This passage suggests that Patroclus’s fear of Achilles’s innate skill is, at its heart, a fear of where that skill comes from. Achilles is a product of the gods, and while he is his own person, his “divinity” was given to him. Patroclus sees Achilles as human and innately good—a god-given capacity for violence complicates that idea. The fact that Achilles’s violence is actually “beautiful” only further makes clear its divine aspect. Patroclus’s desire to fight Achilles, then, seems like an effort to take Achille’s divine fighting skills and bring them to a human level of actual fighting—to push out the divine and make Achilles merely human. It’s also possible that Patroclus is just jealous of his beautiful, perfect friend who excels at what the Greeks most value. Or, perhaps, it’s both. Note also how this scene parallels Patroclus’s interaction with Clysonymus’s, but this time Patroclus takes on the bully role and implies that Achilles is a coward. But Achilles, secure in himself, feels no need to fight back.