how long will you eat your heart out here in tears and torment?
All wiped from your mind, all thought of food and bed?
It’s a welcome thing to make love to a woman…
You don’t have long to live now, well I know:
already I see them looming up beside you – death
and the strong force of fate.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 24, lines 156-161. Thetis finds Achilles still grieving for Patroclus. She wonders how long he is going to torment himself without food and sleep, suggesting that "it’s a welcome thing to make love to a woman" – there is a strong insinuation of a homosexual love relationship between the two men here. Thetis also reminds her son that she sees death and the strong force of fate looming up beside him.