As his ranks thinned, Agamemnon finally agreed to allow Chryseis to return to her father. However, he demanded a replacement concubine in exchange: Achilles' wife, the Trojan princess Breseis.
The idea that Patroclus and Achilles were lovers is quite old. Many Greco-Roman authors read their relationship as a romantic one—it was a common and accepted interpretation in the ancient world. We even have a fragment from a lost tragedy of Aeschylus, where Achilles speaks of his and Patroclus' “frequent kisses.”
With Lycomedes' daughter Deidamia, whom in the account of Statius he raped, Achilles there fathered two sons, Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus, after his father's possible alias) and Oneiros.
Now, Barker is back with The Women of Troy. Years have passed, the war has ended, Achilles is dead, and Briseis is pregnant with his child. Before his last battle Achilles gave Briseis to Alcimus, a trusted general, to prevent her being auctioned off with his other possessions.
Even though she was a war prize, Achilles and Briseis fell in love with each other, and Achilles may have gone to Troy intending to spend much time in his tent with her, as was portrayed in the movie.
Achilles responds by saying that Patroclus is his husband.
She was married to Mynes, a son of the King of Lyrnessus, until Achilles sacked her city and enslaved her shortly before the events of the poem.
Patroclus and Thetis' Son
Once Thetis gave into marrying Patroclus, she became determined to have a child with him. But first, she had to make sure her son Achilles was safe.
We know Achilles wasn't much of a family man. He spent much of his life out in the battlefields, and he never married or settled in any one place. Some stories even suggest he might have been gay. However, we do know that Achilles had one son, a boy named Pyrrhus Neoptolemus.
When Briseis is taken from him in the Iliad, Achilles describes her in startlingly emotional language: in fact, he calls her the 'wife of his heart', declaring that 'any good and sensible man loves and cares for his own woman as I loved her from my heart, although she was acquired by my spear'.
As his ranks thinned, Agamemnon finally agreed to allow Chryseis to return to her father. However, he demanded a replacement concubine in exchange: Achilles' wife, the Trojan princess Breseis. Achilles did as his commander asked and relinquished his bride.
Family. Patroclus was the son of Menoetius by either Philomela or Polymele, Sthenele, Periopis, or lastly Damocrateia. His only sibling was Myrto, mother of Eucleia by Heracles.
Neoptolemus, in Greek legend, the son of Achilles, the hero of the Greek army at Troy, and of Deïdamia, daughter of King Lycomedes of Scyros; he was sometimes called Pyrrhus, meaning “Red-haired.” In the last year of the Trojan War the Greek hero Odysseus brought him to Troy after the Trojan seer Helenus had declared ...
They become friends and possibly lovers. In Homer's Iliad, Achilles describes Patroclus as 'the man I loved beyond all other comrades, loved as my own life'.
Patroclus and Achilles relationship is a deep bond because they grew up together, and this has been viewed and interpreted by others as a romantic relationship rather than purely platonic. Although, there is no certainty regarding what the proper label is to put on the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles.
Achilles and Patroclus in love
In Plato's Symposium (179E-180B), the character Phaedrus mentions that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, mentioning a play by Aeschylus that we only know in fragments, the Myrmidons, in which the playwright mentions the “many kisses” between them.
Achilles fell in love with one of Lycomedes' daughters, Deidamia, and impregnated her. Later, Odysseus discovered Achilles hiding in the court of Lycomedes and tricked him into revealing his true identity. Achilles then left the court of Lycomedes with Odysseus to fight in the Trojan war which broke Deidamia's heart.
Paris himself, soon after, received a fatal wound from an arrow shot by the rival archer Philoctetes.
Neoptolemus was Achilles' only child
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Achilles was cremated and his ashes buried in the same urn as those of his friend Patroclus. This was well, because it was said that Achilles and Patroclus shared the love that dares not speak its name.
The idea that Patroclus and Achilles were lovers is quite old. Many Greco-Roman authors read their relationship as a romantic one—it was a common and accepted interpretation in the ancient world. We even have a fragment from a lost tragedy of Aeschylus, where Achilles speaks of his and Patroclus' “frequent kisses.”
Thetis, the mother of Achilles, disguised him as a girl and planted him among the daughters of Lycomedes. This was to prevent him from fighting in the Trojan war because an oracle had prophesied that Achilles would die should he partake in the war.
Menelaus and Helen then returned to Sparta, where they lived happily until their deaths. According to a variant of the story, Helen, in widowhood, was driven out by her stepsons and fled to Rhodes, where she was hanged by the Rhodian queen Polyxo in revenge for the death of her husband, Tlepolemus, in the Trojan War.
Before Troy falls, she tells Patroclus that if the Greeks lose, she'll claim him as her husband. When Patroclus is killed in battle, Briseis is devastated and blames Achilles for his death, claiming that he never deserved Patroclus.
Patroclus's Last Words
Fate and the son of Leto have overpowered me, and among mortal men Euphorbus; you are yourself third only in the killing of me.