Characters
- Ajax — wrestles Odysseus to a draw; armed duel with Diomedes
- Aphrodite and Apollo — protect Hector’s corpse from decay and dogs
- Ares — summons the winds to the pyre
- Boreas and Zephyrus — fan the funeral fire
- Diomedes — victor of the chariot race
- Epeius — boxing victor
- Eumelus — best team until Athena’s interference
- Meriones — archery winner
- Odysseus — wrestling draw; foot-race winner
- Patroclus — buried after the shade’s request; bones reserved to share Achilles’ jar
- Polypoetes — weight-throw winner
- Shade of Patroclus — appears in dream-vision demanding burial
- Teucer — misses the bird’s cord
- Thyestes — chief mourner; host of the games; still mistreats Hector’s body between rites
- Twelve Trojan youths — sacrificed on Patroclus’s pyre
Places
- Hades’ gates — where Patroclus’s shade cannot pass unburied
- Shore — lament, pyre, and games
- Spercheius — to which Achilles’ hair was vowed
- Stadium of the games — marked course on the plain by the ships
Themes
Narrative
While Hector’s corpse lay by Achilles’ hut—Aphrodite oiling it against mangling, Apollo holding a cloud against the sun—Achilles led the Myrmidons in lament and a chariot circle around Patroclus. That night Patroclus’s shade stood over Achilles’ head, begging burial so he might pass the gates of Hades, and asking that their bones share one jar. At dawn the Achaeans built a great pyre; Achilles cut locks of hair vowed to Spercheius, slaughtered sheep, cattle, horses, dogs, and twelve Trojan captives, and set the fire. He prayed to the winds with wine and promises; Iris fetched Boreas and Zephyrus to fan the blaze. When the pyre sank, they gathered Patroclus’s bones into fat and a golden jar, and marked a modest mound for now—greater when Achilles himself should fall.
Achilles then held funeral games with prizes from his stores. Diomedes won the chariot race (Eumelus favored until Athena broke his yoke; Antilochus out-crafted Menelaus; Menelaus protested, then yielded in friendship). Epeius won boxing; Ajax and Odysseus drew in wrestling; Odysseus took the foot-race with Athena’s trip on Ajax son of Oileus; Ajax Telamonian and Diomedes shared the armed duel’s prizes; Polypoetes won the weight-throw; Meriones the archery (Teucer missed the cord); Agamemnon was awarded the javelin without a cast, honored by Achilles. The games restore a measure of Achaean fellowship and glory-distribution after the crisis of wrath—while Hector still waits unburied for Priam’s coming.