‘best of the Achaeans’

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Iliad 16.273–274

For Agamemnon to dishonor the status of Achilles as ‘the best of the Achaeans’, as Achilles himself says at I.01.412, is a sign of the over-king’s atē ‘aberration’. Patroklos says ... Continue reading

Iliad 17.164

In this retrospective, it is said that Patroklos has been killed as a therapōn of Achilles, who is described here as ‘best of the Achaeans’. The immediate context accommodates here even the deeper meaning of therapōn as ‘ritual substitute’, since Patroklos himself could become temp ... Continue reading