment in the Iliad. In Book 1, “The Rage of Achilles,” Homer informs the readers that Achilles outrageously quit the battlefield after his bitter dispute with Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the Achaean army.1 Even though Agamemnon sent off the embassy in a gesture of reconciliation and persuaded Achilles to rejoin the Achaean lines—as Book 9 records—the latter impulsively rejected Agamemnon’s advances, holding his grudges still. In fact, by the time the hero returned to the battlefield, he planned to take revenge on his rival Hector, who mistakenly recognized Patroclus as Achilles and killed him. This is a plot at the near-end of the poem which most strongly reflects Achilles’ grief over Patroclus’ death as well as his deep emotions for his comrade.2 The vessel portrays Achilles dressed in his full armor with his breastplate and helmet on, suggesting that he was still in battle with Patroclus at this time. Since Achilles was mostly in his tent after quitting the fight, I speculate that it would be illogical for him to be in his full military costume when not at war. Thus, it is reasonable to infer that the scene fits in the timeline before the tension between Achilles and Agamemnon; so here, Achilles and Patroclus should be just returning from the battle front of the Trojan war together, which falls out of the scope of Homer’s narration and thus, it serves an imaginary characterization of Achilles created based on the painter’s individual artistic understandings and pursuits. The artist delineates Achilles as an affectionate nurturer and caregiver on the vase, whereas Patroclus is portrayed as a wounded soldier. As mentioned above, Achilles is wearing his full armor and displays a concentrated facial expression; he kneels down on his left knee to wrap the wounded arm of Patroclus, which is a posture that embodies his attentiveness and loyalty. It is plausible that Achilles might be capable of providing medical care, as he learned it from his instructor Chiron,3 who was widely respected for his knowledge in medicine. Unlike Achilles, Patroclus is shown with a beard, which is an indication of old age in Greek art. Thus, this contrast aligns with Homer’s depiction of Patroclus as the elder friend, and Achilles’ tender attention towards the elderly here showcases the soft and often neglected side of his personality. Juxtaposing Achilles’ full armor, Patroclus has his helmet off and his breastplate unfastened, so that his physical discomfort is already implied by the painter. Moreover, Patroclus is sitting on his shield, and the tilted arrow in the front hints at the cause of his injury. He curls up his right leg, while stretching his left leg all the way to reach the boundary of this painting, as if trying to seek balance and support of his aching body. This gesture, along with his gritted teeth marked in white, and his head that is turned away, indicates the suffering that he endures. Achilles, tenderly binding the wounded arm of Patroclus, serves as the focal point of this image. This detail discloses the cruel and violent nature of the Trojan war, but most significantly, it highlights the two warriors’ close affinity, as the bandage can be seen as a symbol that not only ties up the physical wounds but also their hearts and emotions. What’s more, the undefended physical distance between them further implies their trust and faith in one another, which allows viewers to perceive their closeness on the spiritual plane. As a result, the compelling characterization of Achilles on this vessel differs from those heroic and combative portrayals in the Iliad. Interestingly, however, the intimacy between Achilles and Patroclus shown on this kylix transfers to a different nature if we incorporate scholarly arguments which indicate that Homer refrains from explicitly revealing the two as homosexual lovers.4 In particular, the scholar Kenneth Dover not only includes Achilles and Patroclus in his book Greek Homosexuality as an illustrated pair from antiquity,5 but he also expresses how he perceives the pictorial record of the kylix as containing hidden details about the homosexual aspect of their relationship (Fig. 1). On one hand, according to Dover, the skirts of both warriors are diaphanous, thus Patroclus’ posture of sitting with his thighs spread exposes his genitals, which rest on the upper surface of his right foot.6 Dover explains this in the manner “as if the painter was under a powerful

constraint not to conceal the genitals.”7 Achilles, on the other hand, kneels down just between those revealed legs and genitals of Patroclus, which in a way alludes to the two warriors’ extreme intimacy in homosexual terms. These observations supply critical insight into understanding how the artist potentially ascribes this implicit physical dimension to the intimate relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. While the kylix paints the picture of Achilles in a faithful male comradeship or homosexual relationship, the 2004 movie Troy utterly ‘converts’ his potential sexual orientation, specifically in a brief clip from the latter that shows the hero at his death.8 This movie production directed by Wolfgang Peterson is a modern adaptation again featuring the historical background of the Trojan war, though it is only loosely based on Homer’s Iliad. Specifically, the ending falls out of scope of the Iliad’s narration and instead gives another romanticized characterization of the hero that has much less literary evidence in comparison to his intimate relationship with Patroclus. In fact, Troy presents a completely new dimension of intimacy for Achilles: his heterosexual romance with Briseis. Briseis is the war prize of Achilles whose brief appearances only serve as a framing function in the Iliad, and who “remains a rather shadowy figure in comparison with Patroclus.”9 As mentioned above, the poem opens with Achilles’ rage, and the triggering factor is Agamemnon’s abduction of Briseis; his rage does not necessarily reveal much about Briseis’s importance to Achilles though—as Agamemnon’s insult and injustice were mostly relevant in this case—thus she essentially “represents a unit of currency in the Homeric economy of honor,”10 meaning that she is valuable to him as a war prize and more importantly, as a token of his glorious victory. In the movie, director Peterson designates Briseis as the cousin of Hector and Paris and as a priestess who dares to fight back when captured. These roles characterize her as noble-born, brave, and dignified, which also makes her appeal to Achilles more plausible. Thus, Peterson’s plot design is made

clear to the audiences as he paves the way for Achilles’ heterosexual romance with Briseis. Troy then extends Achilles’ image as a heavily dramatized and romanticized warrior further when he dies to save Briseis near the end of the movie. Unlike in the Iliad, the hero saves and falls in love with his booty after her spiteful abduction by Agamemnon. The ending scene, which also features the sack of Troy, depicts Achilles rushing to rescue Briseis from the bloodstained hands of the triumphant Greek army. The camera shot displays Achilles killing two Achaean soldiers without hesitation,11 which showcases his strong masculine power portrayed by actor Brad Pitt. As he lifts Briseis from the ground and softly tells her to come with him, the spotlight quickly turns to Paris, who has spotted the chance to avenge his dead brother.12 With Briseis’ exclamations in despair, the hero— with his back facing Paris defenselessly—has no time to avoid the deadly arrow that shoots through his vulnerable heel (see Fig. 3), and the next camera angle then magnifies him instantly leaning back, gasping in tremendous pain. Although the movie here emphasizes Achilles’ sentimentality like the scene on the kylix, it does not totally exclude itself from depicting his heroic spirit while romanticizing him further. Peterson shows how Achilles’ combative nature allows him to still stand up and walk over to Paris with his shaking body, and to attempt fighting back with his raised spear. However, three consecutive arrows from Paris shoot into his chest, and, eventually, the defeated hero uncontrollably kneels down to the ground with tears in his eyes (see Fig. 4),13 which sharply contrasts with

him voluntarily kneeling down in Figure 1 to care for Patroclus. The heavily romanticized characterization then continues as Achilles bids his loving farewell to Briseis: “You gave me peace, in a lifetime of war.” This romanticizing effect extends further as he affectionately holds her face in his hands and kisses her gently in slow motion (see Fig. 6)14. He then repeatedly talks the heartbroken girl into leaving with Paris as “Troy is falling,” and so the latter most reluctantly flees away. Achilles’ life ends subsequently, and the camera shot frames him lying down lifelessly with that deadly arrow piercing through his heel (see Fig. 5). Interestingly, while the destructive arrow serves as a common element that injures Patroclus in the first item and kills Achilles in the second, and they both connect to the humanized aspects of Achilles, these two depicted scenes convey a vastly different pathos, meaning their emotional tones and appeal. Compared to the tender scene of Achilles caring for Patroclus, the second scene here portrays how the hero dies in a tragic romance for Briseis, which is substantially dramatized and romanticized using contemporary filming techniques. The rest of this paper then concerns the two items’ respective purposes as well as the artists’ motivations, which explain their different expressive qualities and lead to audience groups with divergent interpretations of Achilles. Firstly, in terms of usage, the kylix shown in Figure 1 is a two-handled wine-drinking cup popular for contexts like the symposia or drinking banquets in Greek antiquity. Kylix vases were also vehicles for images, according to François Lissarrague.15 If symposium participants were drinking wine using this cup back then, what would be their thoughts after looking into the shallow bottom of the interior surface that features Achilles’ compelling intimacy with Patroclus? Or why would hosts of the symposium order this specific artistic portrayal from potters and vessel painters? Since symposia are private social gatherings, we may expect to find a participant drinking together with an intimate someone, let it be a friend or homosexual lover in this case. Depending on their different individual identities and experiences, the pair may either interpret the close bond between the two mythological heroes as friendship or love, through which they may delightfully find similarity and resonance with them. This along with the element of drinking may add to their feelings of liberation and happiness.16 Thus, hosts could maintain an enjoyable atmosphere for their symposia by potentially enhancing the intimacy between those drinking pairs as they observe, interpret, and bond over the hosts’ well-chosen artistic vessel. What’s more, the imaginary nature of the painted scene reflects that the artist is comfortable with taking a degree of license largely on grounds of the usage and contextual details of the kylix. That gives the viewers reason to anticipate a different perspective on Achilles than they might otherwise encounter. The movie Troy, on the other hand, embodies Peterson’s motivations to merge an eye-catching love story into the movie’s overall historical war narrative to entertain his potential audience. Although Troy is a commercial adaptation based on the Iliad, its chief storyline does not fail to emphasize the chronicles of the Trojan war and the fates of the heros involved. This also means that this Hollywood blockbuster at least

partially succeeds in bringing the Homeric traditions again back into the sights of the public through its own medium. Consequently, the romance between Achilles and Briseis serves more as a deliberately designed sideline of the story that intends to add emotional layers to the central narrative while taking a break from the heavy tone of the war setting. In addition, as the societal context in 2004 is not welcoming enough to embrace a homosexual couple, it is clear that Peterson wants Troy to stay in line with mainstream and traditional aesthetics in contemporary cinematic productions as well as popular culture. This means that leaving Achilles and Patroclus as homosexually intimate would definitely divert attention from the central story plot while also risking having fewer target audience groups. Peterson does strive to still showcase Achilles’ affinity with Patroclus in the adapted form of kinship, yet it is not emotionally strong enough due to the need for romantic ties on the dramatical level. As a result, directly assigning Achilles in an appealing heterosexual relationship with Briseis appears to be the director’s plausible artistic pursuit in Troy. Nonetheless, Peterson here risks generating different levels of reception among scholars, critics, and certain audience groups as he intends to please the general audience pool with a rather conventional romantic narrative. The central debate is undoubtedly how truthful contemporary movie productions like Troy should be to their original accounts, in this case the Iliad. Essentially this is an open-ended question, but it is a bit surprising to find many scholars in the classics field actually view Peterson’s movie as a piece of cinema and recreation of old legends that should be understood on its own terms by laying aside preconceptions.17 Some critics maintain that the Troy filmmaking team does not do Homer enough justice though, as they are bothered by the significant departures between the movie scripts and the Homeric texts. Others, however, acknowledge the fact that there was no historical advisor for the movie, but since Homer was not a historian himself, the interests of the contemporary audiences naturally lie in the story presented to them. Moreover, as Peterson and his team are in essence ‘inspired by’ the Iliad, their final product “has no duty to be evangelically accurate to its original source.” Then what about the experiences of different audience groups? In particular, how would they view the characterization of Achilles? For those who believe Homer forbears to tell the readers that Achilles and Patroclus are lovers and see no hint of romance between the two in Troy, they may sensitively detect how the movie taboos homosexual love by heterosexualizing their hero. Thus, from the standpoints of those audiences, Achilles undergoes an unjustified sexual metamorphosis across time. For those who don’t have much prior knowledge of the field though, they may regard Achilles as a celebrity they admire or wish to encounter in the contemporary world—someone who is significantly human yet still distant from ordinary. This is because Peterson dramatized and romanticized him “after modern standards to please his modern viewers,” and I think this approach of negotiating audience expectations also risks leading those viewers to make deviated or even wrong impressions on the hero. In consequence, comprehending the image of Achilles can be vastly different for viewers in antiquity versus modernity due to the artists’ and film producers’ divergent motives and artistic concerns.

In conclusion, this paper compares and contrasts the characterization of Achilles together with Patroclus on a kylix drinking cup in Greek antiquity to Achilles together with Briseis in a clip from the contemporary film production Troy. Both items are also compared to Homer’s Iliad in terms of content, as both scene depictions are set against the Trojan war, and they all portray Achilles in intimate relationships, whether or not supported by textual evidence. However, as the two are showcased using vastly different mediums, red-figure painting versus movie clip, and presented in vastly different original contexts, ancient symposia versus modern cinemas, the painter and film producers differ in their visions and motives to engage with the audiences correspondingly. Furthermore, the pathos of their respective characterizations also differs, as the kylix portrays him in a tender post-battle scene while the movie sentimentalizes him at the scene of his death. Hence, depending on which item, one should be ready to encounter Achilles either in male comradeship or heterosexual romance, both of which invite viewers to walk into the inner emotional world of this epic mythological hero