Of all things — Achilles, in a romantic novel. Achilles, whose father was a king and mother a goddess, the hero who fills Homer’s Iliad with other people’s blood, not all of it justifiably spilt. The warrior who, insulted, refuses to fight, and so lets the Trojans kill thousands of his fellow Greeks. Above all, Achilles, who may not even have existed as a real human being, and of whom there is no surviving archaeological evidence. How much could there be to say about this man, or half-god, as a lover?
Madeline Miller found plenty. A key turning point in the story of the Trojan War comes when Achilles is told that his friend and lover Patroclus has been killed. Patroclus had put on Achilles’s armour to make a show and frighten off the Trojans. He hadn’t been meant to fight, and certainly not to die. But he fights, and is killed by Prince Hector of Troy aided by the god Apollo. (The Greek gods tended to take sides.) Achilles’s rage is tremendous, his reaction unhinged. He rushes out and kills Hector and thousands of Trojan soldiers. He keeps Patroclus’s body in his tent for days, even as it beings to decay, kissing it and weeping over it.
This much is in the texts. Miller’s debut novel The Song of Achilles (Bloomsbury, Rs 499) uses myth, conjecture and extrapolation to tell the full story of this relationship. It is told from the perspective of Patroclus — who is not as good-looking, not as tall, fast, smart, skilled at fighting or self-confident as his lover. He is an unhappy and unloved child, albeit a prince. While still a boy he happens to kill another boy, a nobleman’s son, and is exiled to the palace of Peleus, father of Achilles. The two meet there. Patroclus finds himself accepted; Achilles finds a companion who doesn’t see him solely as a god-born hero-in-waiting.
They grow up together, spend their time together, study together under the centaur Chiron. Achilles’s goddess mother is baleful, but nevertheless the two become lovers. And then fate calls and Troy takes them.
Miller’s prose rarely falters, even when the event is well-known (such as Odysseus’s uncovering of Achilles hiding in drag on an out-of-the-way island; such as Agamemnon’s shockingly cruel sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia before the Greeks sail to Troy; such as, in fact, the famous scenes Achilles makes in the Greek camp on the beach of Troy as the war drags on). So the book is an achievement.
However, if one is at all familiar with the story of Alexander of Macedon and his lover Hephaistion, the parallels are overwhelming, especially if you read Mary Renault’s three-volume fictionalised biography of Alexander (a towering achievement), published between 1969 and 1981. Renault also fills the gaps in the Alexander story, particularly his youth. Achilles and Alexander both have frightening mothers, Alexander models himself on Achilles, both have a wild drive to win glory, a talent for music, and so on. There is a pattern to being a Greek hero.
The similarities may interfere with the reader’s suspension of disbelief, but no doubt the shades of the hero and the conqueror rest easy in Hades because they are remembered. How satisfying it would be to see the same done for the heroes of our civilisation, to see them presented — seriously and literately yet without excess reverence — as humans, not just historical figures. Would Rana Pratap make a good subject? Or the brilliant failure Muhammad bin Tughluq? Ashoka Maurya awaits a classy narrator. And this is to ignore the many lesser figures who orbited these stars but could make good protagonists.
