There is no King Menelaus in known Spartan history of the time. [70] Well known is the connection of these mythological Fortunate Isles (μακαρῶν νῆσοι, makárôn nêsoi) or the Homeric Elysium with the stream Oceanus which according to Greek mythology surrounds the inhabited world, which should have accounted for the identification of the northern strands of the Euxine with it. The Homeric epic only covers a few weeks of the decade-long war, and does not narrate Achilles' death. Yes, Achilles is a mythological figure, not a historical one (as far as we know). [66] Pliny's contemporary Pomponius Mela (c. 43 AD) tells that Achilles was buried on an island named Achillea, situated between the Borysthenes and the Ister, adding to the geographical confusion. This puts Menelaus in a bate, and gives his brother Agamemnon an excuse to start a war. … Some retellings also state that Achilles was scaling the gates of Troy and was hit with a poisoned arrow. [37][38] Although there is no direct evidence in the text of the Iliad that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, this theory was expressed by some later authors. An Achilles' heel or Achilles heel is a weakness in spite of overall strength, which can lead to downfall. We can safely assume that Troy did exist. In 5th-century BC Athens, the intense bond was often viewed in light of the Greek custom of paiderasteia. He appointed five leaders (each leader commanding 500 Myrmidons): Menesthius, Eudorus, Peisander, Phoenix and Alcimedon. And after they finish the sprinkling, they clean the hearth of the temple with their wings. He was reaching through the book, into somewhere—somewhere that did not exist. Following the death of Patroclus, Nestor's son Antilochus becomes Achilles' closest companion. Her father Chryses, a priest of Apollo, begs Agamemnon to return her to him. While the mythological origin refers to a physical vulnerability, idiomatic references to other attributes or qualities that can lead to downfall are common. Although Achilles’s treatment of Briseïs is certainly questionable, there is little reason to doubt that his attachment to her is genuine. In another version of the story, Odysseus arranges for a trumpet alarm to be sounded while he was with Lycomedes' women; while the women flee in panic, Achilles prepares to defend the court, thus giving his identity away. I am currently a student at Indiana University Bloomington pursuing a double major in classical studies and history. It does not mention them kissing or having sex. The Trojan War began when Helen, the queen of Sparta, was abducted by the Trojan prince named Paris. Patroclus succeeds in pushing the Trojans back from the beaches, but is killed by Hector before he can lead a proper assault on the city of Troy. As the book progresses, the image of Achilles as a spiteful child is sharpened dramatically. Achilles stood in for him, although he had been warned … Achilles chases Hector around the wall of Troy three times before Athena, in the form of Hector's favorite and dearest brother, Deiphobus, persuades Hector to stop running and fight Achilles face to face. Some of these animals they slaughter, others they set free on the island, in Achilles' honour. [36] At first, he was so distracted by her beauty, he did not fight as intensely as usual. In Act I, Scene 3, the character Ulysses complains about how Achilles has been spending all his time in his tent in bed with Patroclus. "Alexander came to rest at Phaselis, a coastal city which was later renowned for the possession of Achilles' original spear." [11], There is a tale which offers an alternative version of these events: In the Argonautica (4.760) Zeus' sister and wife Hera alludes to Thetis' chaste resistance to the advances of Zeus, pointing out that Thetis was so loyal to Hera's marriage bond that she coolly rejected the father of gods. In twenty-first-century adaptations of the story of the Trojan War, Achilles and Patroklos are often portrayed as gay lovers. The author’s intentions in this case, however, are probably irrelevant, since we do know for certain that many later Greek writers did interpret Achilles and Patroklos as being in a sexual relationship. If he did anything that his worth did not entitle him to do, if he showed hubris by rejecting Agamemnon’s gifts, Zeus would surely have set him straight (as he does in due course). The first root part *h₂eḱ- "sharp, pointed" also gave Greek ἀκή (akḗ "point, silence, healing"), ἀκμή (akmḗ "point, edge, zenith") and ὀξύς (oxús "sharp, pointed, keen, quick, clever"), whereas ἄχος stems from the root *h₂egʰ- "to be upset, afraid". The Trojans, led by Hector, subsequently push the Greek army back toward the beaches and assault the Greek ships. ABOVE: Image from this review article of a scene with Achilles, Patroclus, and Thersites in a performance of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Troilus and Cressida from 2018. As I discuss in greater depth in this article from March 2019, it is certainly true that Troy (or, as it is perhaps more accurately known, Wilusa) was a real city. His hand returned from inside the book, clutching by the nape of the neck the Greek warrior Achilles. [55][74] Pausanias has been told that the island is "covered with forests and full of animals, some wild, some tame. This so-called Achilles paradox dealt with the problem of a continuum, a limited distance divided into unlimited smaller units. And greatly as the gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover is more divine; because he is inspired by God.”, “Now Achilles was quite aware, for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid death and return home, and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hektor. [22], When the Greeks left for the Trojan War, they accidentally stopped in Mysia, ruled by King Telephus. The Iliad begins with Achilles getting into an … Achilles, in Greek mythology, son of the mortal Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, and the Nereid, or sea nymph, Thetis. "The Iliad", Fagles translation. The Aethiopis (7th century BC) and a work named Posthomerica, composed by Quintus of Smyrna in the fourth century AD, relate further events from the Trojan War. This is known to have been an extremely common practice between male partners in ancient Greece. Plato, for instance, addresses this idea in his Symposion through his myth of the primeval human being. Achilles is a popular subject in ancient Greek art, appearing on vases from all over Greece, from Athens to Mykonos. The city was visited in 333 BC by Alexander the Great, who envisioned himself as the new Achilles and carried the Iliad with him, but his court biographers do not mention the spear; however, it was shown in the time of Pausanias in the 2nd century AD. [16] Thetis foretold that her son's fate was either to gain glory and die young, or to live a long but uneventful life in obscurity. Achilles killed him in revenge (as Achilles also did with Hector after Patroclus was slain) after Memnon killed Nestor's son Antilochus. ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix dated to c. 500 BC depicting Achilles seated on the chair wrapped tightly in a himation, mourning for Patroklos. Odysseus eventually gave the armour to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. The Athenian philosopher Plato (lived c. 429 – c. 347 BCE) has the speaker Phaidros in his dialogue The Symposion say that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers. Contrary to Aischylos, however, Phaidros insists that Achilles was the eromenos and Patroklos was the erastes. The heroic cult dedicated to Achilles on Leuce seems to go back to an account from the lost epic Aethiopis according to which, after his untimely death, Thetis had snatched her son from the funeral pyre and removed him to a mythical Λεύκη Νῆσος (Leúkē Nêsos "White Island"). The fact that Aischines could treat it as axiomatic that Achilles and Patroklos were in a homosexual relationship in a speech that was meant to be delivered in front of an Athenian jury clearly demonstrates that, by the time Aischines was writing in the late fourth century BCE, this must have been a fairly widely accepted interpretation. • Achilles appears in Dante's Inferno (composed 1308–1320). The excerpt below from The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction helps answer some of the many questions about the infamous war Homer helped immortalize.. By Eric Cline. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, king of Phthia. The "present day" measures, he gives at this point, seem to account for an identification of Achillea or Leuce with today's Snake Island. According to Homer, Achilles was brought up by his mother at Phthia with his … As the battle turns against the Greeks, thanks to the influence of Zeus, Nestor declares that the Trojans are winning because Agamemnon has angered Achilles, and urges the king to appease the warrior. ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the walls of the acropolis of Troy VII, ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a portion of the walls of Troy VII, Breaking out of the “gay” versus “straight” dichotomy. "Dares' account of the destruction of Troy, Greek Mythology Link", Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Achilles&oldid=987983943, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Moreover, the Iliad and the Odyssey are clearly both works of fiction, utterly detached from whatever historical basis they may have. While I do think that it is likely that there was some kind of military conflict at some point between some Mycenaean Greek kingdoms and the city of Wilusa, this war must have been so utterly different from what modern people think of when they hear the phrase “Trojan War” that it is not worth even calling it that. [23], According to other reports in Euripides' lost play about Telephus, he went to Aulis pretending to be a beggar and asked Achilles to heal his wound. The Aethiopis is now lost, except for scattered fragments quoted by later authors. They bring animals in their ships, destined to be sacrificed. "My 「Stand」—「Mad World」." the Cypria, the Little Iliad by Lesches of Pyrrha, the Aithiopis and Iliou persis by Arctinus of Miletus), there is no trace of any reference to his general invulnerability or his famous weakness at the heel; in the later vase paintings presenting the death of Achilles, the arrow (or in many cases, arrows) hit his torso. Herodotus, Pliny the Elder and Strabo reported on the existence of a town Achílleion (Ἀχίλλειον), built by settlers from Mytilene in the sixth century BC, close to the hero's presumed burial mound in the Troad. The tragedies relate the deeds of Achilles during the Trojan War, including his defeat of Hector and eventual death when an arrow shot by Paris and guided by Apollo punctures his heel. Shakespeare does not explicitly say that Achilles and Patroclus are having sex when they are in bed together alone in Achilles’s tent, but he certainly implies it and modern performances of the play generally do portray Achilles and Patroclus as explicitly lovers. None of the sources before Statius make any reference to this general invulnerability. [41] In the oldest one, the Iliad, and as predicted by Hector with his dying breath, the hero's death was brought about by Paris with an arrow (to the heel according to Statius). . Homer does not suggest that Achilles and his close friend Patroclus were lovers. ), In the following chapter of his book, Pliny refers to the same island as Achillea and introduces two further names for it: Leuce or Macaron (from Greek [νῆσος] μακαρῶν "island of the blest"). Compare also the Latin word family of aciēs "sharp edge or point, battle line, battle, engagement", acus "needle, pin, bodkin", and acuō "to make pointed, sharpen, whet; to exercise; to arouse" (whence acute). Their age had now died, leaving behind it all the bloodthirstiness, but none of the heroism or martial excellence, of the Trojan War. As they have no sacrificial animals, but wish to get them from the god of the island himself, they consult Achilles' oracle. [78] Nicolae Densuşianu recognized a connection to Achilles in the names of Aquileia and of the northern arm of the Danube delta, called Chilia (presumably from an older Achileii), though his conclusion, that Leuce had sovereign rights over the Black Sea, evokes modern rather than archaic sea-law. This does not, however, mean that the Trojan War as we think of it really happened. The idea that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers mostly died out during the Middle Ages, but it does notably reappear in the tragedy Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare, which is thought to have been written in around 1602. For the Roman emperor with this name, see, Later epic accounts: fighting Penthesilea and Memnon, Achilles in Roman and medieval literature. When Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons and daughter of Ares, arrives in Troy, Priam hopes that she will defeat Achilles. Aischylos portrayed Achilles as the erastes, or active partner, and Patroklos as the eromenos, or passive partner. Another etymology relates the name to a Proto-Indo-European compound *h₂eḱ-pṓds "sharp foot" which first gave an Illyrian *āk̂pediós, evolving through time into *ākhpdeós and then *akhiddeús. "It is said . For instance, I wrote an article in May 2020 about how there actually is a god in Greek mythology called “Kratos” and I wrote an article October 2020 in which I briefly talk about a scene involving the portrayal of Cleopatra from Assassin’s Creed Origins—despite the fact that I haven’t actually played any of the God of War games or any of the Assassin’s Creed games. The prophet Calchas correctly determines the source of the troubles but will not speak unless Achilles vows to protect him. Also, in the fragmentary poems of the Epic Cycle in which one can find description of the hero's death (i.e. Did the fabulous Shield of Achilles forged by Hephaestus ever exist? I may or may not do something similar with Hades at some point. When Does United States History Really Begin? Scenes on black- and red-figure pottery from the 7th to the 5th century BCE include Peleus giving his son to the care of Chiron, Achilles receiving his divine armour from his mother Thetis, the hero pursuing prince Troilus, slaying Hector and dragging the Trojan prince behind his chariot. The dialogue is primarily a debate between two men over which are better: sexual relationships with women or sexual relationships with boys. [72], The Greek geographer Dionysius Periegetes, who lived probably during the first century AD, wrote that the island was called Leuce "because the wild animals which live there are white. It's possible that there were people named Achilles in history, but the original (as told in Greek myths) doesn't exist. Accepting his fate, Hector begs Achilles, not to spare his life, but to treat his body with respect after killing him. Achilles was the greatest of the warriors famed for his swiftness on the Greek (Achaean) side during the Trojan War, directly competing with Troy's warrior hero Hector. Anthony Edwards (1985b), "Achilles in the Odyssey: Ideologies of Heroism in the Homeric Epic". Achilles and Odysseus had inhabited an age of heroes. In Book 11 of Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus sails to the underworld and converses with the shades. The nearest thing to a historical record of Achilles is the Iliad, a poem about Troy and its war with Greece. His mother Thetis comes to comfort the distraught Achilles. [67] Ruins of a square temple, measuring 30 meters to a side, possibly that dedicated to Achilles, were discovered by Captain Kritzikly in 1823 on Snake Island. Thetis and the Nereids mourning Achilles, Corinthian black-figure hydria, c. 555 BC (Louvre, Paris), Achilles and Ajax playing the board game petteia, black-figure oinochoe, c. 530 BC (Capitoline Museums, Rome). Agamemnon, of course, is as guilty of creating the ensuing disorder as Achilles is, but Achilles seems petulant and argumentative. They ask permission to slaughter the victims chosen from among the animals that graze freely on the island, and to deposit in exchange the price which they consider fair. Achilles was the bravest, handsomest, and greatest warrior of the army of Agamemnon in the Trojan War. Ptolemy Hephaestion, New History Book 6 (summary from Photius, Myriobiblon 190) (trans. The episode then formed the basis of the cyclic epic Aethiopis, which was composed after the Iliad, possibly in the 7th century BC. Later Chiron exhumed the body of the Damysus, who was the fastest of all the giants, removed the ankle, and incorporated it into Achilles' burnt foot. Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the Iliad, other sources concur that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, who shot him in the heel with an arrow. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound and Telephus was healed. I would like to think that Achilles was a true historical figure (although not the totally amazing hero as portrayed in the poem). Its paintings and statuary depict scenes from the Trojan War, with particular focus on Achilles. He engaged Hector (the chief Trojan warrior) in single combat and later, with the aid of the goddess Athena, rescued the body of Achilles … Achilles is perhaps most famous for being imperfectly invulnerable, a detail of his exciting and mythical life known as the Achilles Heel … When Achilles instantly takes up the spear, Odysseus sees through his disguise and convinces him to join the Greek campaign. The tomb of Achilles,[53] extant throughout antiquity in Troad,[54] was venerated by Thessalians, but also by Persian expeditionary forces, as well as by Alexander the Great and the Roman emperor Caracalla. Achilles describes Patroklos several times as his “πολὺ φίλτατος . [1], According to Photius, the sixth book of the New History by Ptolemy Hephaestion reported that Thetis burned in a secret place the children she had by Peleus; but when she had Achilles, Peleus noticed, tore him from the flames with only a burnt foot, and confided him to the centaur Chiron. Penguin Books, 1991: 22.346. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window). After having a dream where Patroclus begs Achilles to hold his funeral, Achilles hosts a series of funeral games in his honour.[35]. For this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit, and had her wed Peleus. [82], The tragedian Sophocles also wrote The Lovers of Achilles, a play with Achilles as the main character. There’s an arch for Achilles and Patroclus . Also, Orestes and Pylades, and Theseus and Peirithous, and many others among the greatest heroes are celebrated in song for having jointly performed the greatest and noblest exploits, not because they slept together, but out of mutual admiration.”. In another version of this story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire in order to burn away the mortal parts of his body. Achilles asks Priam for Polyxena's hand in marriage. Pearse) (Greek mythographer C1st to C2nd A.D.) : Achilles' name can be analyzed as a combination of ἄχος (áchos) "distress, pain, sorrow, grief"[4] and λαός (laós) "people, soldiers, nation", resulting in a proto-form *Akhí-lāu̯os "he who has the people distressed" or "he whose people have distress". At this point it becomes apparent that Achilles took charge of him because of love.”. Alternatively, Telephus held Orestes for ransom, the ransom being Achilles' aid in healing the wound. So many do now. He is seen in Hell's second circle, that of lust. The Growth of Achilles Russell Selva Course: ENGL 121H Instructor: Dr. Joan Faust Essay Type: Literary Analysis From the first pages of Homer's The Iliad, Achilles is portrayed as vengeful, proud, and petty. In the resulting battle, Achilles gave Telephus a wound that would not heal; Telephus consulted an oracle, who stated that "he that wounded shall heal". In. Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals for the hand of Thetis until Prometheus, the fore-thinker, warned Zeus of a prophecy (originally uttered by Themis, goddess of divine law) that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father. Notably, the writer Xenophon (lived c. 430 – 354 BCE) wrote a response to Plato’s Symposion in which he makes the speaker Socrates specifically argue that Achilles and Patroklos were not lovers. [28][31] Ancient writers treated Troilus as the epitome of a dead child mourned by his parents. Although Achilles possesses superhuman strength and has a close relationship with the gods, he may strike modern readers as less than heroic. Achilles' wrath (μῆνις Ἀχιλλέως, mênis Achilléōs) is the central theme of the poem. But they do not worship Hercules, alleging as a reason that he ravaged their country. I mention this because it is well known that, in the Iliad, Achilles has a strong attachment to—and apparent sexual desire for—Briseïs, the woman whom he has captured and forced to become his personal sex-slave. Achilles is the central character in The Iliad, and the story of the Trojan War is largely told with respect to his experience of it. Near the Sigeium is a temple and monument of Achilles, and monuments also of Patroclus and Anthlochus. The philosopher Zeno of Elea centred one of his paradoxes on an imaginary footrace between "swift-footed" Achilles and a tortoise, by which he attempted to show that Achilles could not catch up to a tortoise with a head start, and therefore that motion and change were impossible. Achilles killing Penthesilea, tondo of an Attic red-figure kylix, c. 465 BC, from Vulci. Required fields are marked *. And there may have been one not so incredibly different from the one described by Homer. Achilles was one of the greatest warriorsand heroes for the Greeks in the Trojan War. Alexander the Great, son of the Epirote princess Olympias, could therefore also claim this descent, and in many ways strove to be like his great ancestor. The poem ends with a description of Hector's funeral, with the doom of Troy and Achilles himself still to come. I watched Troy last night, and really enjoyed it, however I just wondered if Achilles did really exist, and if so was he as good at fighting as made out in the film, or was he just a good swords man, but not half god? Like many mythological figures, the stories about him evolved over time and contain discrepancies. We have no evidence that any of the characters described in any of the works of ancient Greek literature about the Trojan War ever existed or that any of the specific events described in those works ever happened. When Aischylos uses the phrase “sacred wonder of the thighs,” he is alluding to intercrural sex, which is a form of non-penetrative intercourse in which a man rubs his penis between the thighs of his partner. There are also in this island countless numbers of sea birds, which look after Achilles' temple. The Iliad does not at any point explicitly describe Achilles and Patroklos as lovers. The Periplus of the Euxine Sea (c. 130 AD) gives the following details: It is said that the goddess Thetis raised this island from the sea, for her son Achilles, who dwells there. The Erotes is a dialogue written in the Greek language that is traditionally attributed to the Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 CE), but it is often thought to have actually been written by a later imitator of Loukianos, probably in around the late third or early fourth century CE. To the contrary, in the Iliad Homer mentions Achilles being wounded: in Book 21 the Paeonian hero Asteropaeus, son of Pelagon, challenged Achilles by the river Scamander. This strand continues in Latin accounts of the Trojan War by writers such as Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius and in Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie and Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, which remained the most widely read and retold versions of the Matter of Troy until the 17th century. Achilles is the strongest, more virile of men—the son of a nymph and a mortal man, Achilles was prophesized at birth to either die an unimportant old man, or to die a young hero. It is hard to say whether the author of the Iliad intended his audience to interpret Achilles and Patroklos’s relationship as sexual. We should not impose spurious modern dichotomies on texts from 2,800 years ago. [55] Achilles' cult was also to be found at other places, e. g. on the island of Astypalaea in the Sporades,[56] in Sparta which had a sanctuary,[57] in Elis and in Achilles' homeland Thessaly, as well as in the Magna Graecia cities of Tarentum, Locri and Croton,[58] accounting for an almost Panhellenic cult to the hero. The Greeks would retaliate by battling the Trojan for years. The new armour includes the Shield of Achilles, described in great detail in the poem. The Athenian tragic playwright Aischylos (lived c. 525 – c. 455 BCE) is known to have explicitly portrayed Achilles and Patroklos as sexually intimate in his now-lost tragedy The Myrmidons. And Arke was the daughter of Thaumas and her sister was Iris; both had wings, but, during the struggle of the gods against the Titanes (Titans), Arke flew out of the camp of the gods and joined the Titanes. Here is his temple and his statue, an archaic work. A second exploration in 1840 showed that the construction of a lighthouse had destroyed all traces of this temple. Nonetheless, the fact that Achilles is clearly portrayed as being sexually attracted to Briseïs does not mean he cannot also be sexually attracted to Patroklos. I don’t personally play video games. Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not only in his defence, but after he was dead. . Where Does the Idea of a “Saint” Come From? In another inscription from the fifth or fourth century BC, a statue is dedicated to Achilles, lord of Leuke, by a citizen of Olbia, while in a further dedication, the city of Olbia confirms its continuous maintenance of the island's cult, again suggesting its quality as a place of a supra-regional hero veneration.[55]. The cult of Achilles is illustrated in the 500 BC Polyxena sarcophagus, where the sacrifice of Polixena near the tumulus of Achilles is depicted. Will you ever do a review of the game “Hades” by Supergiant Games? The next day, she runs away with him to Troy. [86] Other writers, such as Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid, represent a second strand of disparagement, with an emphasis on Achilles' erotic career. No - Achilles was not a real person and there is no evidence to suggest that he ever existed. ABOVE: Painting from 1815 by the French painter Léon Cogniet depicting Achilles and Briseïs mourning the death of Patroklos, William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. However, Achilles is a figure of myth, rather than history. [2], Achilles was the son of the Nereid Thetis and of Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons. After his temporary truce with Priam, Achilles fights and kills the warrior queen, only to grieve over her death later. Achilles and the Nereid Cymothoe, Attic red-figure kantharos from Volci (Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris), The embassy to Achilles, Attic red-figure hydria, c. 480 BC (Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Berlin), Achilles sacrificing to Zeus for Patroclus' safe return,[91] from the Ambrosian Iliad, a 5th-century illuminated manuscript, Achilles and Penthesilea fighting, Lucanian red-figure bell-krater, late 5th century BC. Only a few fragments survive. As for Achilles, he is a hero of the Greeks in the story, but there is nothing more than tales of his skill and … In some versions, the god Apollo guided Paris' arrow. Achilles' most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan prince Hector outside the gates of Troy. Other people say still more, that some of the men who reach this island, come here intentionally. Before I even begin to discuss whether Achilles and Patroklos were lovers, I suppose I should answer the question of whether they really existed to begin with. After Hector realizes the trick, he knows the battle is inevitable. [30] In this version of the myth, Achilles' death therefore came in retribution for this sacrilege. He refuses to eat or drink until he has avenged Patroklos’s death and he declares that, when he dies, he wants his ashes to be mixed with those of Patroklos so they can be together for eternity, inseparable from one another.