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Pitiless art thou, Achilles, pitiless and unforgiving. Yet if thou dost still hold back from the battle, give me, I pray thee, thine armor, and send me forth in thy stead. Perchance the Trojans may take me for the mighty Achilles, and even now the victory be ours." Then said Achilles, and heavy was his heart within him: "These Greeks took from me my well-won prize, Patroclus.
On this she nodded quietly to Patroclus as a sign that he was to prepare a bed for Phoenix, and that the others should take their leave. Ajax son of Telamon then said, "Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, let us be gone, for I see that our journey is vain. We must now take our answer, unwelcome though it be, to the Danaans who are waiting to receive it.
Yet the Odyssey, with its marvellous adventure, is more romantic than the Iliad, which nevertheless contains, among many other romantic episodes, that of the immortal horses of Achilles, who weep at the death of Patroclus.
For this purpose, and to answer to his conception of a great poem, Homer appears to have thought it necessary that the action should be one; and he therefore took the incidental quarrel of Achilles and the commander in chief, the resentment of Achilles, and his consequent defection from the cause, till, by the death of Patroclus, and then of Hector, all traces of the misunderstanding first, and then of its consequences, should be fully obliterated.
One morning Patroclus and Æneas were out in the field digging potatoes, for new potatoes were just in the market. The Early Rose potato had not been discovered in those days; but there was another potato, perhaps equally good, which attained to a similar degree of celebrity. It was called the Young Plantagenet, and reached a very large size indeed, much larger than the Early Rose does in our time.
One raises the soul and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it again and unbends it into vice. The Grecian gave the two Romans an example in the games which were celebrated at the funerals of Patroclus. Virgil imitated the invention of Homer, but changed the sports.
As when fish fly scared before a huge dolphin, and fill every nook and corner of some fair haven for he is sure to eat all he can catch even so did the Trojans cower under the banks of the mighty river, and when Achilles' arms grew weary with killing them, he drew twelve youths alive out of the water, to sacrifice in revenge for Patroclus son of Menoetius.
Let the sons of the Achaeans, say I, fight fasting and without food, till we have avenged them; afterwards at the going down of the sun let them eat their fill. As for me, Patroclus is lying dead in my tent, all hacked and hewn, with his feet to the door, and his comrades are mourning round him.
Achilles' friend, Patroclus, who was fighting at the head of the Greeks, now saw that the Trojans, unless they were checked, would soon destroy the whole army, and he rushed into Achilles' tent to beg him to come and help them once more. His entreaties were vain.
"There is not a passage in the classics," he declares, "which recognizes the beauty of holiness and Christian mildness;" and in the next breath he remarks, that Homer's description of Patroclus furnishes "language which might convey an idea of that mildness of manner which belonged to men in Christian ages."
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