e, engaged in a game of dice; and
while he was thus employed Antilochus entered with the news of the death
of Patroclus. The next fragment brings the whole scene vividly before
our eyes.

"Wail for me, Antilochus, rather than for the dead man--for me,
Achilles, who still live." After this, the corpse of Patroclus was
brought upon the stage, and the son of Peleus poured forth a lamentation
over his friend. The _Threnos_ of Achilles on this occasion was very
celebrated among the ancients. One passage of unmeasured passion, which
described the love which subsisted between the two heroes, has been
quoted, with varieties of reading, by Lucian, Plutarch, and
Athenaeus.[81] Lucian says: "Achilles, bewailing the death of Patroclus
with unhusbanded passion, broke forth into the truth in self-abandonment
to woe." Athenaeus gives the text as follows:--

"Hadst thou no reverence for the unsullied holiness of thighs, O
thou ungrateful for the showers of kisses given."

What we have here chiefly to notice is the change which the tale of
Achilles had undergone since Homer.[82] Homer represented Patroclus as
older in years than the son of Peleus, but inferior to him in station;
nor did he hint which of the friends was the _Erastes_ of the other.
That view of their comradeship had not occurred to him. AEschylus makes
Achilles the lover; and for this distortion of the Homeric legend he was
severely criticised by Plato.[83] At the same time, as the two lines
quoted from the _Threnos_ prove, he treated their affection from the
point of view of post-Homeric paiderastia.

Sophocles also wrote a play upon the legend of Achilles, which bears for
its title _Achilles' Loves_. Very little is left of this drama; but
Hesychius has preserved one phrase which illustrates the Greek notion
that love was an effluence from the beloved person through the eyes into
the lover's soul,[84] while Stobaeus quotes the beautiful simile by which
love is compared to a piece of ice held in the hand by children.[85]
Another play of Sophocles, the _Niobe_, is alluded to by Plutarch and by
Athenaeus for the paiderastia which it contained. Plutarch's words are
these:[86] "When the children of Niobe, in Sophocles, are being pierced
and dying, one of them cries out, appealing to no other rescuer or ally
than his lover: Ho! comrade, up and aid me!" Finally, Athenaeus quotes a
single line from the _Colchian Women_ of Sophocles, which alludes to
Ganymede, and r