Abstract
Late archaic lyric poetry tends to obscure all pathetic and tragic elements of Achilles’ destiny present in the Iliad. The offence against his honour, his grief for Patroclus, his yearning for native Phthia, and a painful awareness of being ὠκύμορος (“short-lived”) – none of these themes play a role in the passages of Pindar, Bacchylides or Simonides where Achilles is mentioned. Yet each of these three poets operates differently with regard to the epic source, and it is worth investigating how they do so.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Professor Justina Gregory for allowing me to present this paper at the Twentieth Annual Conference of the ALSCW (Oct. 27–30, 2016) in Washington D.C., and for her kind hospitality there. I also wish to thank Professor Martin Hose and both reviewers of Philologus for their helpful comments, as well as Dr. Emrys Bell-Schlatter for his courtesy in correcting my English.
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