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Book Eleven
say if he knew how badly he was being let down, cf. 7.125 f) K6 UEy'
784 =6.208 (Hippolokhos' injunction to Glaukos).
785 For Aktor, father of Menoitios (so also at 16.14), see 6o5n.
786-9 For the effective use of direct quotation see 9.251-8 n. Here
the pressure is on Patroklos and the important words are not those of
Peleus (which are reduced to a formular verse in an indirect construction)
but those of Menoitios.
786 yEverj ... UTrepTepos: an important note for the relationship of
Akhilleus and Patroklos (rightly interpreted by Xen. Symp. 8.31). Arn/A
cite Archilochus (fr. 38 West) for uirepTepos = vEcoTEpos (which would make
the UEV ... 6E ... rather pointless) but proceed to argue, rightly, that
Akhilleus was uirepTEpos in that his ancestry was divine; Patroklos was
the elder, but the autobiographical passage 23.85-90 makes it clear that
he was the elder by a few years only. That was inconvenient to those
who wished to interpret the bonds of heroic friendship in malam partem,
whether like Phaidros in Plato's Symposium (I8OA) Akhilleus is made the
EpcouEvos (and said, wrongly, to be VECOTEpos TTOAU), or like Aeschylus in
his lost play Myrmidons they made the obviously inferior Patroklos the
Trai8iK& of Akhilleus (and so gave Homer the lie). In book 9, verses 666-
8 assert, rather pointedly, the virility of Patroklos. He had been made
OEpdTTCOV to Akhilleus, having fled to Peleus to avoid the consequences of
homicide, cf. the story of Phoinix, 9.447-91, hence his generally obliging
behaviour towards his friend. It would hardly have been fitting to portray
Akhilleus in the passive role of the EpcouEVOS, but there is in any case
no overt allusion to homosexual love in either Homeric epic, on which
matter see Aeschines, In Timarchum 141-50, and among modern contributions
Stella G. Miller, AJA 90 (1986) 165-7 {contra S. Levin, TAP A 80
(1949) 43-6, and W. M. Clarke, Hermes 106 (1978) 381-96), and the
full discussion by D. M. Halperin, One Hundred Tears of Homosexuality and
Other Essays on Greek Love (New York 1990) 87-93. The silence is apparently
deliberate, as the discreet allusions to Ganumedes 5.266 and 20.231-5
suggest: see also i6.97n. with schol. ad loc, and B. Sergent, Homosexuality in
Greek Myth, trans. Goldhammer (London 1987) 250-8. Apollonius appears
to have taken the discretion as epic regard for TO irpETrov and was careful
never to affirm explicitly that Herakles and Hulas were lovers, Arg. 1.1240-
72, 1344-50 (at 1.131-2 Hulas is ECTOAOS OTT&COV | irpco0T||3r|s).
788-12.8 Pap. 5 (second century B.C.), a slovenly text with many orthographic
slips, contains the ends of verses 788-809 and 837-12.8, and the
beginnings of 810-34. There are plus-verses at 795a and b, 804a, 805a,
807a, 827a, b, and c, and 840a.
790-1 In the event, at 16.2 iff., Patroklos made no use of this tactfully
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