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Phoinix is Peleus’s most trusted advisor who helps raise Achilles; he later accompanies Achilles and Patroclus to Troy. When Thetis takes Achilles to Scyros, Phoinix is the one to tell Patroclus that he’s gone—he’s a kind and gentle man, and he seems to understand that Achilles and Patroclus love each other romantically. He disapproves of Achilles’s pride in Troy and his refusal to defer to Agamemnon, and he later helps Patroclus and Briseis teach the Trojan women Achilles “claims” as war spoils. Though Phoinix wants Achilles to return and help the Greek army after Achilles’s quarrel with Agamemnon, he doesn’t try to convince him directly. Instead, he tells Patroclus and Achilles a story about the hero Meleager and his wife, Cleopatra, who begged her husband to fight in battle to save his people. Though Meleager did this, his people hated him for how slow he was to help. This story is meant to convince Patroclus to beg Achilles to fight, which he eventually does.
Get the entire The Song of Achilles LitChart as a printable PDF.
Phoinix Character Timeline in The Song of Achilles
The timeline below shows where the character Phoinix appears in The Song of Achilles. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...visits Phthia to see the boy, who is otherwise raised by Peleus and Peleus’s advisor, Phoinix. A normal wife would have been happy with Peleus, Patroclus knows, but Thetis despises Peleus...
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Chapter 12
...the council chamber, not in the lyre practice room. Nervous, Patroclus eventually finds Peleus’s advisor Phoinix, who’s looking at clay tablets, each bearing the names of men who signed up for...
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Chapter 16
...to an onlooker, his vividness makes that onlooker heroic. Achilles defers most war matters to Phoinix, who will come to Troy with them, and he often asks Patroclus’s opinion. But Patroclus...
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Chapter 17
...it’s a shame that Achilles was so slow to come. After the interaction is over, Phoinix, in a way that suggests he is disapproving of Achilles’s behavior, tells him that their...
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Chapter 19
...Greeks. Achilles is calm; when one of the Myrmidons, Automedon, brings Achilles more spears on Phoinix’s orders, he throws unceasingly. Eventually, he has Patroclus stand behind him. The soldiers grow wild;...
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Chapter 21
...he didn’t even know Achilles liked girls. Each girl goes to Briseis first, and then Phoinix and Patroclus help teach them. Achilles stays away; he was part of the raids, and...
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Chapter 25
...to the Phthian camp with Achilles, who rages about Agamemnon and the cowardly crowd. On Phoinix’s orders, Automedon comes to tell Achilles what the other kings are saying: Agamemnon says that...
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Chapter 28
That night, Phoinix tells them about a duel that happened earlier: Paris offered to fight for Helen in...
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Phoinix, Odysseus, and Ajax come to Achilles’s tent, where Achilles is playing the lyre. They eat...
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Phoinix interjects: there’s a story he wants to tell Achilles. Many years ago, the hero Meleager...
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Chapter 33
...her, except for Achilles. But Pyrrhus is Achilles’s son, and his spear strikes her back. Phoinix sends someone out to find the body, but they don’t. Patroclus hopes that her gods...
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