Word: patroclus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...disciplined, more absorbing books (The Last of the Wine, The King Must Die). Here she appears to be limited by her slightly blinkered view of Alexander. Granting him his historic virtues-precocity, courage, leadership and tactical genius-she dissembles on the crucial matter of his sexuality. After Achilles and Patroclus, Alexander and Hephaistion (one of his generals) were the best-known best friends of the ancient world. In the novel, however, though the author surrounds her hero with Hephaistion, an overt invert, and a band of other young men, Alexander himself remains pure, sublimated and inevitably prissy. He not only...
Thirsites, the deformed, caviling, ranting, smirking, groveling Greek, gradually emerges as the dominant figure. Ajax beats him, Patroclus upbraids him, but when (as he watches while Cressida submits to Diomed's advances) he speaks the line...