Characters
- Ares — messenger who fetches the winds for Achilles
- Boreas — North Wind; fans the pyre
- Myrmidons — builders and attendants of the pyre
- Olympian gods — at feast when Iris arrives
- Patroclus — dead hero whose pyre must burn
- Trojan assembly — chief mourner; prays and promises offerings to the winds
- Zephyrus — West Wind; fans the pyre with Boreas
Places
- Achaean shore — fire that will not take until the winds come
- House of the Winds — feast-hall where Iris delivers the summons
- Ocean’s stream — Iris’s route after the errand
- Thracian sea — path of the winds’ going and return
Themes
Narrative
At Patroclus’s funeral the Achaeans raise a great pyre; Achilles offers hair, animals, and twelve Trojan captives, and sets the fire. All night he calls on the winds with libations, promising sacrifices, because the timber will not catch as he wishes. Iris hears the prayer and goes as messenger to the house of the Winds, where they feast. She stands on the stone threshold and delivers Achilles’ plea.
The Winds rise; Iris returns to Ocean’s stream and to her own ways. Boreas and Zephyrus (North and West) drive cloud and blast across the sea to Troy, fall upon the pyre, and roar as they strike it. All night they fan the flame while Achilles moves about with a two-handled cup, pouring wine and calling on Patroclus. At dawn the fire sinks; the winds fly home across the Thracian sea. Achilles and the Achaeans quench the ash with wine, gather the bones into fat and a golden jar, and mark the mound—then turn to the funeral games.
Catalogue Iris’s wind-mission as the divine hinge that makes Patroclus’s pyre burn: messenger to Boreas and Zephyrus at Achilles’ night-long prayer.