[Verginius Rufus]

There's nothing in the Iliad to suggest that Achilles and Patroclus are lovers--in fact both were sleeping with captive women. Later Greeks may have read something sexual into their friendship but it isn't in Homer. Achilles' quarrel with Agamemnon starts when Agamemnon takes his prize, a captured woman.

[allmendream]

Quite a bit to “suggest” it. Nothing that overtly states it.

It was well accepted in Homer’s time and shortly after that the two were lovers.

Alexander the Great, for example, took it as a given when he and his lover went to a shrine for the two of them.