T hose pain practices changed over time, despite the preservation

of the stories. In the Iliad, when Achilles learns of the death of

Patroclus, his friend, comrade and maybe lover, he flings himself
into the dirt and tears out his hair, while his attendants all wail.
When the body is finally recovered, Achilles is all tears, wails,
groans and cries. He is like a lion whose cubs have been killed by a
hunter, whose pain is quickly directed in anger (χόλος, khólos) and
revenge. When Achilles’ mother finally arrives to deliver his new
armour, she finds him still clinging to Patroclus’ dead body, openly
weeping.
Yet by the time of Plato many of the apparent virtues of
the Iliad were in question. On an Attic red-figure volute-krater from
about 460 BCE, perhaps some 300 years after the Iliad was first set
down in writing, the figure of Achilles is discovered by his mother
precisely at this moment of his grief. The artist does not show
Achilles in tears, clinging to the body of Patroclus; instead, Achilles
is depicted alone, entirely veiled in a shroud, save for the top of his
head and the symbolically important heel of one foot.