Achilles and Patroclus: Pederastic Relationships in the Time of Homer

       The Greek hero Achilles, known for his skill as a warrior, was a hero of ancient Greece in the time of the Trojan War, thanks in part to his invincibility from being dipped in the River Styx as a baby. The River Styx is a river in the Greek underworld that separates the land of the living from that of the dead, and by being doused in its waters and surviving, he was granted skin like stone everywhere on his body except his ankle, which wasn’t submerged. His status as a great warrior meant he had a certain level of prestige amongst other soldiers, similar to how a general may differ from a captain or lieutenant in a modern army. Achilles is the star of Homer’s The Iliad, one of a pair of ancient Greek stories about the Trojan war, a likely fictional conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans of Troy.
       While Achilles is well known to modern society, there are a multitude of other aspects of Greek society that are less well known. One of these is the practice of pederasty. Pederasty is what most laymen would refer to as one of the most outright examples of homosexual relations in ancient times. In actuality, it’s a little more complicated than that. Reeve, in his book Plato on Love succinctly describes pederasty as “the socially regulated intercourse between an older Athenian male (erastês) and a teenage boy (erômenos, pais), through which the latter was supposed to learn virtue (Reeve).” While it is a topic of some debate, it is widely held that the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is a pederastic relationship. 
       Before one can characterize Achilles’ and Patroclus’ relationship, one must understand the historical context for the practice of pederasty in Greece. Pederasty is a practice that is widely believed to have begun in Minoan Crete as part of a coming-of-age ritual. It’s origins, as described in the article “The Chieftain Cup and a Minoan Rite of Passage,” are believed to be “that the passage testifies to the means by which a particular cast of aristocratic warriors was recruited from among the citizens” (Jeanmaire qtd in Koehl). In essence, the practice is believed to have been a means of recruiting the best boys of a particular class into a specific group of specialized warriors, separate from the much larger groups who would become regular soldiers. In the Minoan tradition, a boy about to go through the traditional rites of passage into manhood would be abducted from his home with the assistance of his friends by an older man, a philetor, or lover. This boy, hereby called a parastatheis, was chosen on the basis of “his comely appearance but [also] by his courage and manner[s]” (Koehl). The parastatheis would be taken away by the philetor into the country for several months where they would hunt and feast together, and likely also have intercourse of some kind. Upon returning to the city, the philetor would give the parastatheis a minimum of three gifts, an ox to sacrifice to the god, Zeus, military attire, and a special drinking cup (Koehl). This practice is not very far off from the practice of pederasty as it is known in the context of the Greeks. 
       In ancient Greece, pederasty was much less ritualistic and traditional than in the Minoan society and yet held a similar importance to Greek culture. Greek pederasty is most well documented in artifacts from the Greek city-state of Athens, where prostitution in all its various forms was apparently quite common. David Halperin, in his article, “The Democratic Body: Prostitution and Citizenship in Classical Athens,” argues that the educational or virtuous aspect attributed to Minoan pederasty, “was not, even among the honorable members of that beau monde, the essence of pederasty (Halperin).” Halperin argues that first and foremost, homosexuality in ancient Greece and Athens was often between a younger male prostitute and an older man, without the virtue of educating a male coming of age. That isn’t to say that this more traditional pederasty didn’t also exist. 
       George Haggerty and Bonnie Zimmerman in their book, Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, describe the more traditional form of pederasty, similar to how it existed in Minoan times, “tend[ing] toward long-term one-on-one relationships, with the youth eventually marrying and adopting the role of mentor to a youth of the next generation (Haggerty and Zimmerman 1035-1039).” While this practice may have been less common than the more short-lived relationship between solicitors and young male prostitutes, it is still shown to have existed in these periods. 
       Now that pederasty has been explained in its historical context and the context of ancient Greece in particular, it can be discussed how the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus fits into it. It’s important to note that nobody can say with any real certainty what the true details of their relationship entailed. Homer’s depiction of the relationship is vague in that regard, but it is easy to see, whether the relationship was meant to be pederastic in nature, platonic, or of an otherwise sexual/romantic nature, the two men were very important to one another. 
       In book 16 of The Iliad, Achilles refers to Patroclus as his “best beloved,” and again in book 17 he is referred to as Achilles’ “loved-one.” These are small, yet telling, details that speak to their close bond. One could say, however, that this is nothing more than how close friends and brothers-in-arms may refer to one another. What is most telling is how Achilles reacts to the death of Patroclus. At first hearing the news Achilles, “cast on the ground, with furious hands he spread The scorching ashes o'er his graceful head; His purple garments, and his golden hairs, Those he deforms with dust, and these he tears (Homer 546).” While ancient Greece differed a good deal from the culture and rituals of the ancient middle east, it can be construed that this act of covering oneself in ashes is a sign of great mourning, as it is shown in the book of Job in the Bible. Achilles also begins to tear his clothes and roll around on the ground in his grief, “on the hard soil his groaning breast he threw, and roll'd and grovell'd, as to earth he grew (Homer 546).” Homer even describes how this level of grief and mourning is beyond the usual for the loss of a brother-in-arms, stating, “while Nestor's son sustains a manlier part, and mourns the warrior with a warrior's heart (Homer 547).” Celsiana Warwick even states in their article “The Chaste Consecration of the Thighs: Post-Homeric Representations of Achilles and Patroclus in Classical Greek Literature,” “what Achilles and Patroclus feel for each other in The Iliad is something wholly extraordinary, a love that exceeds the boundaries of ordinary human relationships (Warwick).”
       From this evidence it is obvious that this was an intense relationship, the question remains, however, how do Achilles and Patroclus fit into the recognizable roles that characterize a pederastic relationship? They more or less do not, one of numerous reasons there is debate over the exact dynamic of their relationship. While Achilles is the younger of the two, he is more skilled in battle and holds a higher social standing than Patroclus, which doesn’t allow for pederasty as it is known in Greek culture (Warwick). Even if the relationship wasn’t pederastic in nature but still sexual in some capacity, the same rules would generally apply due to the way Greeks viewed sex and what was acceptable at the time. 
       The terminology often used to refer to either half of a homosexual relationship in ancient Greece are erastés, meaning lover, and erómenos, meaning beloved. In other terms, who took the active role in intercourse, and who took the passive role. The erastés was the active role while the erómenos was the passive role in that sense. While both people in the relationship were male, there still needed to be a feminine role, in other words, the erómenos. This was why the erómenos was generally a teenage boy who had not yet reached maturity by Grecian standards, one who had not grown a beard. Since the erómenos was not technically a man yet, there was no shame in him taking on that passive, feminine role; however, the same could not be said for older men. Once a boy had grown a beard and reached maturity, they could no longer take the role without facing some form of shame, one reason the roles also could not have been reversed, at least not in any way that would have been socially acceptable. 
       It is still possible that their relationship had been pederastic and they forewent the generally accepted standards of the time, or they were in a non-pederastic yet still romantic and/or sexual relationship. It’s possible that there was an unintentional error on behalf of the author, or some other confusion considering the poem was told verbally before being written down. It is possible, given the poem is believed to have been written sometime in the 700’s BCE that it is evidence of the osmosis of pederasty into Greek myths occurring earlier than previously thought (Cartwright). William Percy states in his book Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece, “around 600, poets and artists began to introduce pederastic episodes into the old myths or to create entirely new stories about the gods and heroes (Percy 54).” While this is considerably later than when The Iliad is believed to have been written, there is no reason to believe there is not at least a possibility for this osmosis to have begun slightly earlier than previously believed. 
       Pederasty was a large part of ancient Greek society, even appearing in many of the myths and legends the Greeks used to define parts of the universe that, at the time, they didn’t have the science to uncover themselves. Percy states that, “by the end of the fifth century perhaps, poets had assigned at least one erómenos to every important god except Ares and to many legendary figures (Percy 54).” That alone demonstrates what a large part these forms of relationships took in ancient Greek life, their gods, the beings that controlled the universe, partook in it. It is unsurprising then that it would also begin to make appearances in earlier works, such as The Iliad.  
       While there is debate as to the true dynamics of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus in Homer’s The Iliad, and ultimately no one will ever know with 100% certainty what the relationship consisted of, it is believed by many scholars that there was a pederastic element involved. Even if it wasn’t pederastic, Achilles reaction to Patroclus’ death is enough in and of itself to demonstrate the extremely close bond shared between the two men. Greek society defined homosexual relationships in this way, but it doesn’t mean that relationships did not exist outside of that norm. Perhaps that is the reason Homer doesn’t elaborate much on the details of the relationship, because it existed outside the Grecian standard for social acceptability. 

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