The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

A song, sung by Patroclus, telling the story of his friend Achilles, the great warrior of the Trojan War and the “swift-footed” hero of Homer’s “song”, The Iliad.

In The Iliad, Patroclus is a beloved companion of Achilles. If they were more than friends, Homer doesn’t say. Perhaps it’s impossible to map our modern understanding of romantic love onto relationships in ancient Greece (either gay or straight). Plato, 400 years after Homer (and 1000 years after the Trojan War), assumed Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship included sex. In Plato’s Symposium, Patroclus is identified as the erastes (the active/admirer “top”) and Achilles, the younger and more beautiful, the eromenos (the receiving/object of affection “bottom”). When Alexander marches through Anatolia conquering his empire, he and his lover Hephaestion stop to pay homage at the tomb shared by the ancient hero and his companion. Read into that what you will.

But the problem with mapping contemporary romantic notions onto ancient relationships leads to a problem with Miller’s novel. Today, we expect relationships to be comprised of more-or-less equals, a partnership, where each contributes something of value. But Patroclus has nothing to offer Achilles, not wealth, status, experience, wisdom. Achilles is a prince, the son of Peleus, and also a demi-god through his mother the sea-nymph Thetis. Achilles is beautiful, and strong, fast, a great warrior and destined to be the greatest, a talented musician, and (according to Miller) he can even juggle! Patroclus is sullen and slow, of mind and body. He’s neither handsome nor strong nor agile. Born a prince, Patroclus is disowned by his father and exiled, which is how he ends up in Peleus’ court with Achilles. So why Achilles chooses Patroclus as his companion is a mystery.

Achilles’ mother, Thetis, doesn’t get it, either. She appears throughout the novel showing up with prophecies for her son and put-downs for Patroclus. She feels Patroclus isn’t worthy. And though Achilles defends Patroclus against her disdain, the novel never makes clear what Achilles sees in him. Patroclus is like a dog, gazing heart-sick at his handsome, talented, capable, confidant, hero. For most of the novel, we agree with Achilles’ mother, certainly her brilliant son can do better.

And, because Miller makes their sexual relationship explicit, the sex scenes, then, feel awkward, even a little icky. Not because it’s two men (or two boys, at first) but because their relationship doesn’t feel true. Their sex feels like a gift Achilles gives to a fawning Patroclus, rather than a mutual exchange.

The two friends leave the palace to be tutored by Chiron the centaur living in a mountain cave. Then back to the palace when the Greek kings are called together to leave for Troy. Paris, son of the Trojan king, Priam, has stolen Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The Greeks will go to war to get her back. Achilles at first seeks to avoid the war by fleeing to another king’s palace and hiding among the women, dressed as a woman. He is discovered and consents to fight, advancing toward his fate.

The final third of the novel is the Trojan War itself. This is the best part of the novel. Patroclus leaves the fighting to Achilles but is at last given a skill to contribute. He becomes a surgeon working in the medical tent. He also becomes the moral conscience behind the major episode from The Iliad concerning Achilles. Achilles is dishonored by Agaememnon and refuses to fight for him. His pride overwhelms him. He retires to his tent allowing the Greeks to be slaughtered by the Trojans so that the Greeks will recognize his worth. Patroclus eventually invents the solution that saves Achilles’ pride and the Greek army. Unfortunately, as Patroclus becomes a more interesting character, Achilles becomes less so, reduced to little more than a fighting machine until he chooses not to fight, and then a victim of pride and blind fury when at last he does.

It doesn’t give away the ending to say what happens finally in this ancient story. Patroclus, in Achilles’ armor, joins the battle, defends himself heroically, but is killed by Hector, the Trojan warrior. Achilles rejoins the fighting in order to revenge Patroclus’ death by killing Hector. Paris quickly kills Achilles (aided by Apollo). Miller fast-forwards through the end of the war (something about a horse) and the final Greek victory.

The boys growing up together in the palace and being schooled by the centaur, Hogwarts-style, makes the first third of the novel feel like a young adult fantasy novel. It didn’t captivate me. The scene where Achilles hides out among the palace women, dressed in a skirt, is true to the ancient story but just seems silly when included in a contemporary novel, although Miller handles it well. Miller’s writing is uneven; at times, artful; at other times stuck in young adult or romance novel territory. Miller does a remarkable job of weaving together and compressing the ancient stories, from Homer, Euripides, and elsewhere. She’s a classics scholar and unless you are a classics scholar we could all use a refresher. I appreciated that. (I’ve read The Odyssey but not The Iliad. I saw a marvelous production of Iphegenia in Aulis at the Getty in 2017, a minor scene in this novel). And I appreciated what she added to the classic texts: the explicitness of the sexual relationship, the story being told from Patroclus’ point-of-view, the, at times, skillfulness of her prose and efficiency of her story-telling. But it also felt like reading the Cliff’s notes of a work I should probably go ahead and read in the original.

I should say, in my own reading life, The Song of Achilles follows well from the last two books I’ve read: Peter Straub’s Ghost Story and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Like the shape-shifters in Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, The Song of Achilles also includes supernatural and immortal beings: centaurs and sea-nymphs. And it’s also a ghost story, in part, like Beloved. Because The Song of Achilles is told from Patroclus’ first person point of view and Patroclus dies before the end of the story, the final pages are narrated by his ghost: Achilles’ killing of Hector, Paris’ killing of Achilles, the end of the war, and a final scene between the ghost of Patroclus and the goddess mother of Achilles, Thetis, standing before the tomb of the two hero-lovers.