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“No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”
“But what if he is your friend?” Achilles had asked him. “Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?” “You ask a question that philosophers argue over,” Chiron had said. “He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else’s friend and brother. So which life is more important?”
We had been silent. We were fourteen, and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are twenty-seven, they still feel too hard. He is half of my soul, as the poets say.
He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it?
I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.
~The Song of Achilles
I was craftier with my observation, kept my head down and my eyes ready to leap away. But he was craftier still. At least once a dinner he would turn and catch me before I could feign indifference. Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all. The sudden swoop of my stomach, the coursing anger. I was like a fish eyeing the hook.
~Patroclus, The Song Of Achilles