Nearly everyone with a modicum of education knows the title of the greatest Greek epos which has come down to us, The Iliad, which is also the most monumental ancestral work of all Western literature. This epic poem was created by an agglomeration of ancient bards who we know of as HOMER.

The great poem treats the multi-layered tragedy of The Trojan War, a story far too complex to detail here what with warring royal cities, gods and goddesses taking sides, kidnappings, adultery, and savage revenge.

What has carefully been obscured since the now dominant religion took over the Western world is the centrality of the soul-shaking homosexual love story (Paris and Helen notwithstanding) that propels the brilliant and tragic epic to its denouement; that is, the great love of Achilles and Patroclus, the warrior lovers.

As briefly as possible, it all starts with some heterosexual shenanigans. (It should be noted that to the ancient Greeks most gods, demi-gods, heroes, etc., were AC/DC.) First there was a problem about a girl named Briseis and then an act of adultery; i.e., Helen of Troy, the Greek wife of the Greek King Menelaus — with the Trojan Prince Paris. It involves an argument between Agamemnon, another Greek king, and Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest hero and warrior. Agememnon, asserting his royal right, has taken Achilles’ girl Briseis for himself. Achilles is not broken-hearted by this but, rather, deeply insulted. She was his property…In the meantime, the Greeks have started a war with Troy to recover Helen. As the argument between Achilles and Agamemnon goes on the war over the beautiful Helen keeps expanding.

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ACHILLES AND THE MYRMIDONS

Achilles, along with other Greek kings, heroes, and princes sails to the war against Troy (which is located in what is now Turkey) at the head of his own personal war host, a sort of personal army. But the Myrmidons were an army with a difference as many legends make clear. They were an army of lovers.

The ancient Greeks believed that a man would rather die than dishonor himself in front of his lover and so it was that men in such units were inspired to legendary feats of heroism. This primordial legend was reflected in historical fact time and again throughout Greek history. The last great troop of warrior lovers was The Sacred Band of Thebes which Alexander The Great finally defeated in the 4th century BCE. Alexander, who himself had a warrior lover — Hephaestion — was so moved by their bravery (they died to a man) that he raised a great monument to their glory after his victory.

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ACHILLES AND PATROCLUS

Now it happens that Achilles, in The Iliad, has a young and noble companion in arms — Patroclus — with whom he tents, bivouacs, eats, sleeps, hunts, bathes, and makes love to quite incessantly.

At the siege of Troy — because of Agamemnon’s insult — while others are doing all the fighting, including his own Myrmidons, Achilles choose to stay in his tent making love to Patroclus day in and day out. His Myrmidons, as well as the Greek kings and generals, are often outside his tent entreating him to join the fray. The siege has been stalemated for months and he is, after all, their greatest warrior.

At last, succumbing in part to their pleas and those of Patroclus himself, he agrees to let Patroclus go into battle but insists that he wear his (Achilles’) armor. Because of his anger with Agamemnon he will still not join them. It is inconceivable to him that Patroclus might be killed. But after great heroism and victories Patroclus is killed by the Trojan hero, Hector.
What follows is the story of the towering rage and bottomless grief of Achilles as he throws himself on the body of his dead lover and of the terrible vengeance he wreaks.

Like a demon he pursues and kills Hector and for days, like a madman, tears streaming down his face, bellowing like a wounded bull, he drags the body of Hector behind his chariot, around and around and around the walls of Troy. The Trojans on the wall and his own Greeks in their siege camps stare aghast at this apocalyptic agony. Even the gods are shocked. In spite of the abject pleading of the Trojans he refuses to give them the body for burial; the worst thing possible among the ancient Greek peoples.

Achilles, normally equable and just, simply goes mad with grief, doing terrible things such as burning twelve prisoners, noble Trojan youths, on Patroclus’s funeral pyre.

With Achilles now fully engaged in the war the tide is turned against the Trojans and the city’s doom is sealed even though Achilles is to die before it’s over. (It had been prophesied.)

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ACHILLES AND TROILUS

Sometime after the deaths of Patroclus and Hector (the war still dragged on for years) Achilles was in hand to hand combat with a handsome Trojan warrior named Troilus. As the grappling continued Achilles became filled with lust for his Trojan adversary saying, “I will kill you unless you yield to my caresses!” Troilus, wrestling in sweaty struggle with Achilles and knowing he could not beat him agreed to a secret rendezvous. Achilles then let him seem to escape and later, in the dark of night, met him in the precinct of the Temple of Thrymbaean Apollo which was neutral territory during the war.

Achilles fell upon him passionately but his sexual embraces were so fierce that Troilus, carnally impaled, was crushed to death in his mighty arms. The Trojans mourned his death at the hands of Achilles and Achilles himself was filled with regret.

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ACHILLES AND ANTILOCHUS

Still later in the story Achilles takes another lover, a young Greek soldier named Antilochus. It seems that Homer is unable to imagine the chief hero of his epic poem without a male lover.
Achilles is eventually killed by treachery. Off his guard in the neutral temple of Apollo, he is ambushed by Paris who shoots him with a poisoned arrow in his heel; his only vulnerable part. Soon thereafter Antilochus dies in battle.

The Greeks finally get inside the walls of Troy in the belly of a huge wooden horse and overcome the city’s last defenders.

At last the ashes of Achilles, Patroclus and Antilochus are mixed in a single bronze urn and placed in their tomb with great lamentation; a sort of ménage a trios in the afterlife.

Along with the tragedy of the destruction of a great city, The Iliad finally represents the greatest kind of hymn to same-sex love. At Patroclus’s death, Achilles’ countless, heartbreaking lamentations — “O never could anything more bitter come upon me! No! Not even if I should hear of my own father’s death!”, and so on — are too numerous to recount.

“This was the language of love, not of friendship, and it was thus that the ancients always regarded their bond.” (Hans Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece.)

Oddly, in spite of all the death and destruction, the beautiful Helen is brought back home and is forgiven by King Menelaus. The whole thing, he decided, was not her fault. (Aphrodite made her do it!)

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