Achilles: A Death Chosen With Open Eyes
Read the full text in our reader
Phaedrus — γενέσθαι, οὐχ ὥσπερ Ἀχιλλέα τὸν τῆς Θέτιδος ὑὸν ἐτίμησαν καὶ εἰς μακάρων νήσους ἀπέπεμψαν, ὅτι πεπυσμένος παρὰ τῆς μητρὸς ὡς ἀποθανοῖτο ἀποκτείνας Ἕκτορα, μὴ ποιήσας δὲ τοῦτο οἴκαδε ἐλθὼν γηραιὸς τελευτήσοι, ἐτόλμησεν ἑλέσθαι βοηθήσας τῷ ἐραστῇ Πατρόκλῳ καὶ
It did not happen the way they honored Achilles, son of Thetis, and sent him to the isles of the blessed, because he had learned from his mother that he would die if he killed Hector, but if he did not do this, he would go home and die an old man, he dared to choose, coming to the aid of his lover Patroclus, and…
Continuing directly from 179d — where the sentence's verb ἐποίησαν ('they made') was still waiting on its infinitive γενέσθαι — Phaedrus finishes the thought: the gods made Orpheus's death come at women's hands, not the way they honored Achilles, son of Thetis, who chose to die for his lover Patroclus with the price already named to him by his own mother. The sentence runs on, unbroken, into 180a.
Phaedrus's version quietly edits Homer to fit his argument. In the Iliad, Thetis's warning is a choice between fame and longevity in general — die young and glorious at Troy, or go home and live out an ordinary life — with nothing tying it specifically to killing Hector for Patroclus's sake. Phaedrus folds that older calculus into an erotic one: the price of avenging his lover becomes the price of love itself, and pepysmenos, "having been told," is doing real work here — Achilles chooses with the cost already named to him, not in some blind heroic rush. Socrates will reach for this same scene in the Apology, arguing that a man who has taken a post must hold it whatever the danger, on Achilles's own example; Phaedrus gets there first, but for a smaller claim — that a lover, not a soldier or a citizen, is the one Greek type willing to choose death with his eyes open.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Plato, Symposium 179e in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Plato, Symposium — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Plato, Symposium 179e — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/symposium/179e/