"

Thank you. My problem was with labeling Achilles a ""sexual predator."" Presumably Sommerstein will go on to identifying Daedaluas as the first aviator and Andromache as the first feminist. Without in any way denying the existence of sexual predation then and now, this particular use of the phrase strikes me as homophobic. It raises the question, which other (nonmurderous) sexual predators he is thinking of? Solon? Socrates? Aeschines? I can only view it as a homophobic remark directed at the Greeks in general. If so, that raises questions about the propriety of repeating it here.

To add to that, what information do we have on the respective ages of the two? Am I mistaken or was Troilus described as a boupais? It has been a while since I studied the topic, but I seem to recall he was nineteen when he died, one year short of the magic twenty needed to save Troy. Achilles, on the other hand, was sixteen when he shed his female garb and left with Oedipus to join the battle, I believe. And the killing is said to have happened early in the war. So what can Sommerstein be editorializing about? An adolescent preying upon an adult?

On a separate note, I never saw anything claiming that Achilles fell in love with Polyxena at the same time as with Troilus. Everything points to his lying in wait at the Lion fountain expressly to get the boy, not the girl (though it may be significant that she was sacrificed by the Greeks at his tomb).

One more thing - when the brothers (which ones?) of Troilus ride - too late - to his rescue, Achilles meets them in Apollo's temple with an unusual weapon: Troilus' head, which he is swinging around by the hair. It is such a gory detail, it would be a pity to not include it, I just no longer have the sources.  "