Iliad, Homer - Sophie Mills (essay date April 2000)

Sophie Mills (essay date April 2000)

SOURCE: Mills, Sophie. “Achilles, Patroclus, and Parental Care in Some Homeric Similes.” Greece & Rome 47, no. 1 (April 2000): 3-18.

[In the following essay, Mills concentrates on extended similes that recall scenes of parental or mutual care in the Iliad—particularly those associated with Achilles and Patroclus—as they emphasize the poem's countertheme of “love and cooperation between human beings.”]

And the two fought it out over Kebriones, like lions
who in the high places of a mountain, both in huge courage,
and both hungry fight together over a killed deer.

(Il. 16.756-8)

… the flung stones dropped to the ground
like snowflakes which the winds' blast whirling the shadowy clouds
drifts in their abundance along the prospering earth.

(Il. 12.156-8; cf. Il. 12.278-87)

As when dense disaster closes on one who has...

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