josephine balmer | Letters of Lydia

The ancient playwright Aeschylus once wrote a tragedy about the star-crossed lovers, Achilles and Patroclus. This play was called Myrmidons and, excepting a couple of fragments, it is now lost to us. We know that it followed Achilles when he was refusing to fight for the Greeks during the Trojan War, a decision that ultimately leads to the death of his beloved. The fragments we do have are filled with lust, love, betrayal, anger, hatred and despair. There are so many works from antiquity that I wish we still had access to, but I particularly feel the loss of this one. Thankfully, in The Paths of Survival, Josephine Balmer brings this work to life in an innovative and evocative way.

A photo of a book on a blue and white striped background. The book has a white background and a photo of a battle helmet. Text: The Paths of Survival. Josephine Balmer.

This collection of poems starts in the present day, at the Sackler Library in Oxford where Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2256 currently resides. Amongst these scraps of papyrus are some lines that are believed to be when Achilles’ is lamenting over the dead body of Patroclus.