The Iliad

Menelaus and Euphorbus exchange threats and taunts over Patroclus’s body, then stab at each other. Menelaus kills Euphorbus. Apollo rouses Hector to challenge him. Realizing a god has inspired Hector, Menelaus retreats. Meanwhile, Hector strips Patroclus’s armor, intending to behead him and feed his trunk to Troy’s dogs, but Greater Ajax swoops in and protects his body. Glaucus berates Hector for failing to secure Sarpedon’s armor and Patroclus’s body and accuses him of being too cowardly to challenge Ajax. Hector rebukes him for being insolent, straps on the stolen armor, and rouses the Trojan allies. Reflecting that Hector will never return from this battle, Zeus resolves to give him “great power for the moment” (449).

Three Achaean leaders form a protective circle around Patroclus while Hector and the Trojans charge in “as a heavy surf roars in against the rip at the river’s mouth” (450). Not wanting to see Patroclus’s body defiled, Zeus covers the Achaeans in a dense mist. The brutal battle over the body rages on, with Ajax killing Hippothous and Apollo provoking Aeneas, while in his tent Achilles has no thought that Patroclus could be dead. His mother Thetis secretly revealed Zeus’s plans but never mentioned anything about Patroclus dying.