Son of Menoetius and dearest companion of Achilles, brought as a boy to the house of Peleus after a killing and reared there beside the son of the goddess. Borrowing Achilles' armour to drive the Trojans from the ships, he slew Sarpedon, then fell to Hector before the wall of Troy — and his death is what broke Achilles' wrath against the Greeks and turned it upon Hector.1
His own ghost tells the origin. When he was still a little lad his father Menoetius brought him out of Opoeis on account of a grievous manslaughter, for in folly and wrath over a game of dice he had slain the son of Amphidamas, though he willed it not; and the knight Peleus received him into his house and reared him kindly, naming him squire to Achilles. So the bond at the heart of the Iliad begins not in friendship freely chosen but in exile and a child's blood.2
Apollodorus sets down the same shape with names of his own: Patroclus, son of Menoetius, at Opus killed in a dice-quarrel the boy Clitonymus, son of Amphidamas, and fleeing with his father came to dwell in the house of Peleus — the genealogist's confirmation of the Homeric exile, fixing the slain boy and the place where the comradeship took root.3
In the war he is Achilles' inseparable comrade, the one man left sitting in silence while Achilles sings of the glorious deeds of warriors, the gentle hand who leads Briseis out when the heralds come and who, pitying the wounded Greeks, weeps before Achilles like a dark spring pouring over a cliff. Moved by that grief, Achilles lends him his own armour to beat the fire back from the ships, charging him to save the fleet but not to press on toward Troy — a part Zeus granted, while the safe return he denied.4
Arrayed in the borrowed harness, Patroclus storms the field and meets Sarpedon, son of Zeus. Each casts; the Lycian's spear flies wide over his left shoulder, but Patroclus' bronze finds its mark and the godlike man falls. Stripping the shining armour from his shoulders, he gives it to his comrades to bear to the hollow ships — the height of his glory, and the step past Achilles' warning.5
His end was foretold by Zeus himself: that Achilles would send forth his comrade Patroclus, and glorious Hector would slay him with the spear before the face of Ilios, and Achilles in wrath for Patroclus would then slay Hector. So it falls. Achilles, his anger drowned in grief, returns to the war he had abandoned and kills Hector in vengeance; and at the funeral the spirit of Patroclus comes by night and begs that their bones lie not apart but together in one golden urn, even as they were reared in one house — and Achilles holds the games over his grave.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
