Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Clothed in Achilles’ armor, Patroclus leads the Myrmidons out and strikes the Trojans from the ships like a war-god. He quenches fire already lit on the stern of Protesilaus’s ship, drives Hector’s host in rout across the ditch, and kills warrior after warrior—first among them the Trojan Paeonians and the Lycian allies. The climax of his glory is the duel with Sarpedon, Zeus’s son: Patroclus kills him, and the fight for the corpse shakes the field until Zeus has Sleep and Death bear Sarpedon home to Lycia. Patroclus, forgetting Achilles’ charge to turn back once the ships were saved, pursues to the very walls of Troy. Three times he assaults the angles; three times Apollo hurls him down. On the fourth the god warns him off, then in the guise of death’s helpers strips his panoply’s defense: Euphorbus wounds him; Hector delivers the mortal spear-thrust. Catalogue the aristeia as Patroclus’s day of triumph—the false Achilles who saves the ships and slays a son of Zeus—before the death-entry takes over.