“Gilgamesh” established important threads in the buddy narrative, including the notion of enemies turned friends and the hero and his sidekick on a series of adventures.
Other ancient buddy stories center on comrades in arms. No doubt the greatest of these is Homer’s “The Iliad” (9th century B.C.), which unspools the riveting tale of the dreadful consequences of the Greek warrior Achilles’ prideful wrath in the 10th and final year of the Greeks’ conquest of Troy. A complex antihero if there ever was one, Achilles does have a tender side, revealed in his relationship with his kinsman Patroclus. A stunning red on black ceramic plate from the 6th century B.C. depicts the younger, beardless Achilles gently binding his friend’s wounded arm as the bearded Patroclus cowboys up, turning his head so Achilles and the viewer cannot read his pain.
So intense is their relationship that when Patroclus is killed by the Trojan hero Hector, Achilles goes on a rampage that is not sated until he has defeated Hector in single-handed combat and dragged his body around the gates of Troy.
Contemporary readers tend to see these buddies in homoerotic terms. But Peter Meineck – a former member of the British Commandos whose Aquila Theatre brilliantly condensed “The Iliad” for the stage, notably at Purchase College – has told me that such intense friendships are a product of war: You are fighting only for the guys in front of, next to and behind you.
The real-life warrior Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) fancied himself an actual Achilles and his childhood soul-mate Hephaistion his own Patroclus, so much so that the two men paid homage to the mythic Greek warriors’ tombs at Troy as Alexander embarked on his conquest of the Persian Empire. So great was his grief when Hephaistion died in Ecbatana (modern-day Hamadan, Iran), that he had his friend’s physician crucified, ordered all the horses tails to be shorn and staged a funeral the likes of which the ancient world had never seen. Eight months later, Alexander himself was dead, worn out at age 32 by a lifetime of combat and loss.
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