>>24560617
>everyone knows
Evidently not. This thread is full of people arguing the historic context of specific details of a text composed over hundreds of years, and then received from a middle ages transcription.

I do, however, agree with you on the point that we can still argue on the text we did inherit; its historicity being commented on when useful, but without being overly reliant on it.
Now, let's actually examine the text and subsequent arguments revolving around it. The main arguments for the relationship being romantic are the acknowledgement that Briseis' grief for Achilles and Achilles' for Patroclus are mirrors, as well as Achilles' grief being fairly openly described as being "like someone mourning their wife."
From this, we can fairly safely assert that their relationship is at least meant to read as "romantic-like."
This opens a whole can of worms, primarily "why describe a relationship that's romantic as being 'like a romance?' Personally, I actually fall on the side of this meaning that it's not romantic, as there's not much of a reason to try and hide behind "romantic-like" if there's actual romance. That said, we don't have any explicit homosexuality in the book to cross compare it to, and it's naive to assume homo and hetero love would be treated the same way in classical society, even if we (rightly, imo) assume homophobia wasn't a factor.
Additionally, many have argued that they did have a romantic relationship, just not an intimately sexual one. While I find this a little more convincing, it's worth mentioning that the idea that male-male relationships are inherently more intellectual and less focused on the physical is a philosophy first described later, but again we veer a little to close to over-historicization for comfort.

Tl;dr, I probably ultimately stand on the platonic reading if the text is strictly adhered to, but to deny with such extreme certainty that there are convincing romantic readings of it is asinine.

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Achilles and Patroclus. Lovers or brothers in arms?