The Triumph of Achilles

“The Triumph of Achilles” has 20 lines broken into five stanzas. It is a free-verse poem because the lines and stanzas vary in length, and there is no rhyme scheme. Gluck’s poem focuses on Homer’s Iliad, specifically the story of Achilles and Patroclus. When read together, the poem reveals irony in the title. Achilles is a great warrior who kills many soldiers, but he loses his loved one—Patroclus—and his own life in the course of the Trojan War. This makes his “triumph” a tragic one.

The first stanza establishes both the irony of Gluck’s title and the tragedies within Homer’s Greek epic the Iliad. There are many stories in the Iliad, but the first line of Gluck’s poem clearly defines the focus of the poem: “the story of Patroclus” (Line 1). The poem does not relay all of the details or plot points from Homer’s story of Patroclus and Achilles, but instead uses allusions. This demonstrates how Gluck trusts the reader to have some knowledge of the famous epic poem. Homer’s poem is a starting point for delving into the larger emotional resonance of losing a loved one. The Nature of Grief is a central theme of the poem.

However, the first stanza compares Patroclus and Achilles before later stanzas explore Achilles’s grief. While Patroclus dies first, “no one survives” (Line 2). In other words, both men die. Beginning with the comparison highlights how Patroclus dies. Because he dons Achilles’s armor, he is mistaken for Achilles by the opposing forces. Mistaken identity is key to the tragedy of this story. Yet, while Patroclus physically “resembled” (Line 4) Achilles, he does not have Achilles’s god-like abilities. Achilles, the speaker notes, “was nearly a god” (Line 3). In the Iliad, there are long lists of the men Achilles kills in battle. He is known for only having a weak point on his heel. The famous saying, “Achilles’s heel” (which refers to a point of weakness) comes from this tiny flaw in his god-like nature.

The second stanza unpacks the interpersonal dynamic between the two men, as well as The Nature of Legends. The speaker describes the interpersonal dynamic as a “hierarchy” (Line 8), where “one serves the other” (Line 6). This is another allusion to the plot of the story of Patroclus and Achilles that develops a contrast. Building upon the comparison in the first stanza, the speaker notes that the men are not equal in all ways. Despite their similarity in appearance, Patroclus is not as powerful as Achilles—Achilles is a stronger fighter who is able to defeat more soldiers. This puts Achilles at the top of the hierarchy, and Patroclus as the one on the bottom.

Halfway through the second stanza—in the middle of Line 9—there is a turn from a definitive assertion of this hierarchy to questioning the veracity (truth) of legends and history. The turn occurs in the middle of the fourth line of Stanza 2. Line 9 is broken up by a comma (a caesura), dividing the line into two halves (hemistichs). Before the comma, the hierarchy “is always apparent” (Line 9), or clear and obvious. After the comma, the word “though” (Line 9) indicates the turn, or change in the avenue of thought. Line 10 finishes the thought that begins with “though the legends / cannot be trusted” (Lines 9-10). This introduces doubt into the stated interpersonal dynamic.

The rest of Stanza 2 clarifies why readers should doubt the veracity of legends. Legends are told by the people who survive: “their source is the survivor” (Line 11). This plays on the idea that the victor is the one who writes the history books. Part of Achilles’s “triumph” in the title is that he is the source of the legend, or the one who gets to tell the tale. Line 12 tinges Achilles’s triumph with tragedy; he is “the one who has been abandoned.” This brings the theme of The Nature of Legends together with the theme of The Nature of Grief. Achilles kills many men in retribution for the death of Patroclus, but he is motivated, according to the speaker in Gluck’s poem, by feeling abandoned. This is not only true for the specific story in Homer’s poem, but the repeated diction (word choice) of “always” in Lines 6 and 9 extends the emotional resonance of feeling abandoned when someone dies to all people.

The third stanza is the shortest stanza, with only two lines forming one question. The speaker asks, “What were the Greek ships on fire / compared to this loss?” (Lines 13-14). This question implies that the loss of a loved one, a personal and emotional loss, is greater than the loss of military vessels and the troops on them. The Greek ships are a familiar image and symbol in the Iliad, but they are impersonal, holding masses of people. The speaker argues that the poem gives more insight into the specific characters of Achilles and Patroclus, which makes the reader more attached to them and more empathetic to Achilles’s grief. The question, then, becomes a rhetorical one. The opposite—that the burning of Greek ships is a more significant loss than the death of Patroclus—is not supported by the text of Homer’s poem or Gluck’s poem.

Some publications of Gluck’s poem combine the fourth and fifth stanzas into one stanza. However, sources like The First Four Books of Poems, which includes selections from Gluck’s book The Triumph of Achilles, have two stanzas of three lines each at the end of the poem. The fourth stanza describes Achilles’s mourning “in his tent” (Line 15). This alludes to how Achilles spends much of the Iliad in his tent, unwilling to fight. It is the death of a loved one that causes him to kill many men in retribution. He also “grieved with his whole being” (Line 16) in the tent, making it a site of mourning as well as a site where he abstains from battle. While the tent keeps him from being seen by the troops outside, the “gods saw” (Line 17) how Achilles feels about Patroclus’s death.

The final stanza describes what the gods, and the reader, witness. Achilles experiences the loss of Patroclus as losing part of himself. The speaker says, “he was a man already dead” (Line 18). Before he is killed on the battlefield (due to the fatal flaw of his heel), he experiences death through Patroclus. Achilles is first killed by “the part that loved” (Line 19). In other words, The Nature of Grief is to feel the loss of a loved one so deeply that the survivor feels like they have died as well. This profound quality of grief is part of the human experience. The speaker calls this “the part that was mortal” (Line 20). This alludes to how Achilles is god-like in other aspects but human in his grief.