The news of the death of Patroklos is being poetically formulated here. This death is a pēma ‘pain’, I.17.688, which a god has ‘rolled’ down, as expressed by way of the verb kulindein, upon the Achaeans. See the comment on I.11.347, where we see that this pain is pictured as some boulder that has broken away from the heights above and is now about to crush anyone and anything that stands in the way. And what is this pain? It is the death of the ‘best of the Achaeans’, who is identified here as Patroklos, ritual substitute of Achilles. And the pain caused by this death will cause in turn a pothē ‘longing’ for the hero who has fallen. This noun pothē ‘longing’, like the verb potheîn ‘long for’, evokes the feelings of those who worship cult heroes: see the comment on I.02.695–709.