Death of Patroclus

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Niedzielski
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Death of Patroclus

Post by Niedzielski »

I would like to ask you all to share your thoughts regarding what the necessity is for the determination of Zeus that Patroclus shall be slain.

mwh
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Re: Death of Patroclus

Post by mwh »

Obviously there are a number of ways to approach this. Here’s one, that you may think simplistic. The poem needs Patroclus to be killed (if only to motivate the climactic Hector-Achilles duel), and Homeric poetics demand that we’re definitively told well ahead of time that Patroclus will fatally fail in his assault (such knowledge results in dramatic irony, a rich source of pathos exploited by the tragedians, while leaving room for suspense).* Zeus’ response to Achilles’ prayer (16.250, backed up by 686-8, 693) is a convenient and effective way of accomplishing that with appropriate sollemnity and authority. We can compare other prayers that are not granted. Patroclus belatedly (and face-savingly) recognizes that the outcome is Zeus’s will, aka fate (845, 849).

* It’s when Apollo zaps Pat and Zeus gives Hector the helmet that the poet tells us Hector’s end is upcoming (800). It’s an inexorable chain of deaths.

Markos
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Re: Death of Patroclus

Post by Markos »

Niedzielski wrote:I would like to ask you all to share your thoughts regarding what the necessity is for the determination of Zeus that Patroclus shall be slain.
τὸ μῖσος ὃ μῖσος ἐνεποίησε.
mwh wrote:It’s an inexorable chain of deaths.
That's sort of the Greek view of history, isn't it? The deaths start before the Iliad begins, with Agamemnon's infanticide, and then continue on after the poem ends, with the deaths of Cassandra, Agamemnon himself, then his wife gets it, her boyfriend and on and on. τὸ μῖσος ὃ μῖσος ἐνεποίησε.

Yeats blames the whole thing not on the βουλή of Zeus, but on his φαλλός.
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.

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Paul Derouda
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Re: Death of Patroclus

Post by Paul Derouda »

I don't have anything very intelligent to say here. It has something to with the general Iliadic view of the human condition, the ineluctability of fate, and the idea that the only way we humans can achieve anything of lasting importance is doing something glorious here and now. People much more eloquent than I have written thousands of pages on this...

The one important thing I have to say is that there's little or no allegory in the Iliad. I think the great beauty of the Iliad is precisely how plainly the Iliad poet tells us his story. We're not supposed to find any hidden meaning in the poem (although that doesn't mean we shouldn't analyse it.) There's something not completely unlike Hemingway, another favorite writer of mine, in his poetry.

(J.R.R. Tolkien, on the other hand, has said that he hates allegory. But his writings are full of it!)

Osterdeich
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Re: Death of Patroclus

Post by Osterdeich »

I heard Zeus wanted Patroclus dead because he was reputed to have been an eater of broken meats.

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