I feel like people tend to imagine achilles as being big and hairy and muscle-bound but I just want to remind y’all that he apparently spent quite a long time disguised as a girl and nobody could fucking tell?? including Odysseus, who had to trick him into revealing himself, but was apparently not smart enough to figure out which of the beautiful women in front of him was a man in a dress???
so like please consider: petite fine-boned achilles. achilles with killer cheekbones and big dark eyes w long eyelashes. ppl meeting achilles and being all “you’re the one who’s supposed to be a scary warrior?” and then later he he picks up trojans twice his size and flings them across the battlefield and they’re like ‘oh’. achilles being significantly shorter than hector and needing to tilt his head back to yell at him. patroclus being able to sling achilles over his shoulder. patroclus giving achilles piggyback rides. achilles needing patroclus to reach stuff down for him sometimes. achilles being the little spoon. tiny pretty achilles okay
Actually pretty accurate because Greeks tend to view those kind of bodies as what men were supposed to be, compared to how we view what a man is supposed to look like now. Look at how the statues of Gods and Heroes are the opposite of we view the heroic build today.
Are you effectively saying that greeks thought bishounens were ideal
“the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus 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” -Plato, arguing that Achilles was the bottom in the relationship
I’d like to add that men fucking men in Ancient Greece always looked a certain way - there would always be an Older Hairy One and a Younger Smooth One, and anything outside of this binary pairing was considered morally bankrupt. As Patroclus is the older one of the pair according to Homer (Book XI, Patroclus’s father says “My child, in birth is Achilles nobler than thou, but thou art the elder though in might he is the better far”) so he’s going to be the Large Hairy, and Achilles by necessity will be the Small Smooth.