The Irony of Dedication
Text: The Iliad, Homer [translated by Robert Fagles]

The character of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad is not someone who would ever do something halfheartedly. Rather, he flings himself wholly into a dedicated display, whether it be of rage towards his superior or, in the case of his best friend Patroclus’ death, of a ritualistic behaviour that does not cease even after all the ‘official’ proceedings have taken place. Achilles’ tendency here to obsessively do everything that he thinks Patroclus would want is a method of coping with death for him, since ritual keeps his mind off of grief. The commemoration that Homer gives for Hector, whom Achilles in fact killed to take revenge on Patroclus, is focused almost entirely on a series of emotional laments given by the women in his life. With the presence of a personality like Achilles’, depending on rigid ritual to deal with grief, perhaps the account of Hector’s commemoration would be more focused on burial and honour, as Patroclus’ is. For a time, in fact, honouring Patroclus and shaming Hector as a part of this is all that Achilles has, and the only thing he will consent to doing. He builds what life he has left around his dead friend, in much the same way he dedicated himself previously to a grudge against the Achaean army, which eventually, and ironically, led to the death of this friend.

Patroclus dies as an indirect result of Achilles’ own refusal to fight; he is killed by Hector while posing as Achilles in order to drive the Trojans back from the Achaean ships. Following his revenge on Hector, Achilles is immediately preoccupied with honouring Patroclus; indeed, it might be said that killing Hector is simply the first step in Achilles’ dedication to doing exactly what his dead friend ‘requires’. It seems, however, that it is not until after his aristeia and destruction of Hector that Achilles is overcome with the desire to give specific orders in regards to what must be done. Upon the Achaeans’ return to camp following Hector’s death, Achilles suddenly becomes the authority: ‘Achilles still would not dismiss his Myrmidons, he gave his battle-loving comrades strict commands: “... We must not loose our teams from the war-cars yet. All in battle-order drive them past Patroclus... These are the solemn honors owed the dead.” ’ (23.4-10) Arguably, no one contests this authority in honouring Patroclus simply because Achilles was the man’s closest friend in life -- and that is something that another man could never pretend to be. Still, it is evident from the text that Achilles is much more strict when it comes to his dead friend’s honour than any other might be, such as when men offer him a bath and he refuses to wash on principle, calling it ‘sacrilege’ and citing Patroclus’ cremation as the most immediate necessity (23.44-54).

Perhaps the most blatant image in regards to Achilles’ attitude is that of Patroclus rising from the dead to speak to him in his sleep. Homer uses divine personification throughout The Iliad, and in this particular case, the ghost of Patroclus giving Achilles his ‘last wishes’ represents exactly how bent Achilles is on doing just what his friend would want. Patroclus’ ghost even nags him about wasting his time trying to bury his grief in useless ways, when he could be doing so by cremating Patroclus’ body: ‘Hovering at his head the phantom rose and spoke: “Sleeping, Achilles? You’ve forgotten me, my friend. You never neglected me in life, only now in death. Bury me, quickly -- let me pass the Gates of Hades.” ’ (23.80-83) This dream serves as a personification of Achilles’ drive to do exactly what his friend needs to the very end, as if doing so will somehow make everything okay. True to his actions later on, the dream Achilles -- which could be viewed as his determined personality -- readily agrees to the ghost’s requests: ‘ “Why tell me of all that I must do? I’ll do it all. I will obey you, your demands.” ’ (23.113-114) Then, later, when Achilles awakens: ‘ “All night long the ghost of stricken Patroclus hovered over me, grieving, shedding warm tears, telling me, point by point, what I must do.” ’ (23.124-126) The rituals that Achilles so obsessively carries out, ‘point by point’, are both in response to what he believes to be Patroclus’ wishes and a display of Achilles’ dedicated personality.

Much of Achilles’ authority seen in Book 23 can be attributed to this driving loyalty to Patroclus. Before falling asleep to the requests of his friend’s ghost, he orders Agamemnon, previously his superior and nemesis, to carry out specific steps involved in a body’s cremation, ‘ “to fell and haul in timber, and furnish all that’s fitting, all the dead man needs for his journey down the western dark” ’ (23.57-58). Traditional ritualistic cremation for Patroclus is crucial to Achilles’ relative sanity; going through these preordained motions allows him to momentarily forget his grief. And indeed, just as Achilles orders, Agamemnon’s troops gather wood for the corpse fire, bring it back to camp, and get things ready, without Achilles having to beg or even ask them twice (23.130-147). As another part of this adherence to rigid ritual, Achilles brings a vow he made previously to the river god Spercheus into the burial ceremony for Patroclus: instead of waiting until he arrives at the home he knows he will never reach to cut his hair in offering to the god, Achilles gives his lock of hair over to his dead friend’s body as a gesture of honour and grief. These very specific actions are completed with the meticulousness of a religious ritual. The particularities are only important insofar as Achilles feels that his friend would be pleased and honoured by them, thus helping to alleviate his grief. In the latter part of Book 23, games are held in honour of the dead Patroclus -- a playful event that seems almost absurd in the wake of a funeral. But again, it is not the games themselves that are important to Achilles, but the fact that they are carried out exactly as he wishes. Achilles is in charge during this scene; no one contests this; it is he who chooses and distributes the prizes and orders men to their marks. The funeral games are almost used as a distraction for him, an appropriate way for Patroclus to be remembered, and something that takes his mind off the fact that his best friend is dead while simultaneously benefiting that friend.

The value that the Achaeans, and above all Achilles, place on these acts of commemoration can only be described as obsessive. Like the focus of his revenge on Hector, these funeral acts are a way for Achilles to cope with his grief -- to convince himself to keep on living by having something other than misery to deal with. The magnitude of Achilles’ dedication to these rituals is easily seen when Homer describes the burning of Patroclus’ pyre. As the night drags on, all the other Achaeans have gone to sleep, and yet Achilles is still there, obsessively going through motions of grieving over and over again: ‘All night long [the winds] hurled the flames -- massed on the pyre, blast on screaming blast -- and all night long the swift Achilles, lifting a two-handled cup, dipped wine from a golden bowl and poured it down on the ground and drenched the earth, calling out to the ghost of stricken, gaunt Patroclus’ (23.249-253). The funeral rituals are carried out by all of Patroclus’ comrades, but it is Achilles who takes them to the extreme because of his extreme personality and extremely close bond to Patroclus.

All this ritual in honour of Patroclus is in sharp contrast with the Trojans’ initial display of grief for their most cherished soldier, Hector. Rather than go to any length in describing the actions that Hector’s loved ones take in burying him, Homer instead chooses to let his characters voice their sorrow over the soldier’s fate. Each of these characters is female, which is also quite different from the masculine display of funeral games held for Patroclus. The commemoration of Hector is centred around long speeches given by those closest to him: Andromache, his wife, Hecuba, his mother, and finally Helen herself. One recalls that the first thing Achilles does after taking revenge for his friend is to drive his troops of soldiers past his body in a specified, rigid action. The response to the homecoming of the dead Hector takes a vocal turn instead: ‘Once they had borne him into the famous halls, they laid his body down on his large carved bed and set beside him singers to lead off the laments, and their voices rose in grief -- they lifted the dirge high as the women wailed in answer’ (24.845-849). It is also to be noted that there is no one voice ordering anyone to do this in a particular way -- it is the grief that counts, and not the actions. It can be supposed that if a character like Achilles were on the Trojan side, a compulsive and repeated series of events would be more likely, showing his character’s endless and extreme determination.

The tragic aspect of Achilles’ insistence and obsessive drive in all this honouring of his friend is that no matter how many times he repeats his actions of mourning, and no matter how many games are held to get him thinking about something else, Patroclus cannot come back to life. It is as if by dragging himself through these actions again and again, Achilles is resting upon some vain, desperate hope that it will end his grief, or even resurrect the dead somehow, and fix everything. Even after the cremation, burial, and games are all over, Achilles is still performing ritualised behaviours over and over again, almost as if it were a compulsion -- knowing logically that it won’t help anything, but at the same time being lost about what else to do:

At last he’d leap to his feet,
wander in anguish, aimless along the surf, and dawn on dawn
flaming over the sea and shore would find him pacing.
Then he’d yoke his racing team to the chariot-harness,
lash the corpse of Hector behind the car for dragging
and haul him three times round the dead Patroclus’ tomb,
and then he’d rest again in his tents and leave the body
sprawled facedown in the dust. (24.14-21)

He has done what his friend asked, and more; he has honoured him to great lengths and taken revenge on his behalf, and yet all this ritual has failed to take the pain away. Without specific actions, it seems, Achilles is now ‘aimless’, having no goals, nothing at all to do. Despite all of his efforts to cope with death -- and perhaps in some useless wish, cheat it altogether -- Achilles himself has fallen into a deathlike state, which is the final irony of his person.


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