just cousins, sure

[incandescens]

Probably rereading the Iliad will do nothing to help me appreciate Troy when it hits the screens here.

(Goes and rereads Iliad.)

---

While thse thought were chasing through his mind, King Nestor's son halted before him with the hot tears pouring down his cheeks and gave him the lamentable news: "Alas, my royal lord Achilles! I have a dreadful thing to tell you -- I would to God it were not true. Patroclus has been killed. They are fighting around his naked corpse and Hector of the flashing helmet has his arms."

When Achilles heard this he sank into the black depths of despair. He picked up the dark dust in both his hands and poured it on his head. He soiled his comely face with it, and filthy ashes settled on his scented tunic. He cast himself down on the earth and lay there like a fallen giant, fouling his hair and tearing it out with his own hands. The maidservants whom he and Patroclus had captured caught the alarm and all ran screaming out of doors. They beat their breasts with their hands and sank to the ground beside their royal master. On the other side, Antilochus shedding tears of misery held the hands of Achilles as he sobbed out his noble heart, for fear that he might take a knife and cut his throat.

-- Iliad, trans. by E.V. Rieu

Comments

[jackwalker.livejournal.com]

No, the Iliad won't help. The movie certainly isn't the epic.

Closest thing I can match it to is something Mary Renault might have written, taking the Troy Tale as a starting point. There's a similar kind of soft-pedaling of the supernatural elements (although they're not entirely absent) and some sense of "this is what might have really happened to give rise to the legend."

Of course, Renault would not have downplayed the actual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus . . .

[evil-laugher.livejournal.com]

That part broke me up a bit.