bring him back to me

achilles and patroclus

“i love him.”

★☆☆☆☆

“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.”

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Achilles: Wait you like me?? For my personality???

Patroclus: I know. I was surprised too.

He is half of my soul, as the poets say. 

Re-designing my favourite book covers, this time for a story that has stolen my heart a thousand times, The Song of Achilles. 

Achilles' face is sweat-streaked, his breaths harsh. But he does not pause. "Hector!" He screams. And the hunt begins again.

Somewhere, the gods whisper: He has beaten one of us. What will happen if he attacks the city? Troy is not meant to fall yet.

And I think: Do not fear for Troy. It is only Hector that he wants. Hector, and Hector alone. When Hector is dead, he will stop.

The Song Of Achilles, Madeline Miller.

Young Patroclus : I hate you. You are disgusting. I hate your guts and everything about you. You don’t care for anyone, do you? You’re just a total show off. You’re sick, in a bad way. And stupid. And a jerk. Just leave me alone and don’t talk to me.

Young Achilles, talking to Pelius and pointing at Patroclus : Dad, I want him.

While i believe that everywhere any time, no matter if you haven't read the song of achilles, the “I'm made of memories” line would always hit, but like when you know the context, WHEN YOU KNOW THE CONTEXT lord, it's a whole different feeling

When you realize that that was the first civil conversation he had with Thetis, when you realize that he had been alone doing nothing but watching, listening, LEARNING and you realize that she was finally trying to learn about Achilles the man, not the god he could've been, when you realize that it was her way of acknowledging the importance that he plays in Achilles life, WHEN YOU REALIZE THE AMOUNT OF TIME THAT HAD PASSED, that at that point he had lost all that made him HIM, all except the memories that held him bay

When you realize that truly currently, the Patroclus that existed in the air wasn't man, he was memories

That's when the pain really hits tbh

Hector: -fucking murders Patroclus-

Hector 20 minutes later in his armor:

Me: All of the characters in the Iliad have flaws and aren’t perfect heroes

“He is half of my soul, as the poets say”

Them😭💛

Currently reading Song of Achilles. Hector bout to be my favorite character if he makes these homos actually do something for once. I signed up for angst and bloodshed, not two hundred pages of self pity and sulking, Miller.

eddie diaz- 911 2x18 the life we choose // the song of achilles- chapter 9- madeline miller // evan buckley- 911 4x14 survivors

I’m trying to decide If I hate myself enough to go reread and annotate The Song of Achilles

AFTER HE HAD WASHED his stained hands and changed his bloodied clothes, Agamemnon called us all back to the marketplace. Artemis, he said, had been displeased with the bloodshed this huge army intended. She demanded payment for it, in advance, in kind. Cows were not enough. A virgin priestess was required, human blood for human blood; the leader’s eldest daughter would be best.

Iphigenia had known, he said, had agreed to do it. Most men had not been close enough to see the startled panic in her eyes. Gratefully, they believed their general’s lie.

They burned her that night on cypress wood, the tree of our darkest gods. Agamemnon broached a hundred casks of wine for celebration; we were leaving for Troy on the morning’s tide. Inside our tent Achilles fell into exhausted sleep, his head in my lap. I stroked his forehead, watching the trembles of his dreaming face. In the corner lay his bloodied groom’s tunic. Looking at it, at him, my chest felt hot and tight. It was the first death he had ever witnessed. I eased his head off my lap and stood.

Outside, men sang and shouted, drunk and getting drunker. On the beach the pyre burned high, fed by the breeze. I strode past campfires, past lurching soldiers. I knew where I was going.

There were guards outside his tent, but they were slumping, half-asleep. “Who are you?” one asked, starting up. I stepped past him and threw open the tent’s door.

Odysseus turned. He had been standing at a small table, his finger to a map. There was a half-finished dinner plate beside it.

“Welcome, Patroclus. It’s all right, I know him,” he added to the guard stuttering apologies behind me.

He waited until the man was gone. “I thought you might come.”

I made a noise of contempt. “You would say that whatever you thought.”

He half-smiled. “Sit, if you like. I’m just finishing my dinner.”

“You let them murder her.” I spat the words at him.

He drew a chair to the table. “What makes you think I could have stopped them?”

“You would have, if it had been your daughter.” I felt like my eyes were throwing off sparks. I wanted him burnt.

“I don’t have a daughter.” He tore a piece of bread, sopped it into gravy. Ate.

“Your wife then. What if it had been your wife?”

He looked up at me. “What do you wish me to say? That I would not have done it?”

“Yes.”

“I would not have. But perhaps that is why Agamemnon is king of Mycenae, and I rule only Ithaca.”

Too easily his answers came to him. His patience enraged me.

“Her death is on your head.”

A wry twist of his mouth. “You give me too much credit. I am a counselor only, Patroclus. Not a general.”

“You lied to us.”

“About the wedding? Yes. It was the only way Clytemnestra would let the girl come.” The mother, back in Argos. Questions rose in me, but I knew this trick of his. I would not let him divert me from my anger. My finger stabbed the air.

“You dishonored him.” Achilles had not thought of this yet— he was too grieved with the girl’s death.

But I had. They had tainted him with their deceit.

Odysseus waved a hand. “The men have already forgotten he was part of it. They forgot it when the girl’s blood spilled.”

“It is convenient for you to think so.”

He poured himself a cup of wine, drank. “You are angry, and not without reason. But why come to me? I did not hold the knife, or the girl.”

“There was blood,” I snarled. “All over him, his face. In his mouth. Do you know what it did to him?”

“He grieves that he did not prevent it.”

“Of course,” I snapped. “He could barely speak.”

Odysseus shrugged. “He has a tender heart. An admirable quality, surely. If it helps his conscience, tell him I placed Diomedes where he was on purpose. So Achilles would see too late.”

I hated him so much I could not speak.

He leaned forward in his chair. “May I give you some advice? If you are truly his friend, you will help him leave this soft heart behind. He’s going to Troy to kill men, not rescue them.” His dark eyes held me like swift-running current. “He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”

The words drove breath from me, left me stuttering. “He is not—”

“But he is. The best the gods have ever made. And it is time he knew it, and you did too. If you hear nothing else I say, hear that. I do not say it in malice.”

I was no match for him and his words that lodged like quills and would not be shaken loose.

“You are wrong,” I said. He did not answer me, only watched me turn and flee from him in silence.

- The Song of Achilles

Achilles and portrait practise

I’m currently reading “the song of achilles” and Achilles is just so radiantly described! Captivating and golden

The Song Of Achilles.

“my child is completely fine”

your child’s comfort book is the song of achilles

"And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth, when another is gone."

The Greek Gods, just in general: