The issue for Phaedrus was not whether Achilles and Patroclus were sexually involved but who was the lover or erastes (older and active) and who the beloved or eromenos (younger and passive). We know of this from Plato’s Symposium where Phaedrus criticizes Aeschylus for misrepresenting the attachment between the two heroes.
Although we don’t have the extant work, evidence suggests that Aeschylus had written a play called 'The Myrmidons' in which he represented a sexual bond between Achilles and Patroclus.
The topic was so disturbing to Wolfgang Petersen that he turned the two heroes into cousins in his 1994 Hollywood epic.īut the ancients took it for granted that the erotic had a place in male relations. Did they or didn’t they? Only Homer knows for sure. But readers of the Iliad have wondered for centuries about the love between Achilles and Patroclus.
