“So spake he, and in the hearts of all of them he raised desire of lamentation; and while they were yet mourning, to them appeared rose-fingered dawn about the piteous corpse.” _Iliad_, xxiii. 59 _et seq._ [Sidenote: _Plato on the above_] Plato in the _Symposium_ dwells tenderly on this relation between Achilles and Patroclus:— [And great] “was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus—his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Æschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far). And greatly as the gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover has a nature more divine and worthy of worship. Now Achilles was quite aware, for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid death and return home, and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hector. Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not only on his behalf, but after his death. Wherefore the gods honoured him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the Islands of the Blest.” _Symposium, speech of Phædrus_, _trans. by B. Jowett_. [Sidenote: _Criticism of Plato’s View_] And on this passage Symonds has the following note:— “Plato, discussing the _Myrmidones_ of Æschylus, remarks in the _Symposium_ that the tragic poet was wrong to make Achilles the lover of Patroclus, seeing that Patroclus was the elder of the two, and that Achilles was the youngest and most beautiful of all the Greeks. The fact however is that Homer raises no question in our minds about the relation of lover and beloved. Achilles and Patroclus are comrades. Their friendship is equal. It was only the reflective activity of the Greek mind, working upon the Homeric legend by the light of subsequent custom, which introduced these distinctions.” _The Greek Poets_, ch. iii. p. 103. [Sidenote: _Athenæus_] From the time of Homer onwards, Greek literature was full of songs celebrating friendship:— “And in fact there was such emulation about composing poems of this sort, and so far was any one from thinking lightly of the amatory poets, that Æschylus, who was a very great poet, and Sophocles too introduced the subject of the loves of men on the stage in their tragedies: the one describing the love of Achilles for Patroclus, and the other, in his Niobe, the mutual love of her sons (on which account some have given an ill name to that tragedy); and all such passages as those are very agreeable to the spectators.” _Athenæus_, bk. xiii. ch. 75. [Sidenote: _From Theognis_]