The Song of Achilles

Achilles returned to his strings, and the music rose again. This time he sang also, weaving his own accompaniment with a clear, rich treble. His head fell back a little, exposing his throat, supple and fawn-skin soft. A small smile lifted the left corner of his mouth. Without meaning to, I found myself leaning forward.

“Sing, goddess, of the terrible rage of Achilles,” begins The Iliad; what was for centuries assumed to have been a fanciful fiction, penned by the poet Homer, of gods and heroes, a fabulous wooden horse, and the mythical city of Troy. But then some archaeologists started poking around modern-day Turkey, found the treasures of Priam, a ruined city's walls and gates, the beach where the Greeks landed, and the battlefield in between – complete with Bronze Age arrowheads, scorched shields, and shattered earthenware – and the world said, “Wait. This is actual history?” A hundred or so years later, Classics scholar Madeline Miller decided to do some poking around of her own – if Achilles was an actual, historical man, and not some half-divine, dipped in the River Styx pawn of the gods, then what caused his terrible rage? And who is this Patroclus whose death caused Achilles such grief? – and the result is The Song of Achilles. Equal parts history, mythology, and love story, the narrative often has the feel of a YA Romance, but it was so easy to read (in a lovely and fitting way), and so consistently interesting and touching, that I enjoyed the whole experience.

There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles. And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?

I don't know if a review of a millennia-old story warrants a spoiler alert, but it was absolutely satisfying for me that I had known nothing at all of this book's narrator, Patroclus, before picking it up (that's my fair warning). As the unloved son of King Menoetius, when Patroclus accidentally kills another boy, Menoetius has him exiled to Phthia, where he is to be raised by the kindly King Peleus – who appears to be fostering an army of disowned sons – and where Patroclus meets Pelus' god-like son Achilles. The two boys become fast if unlikely friends, and as they grow together and train together under the tutelage of the wise Centaur Chiron in the wilds, their friendship develops into something more. Achilles' father might have been a rather mundane monarch, but his mother was a sea nymph: and Thetis is imperious, ambitious for her son, cold as the ocean's depths, and no fan of Achilles' chosen companion. Appearing to Patroclus one day, she demands of him if he understands that she means to make Achilles a god. When he manages a “Yes”, Thetis becomes yet more menacing:

She leaned closer still, looming over me. Her mouth was a gash of red, like the torn-open stomach of a sacrifice, bloody and oracular. Behind it her teeth shone sharp and white as bone. 

“Good.” Carelessly, as if to herself, she added, “You will be dead soon enough.”

From this terrifying maternal apparition to her grief after Achilles' inevitable end, I loved everything that Miller made of Thetis. It is his mother who eventually explains to Achilles the prophesy that he can either live a long life of obscurity or prove himself the Aristos Achaion in the Trojan War, die young, and have his name live forever:

“I will go,” he said. “I will go to Troy.”

The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered green of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again.

He was watching me, his eyes as deep as earth.

“Will you come with me?” he asked.

The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”

Are those enough quotes yet to foreshadow that the all-too-mortal Patroclus isn't fated to return from Troy? By spending the first half of the book explaining who Patroclus was and detailing the relationship he formed with Achilles as they grew up together, the petty jealousies and posturing and power struggles that play out over the ten year Trojan War in the book's second half are easily explained as the failings of ordinary men without the need for meddlesome gods. We never see fair Helen, but Ajax, Paris, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Hector and Menelaus stomp around the battlefield with Achilles; hubris and vanity prolonging the engagement. You don't need to be a Classics scholar to completely engage with the tragedy of this tale: of course Achilles raged.

Name one hero who was happy. You can't.

I came to Song of Achilles after first having read Miller's second novel, Circe, and I have to admit that the latter is the more mature and confident narrative. Even so, this book is thoroughly accessible, interesting, and moving; I'm pleased to have read it.