Summary
On the shores of Phthia, Achilles is greeted as a hero. He and Patroclus are never alone, but Patroclus intentionally fades to the background. Back on Scryos, Achilles asked Thetis to protect Patroclus after he died, but she said no—this doesn’t bother Patroclus now, though, because he has decided he will not live after Achilles has died. Six weeks pass as Phthia prepares. Phthian men start calling themselves Myrmidons, “ant-men,” and Chiron sends a spear made just for Achilles. 50 Phthian ships leave for Troy.
The first stop is Aulis, where the Greeks are assembling. Achilles receives an even warmer hero’s greeting than on Phthia. He does not kneel before Agamemnon, though; Agamemnon, displeased, announces the Greeks will leave tomorrow. Patroclus feels some anxiety about Achilles, a boy of 16, being the best of the Greeks, but around him he sees men nodding, amazed.
Patroclus wakes sweating in the night to find there is no wind. It is windless the next day, and the next, and on for two weeks; tempers fray. Achilles tells Agamemnon that it is a message from the gods. Months go by, and men pass from irritable to resigned, before Agamemnon speaks with a priest and decides to make a sacrifice to Artemis. Agamemnon asks Achilles to marry his daughter, Iphigenia, a priestess of Artemis. With Patroclus’s consent, Achilles agrees, but as Iphigenia approaches the altar a few days later, Agamemnon slits her throat. The Greeks are horrified—human sacrifice is an abomination—but the wind picks up immediately. Achilles, shaken, regrets that he could not save Iphigenia. It is the first death he has ever witnessed.
Later, Agamemnon lies and tells his troops that Iphigenia knew and consented to her sacrifice. Patroclus confronts Odysseus about shaming and horrifying Achilles. Odysseus tells Patroclus that if he is truly Achilles’ friend, he will remember that Achilles is a weapon and should know his own nature.
The troops leave the next morning. They sail for nine days; on day seven, Achilles asks Patroclus about the boy he killed, clearly still tormented by Iphigenia. He worries that Patroclus will not be able to forgive him for all of the killing he is about to do in Troy, then saves Patroclus from a hydros, a water-snake that would have killed him.
As the fleet nears the Trojan shore, they battle Hector on the beach. Achilles’ spears fly farther than arrows, and the first blood of the war is spilled by him. At Hector’s command, the Trojans retreat, though they have proven they will not be easy to kill.
Odysseus draws lots for the armies’ camp locations, and the Phthians are placed at the far end of the beach from the other kings, which ends up being the best location for camp, protected by the forest. That evening, the first council meeting is held. Menelaus is strongly in favor of parley, and Diomedes is loudly against. Agamemnon decides to begin by raiding the towns around the walls of Troy. After the meeting, Patroclus asks Achilles what he thought while he was killing men for the first time, and Achilles says he thought nothing at all.
The next morning, Achilles has a place of honor in the first raid. Patroclus helps him put on his armor and is grateful he does not need to fear for Achilles’ safety—Hector still lives.
Achilles wakes Patroclus, covered in blood and amazed by his own triumph in battle. He wishes Patroclus had seen him kill these twelve men. Patroclus forces himself to be sympathetic, asking Achilles questions, imagining it as a story only—dark figures on an urn instead of dead men.
Analysis
Achilles has chosen to become Aristos Achaion, but the Greeks are off to a bit of a rocky start, with Artemis stalling them for months before they even reach Troy. Achilles’ fame rises nonetheless, and it gets in the way of his relationship with Patroclus for the first time. Patroclus chooses to fade to the background, spending more time watching Achilles and less time actually with him. What Achilles worries about, though, is whether Patroclus will be able to forgive him for how good he’s about to be at killing.
Achilles’ first encounter with death is less triumphant than he anticipates. Human sacrifice is an abomination on its own, and Agamemnon directly involves him, tricking Achilles into believing he is about to marry Iphigenia when in fact she’s about to be murdered. The blood of a young, innocent priestess is the first blood that sprays on Achilles, and he is intensely shaken by it.
His first kill, on the other hand, is exactly what fate determined for Aristos Achaion. He throws a spear farther than any Greek or Trojan arrow and takes the first life of the Trojan war. The men are amazed, including Patroclus, but for Achilles it is hardly even a challenge. His triumph here parallels the tragic death of Briseis, who Neoptolemus lets swim impossibly far before he throws a spear, killing her in almost exactly the same place Achilles killed his first man.
Patroclus draws a sort of paradoxical comfort from the prophecy of Achilles’ death when he goes off to battle—because Hector is still alive, Achilles will come home safe today. The foreknowledge of Achilles’ demise crushes Patroclus, but it also saves him a lot of day-to-day anxiety. He is able to sleep, work in the medical tents, and educate the women, knowing that his love will be home soon.
Though Patroclus and Achilles might initially have been introduced as foils (plain versus shining, average versus great), by this point in the novel Patroclus has come to realize that Achilles’ true opposite is Odysseus. Where Achilles is honest and ignorant of deception, Odysseus is the “man of many turnings,” using wits and half-truths to wage war off the battlefield. When Patroclus blames Odysseus for involving Achilles in Iphigenia’s death, Odysseus doesn’t apologize, instead warning Patroclus that his love’s nature is one of destruction. A spear used as a walking stick is still a spear; Achilles, no matter what Patroclus thinks of him, is a killer.
