The Song of Achilles

The following day, they arrive in Phthia to find the shore crowded with people crying out, “Prince Achilles! Aristos Achaion!” (173). Patroclus calls this the day their lives changed. Achilles “had chosen to become a legend, and this was the beginning” (173). As he prepares to step off the ship, Achilles turns back to ask Patroclus to join him. Peleus tells the crowd that Achilles will lead Phthia’s troops and return home to glory. His words provoke a chill in Patroclus, who knows Achilles will never return. The men throng around Achilles, their esteemed leader, and Patroclus realizes that Achilles no longer belongs to him alone.

Achilles becomes absorbed in preparations for the expedition to Troy. Peleus’s eager, cheerful troops begin calling themselves Myrmidons, “ant-men,” a reference to Zeus having created the first race of Phthians from ants. Servant girls gaze admiringly at Achilles. Patroclus begins to slip away by himself, the prophecy about Achilles’s impending death haunting his thoughts.

Patroclus asks Achilles when he plans to tell his father about the prophecy, and Achilles admits that he does not plan to tell him at all since “[i]t would only bring him grief” (176). Achilles makes