ABSTRACT
Towards the end of the Iliad, Achilles finally gives the order to prepare the burial of Patroclus. The pyre is ready, the body is put on it, but then “Achilles thought of something else.” He steps aside, cuts his “blond hair that he had grown for the river Spercheius,” and “looking over the wine-dark sea,” he addresses Spercheius, the main river of his father’s realm, far away in Thessaly. Peleus vowed to offer his son’s hair to the river together with fifty sheep, should his son return from the foreign war. Now that Achilles knows that he will find his grave near Troy, he offers his hair instead to his dead friend. “Thus said, he put the hair into the hands of his dear friend, and all felt the urge for a lament.” The poet leaves it open who it is they are lamenting: the dead Patroclus – or Achilles whose gesture makes plain his imminent fate (Il. 23.138-157).
