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Tues. Oct.1

The ransom of Hector’s body, and the end of Achilles’ anger.

The gods intervene again, as Zeus sends Thetis to instruct her son to receive Priam, and sends Iris to persuade Priam to go to Achilles and beg for the return of his son’s body. Achilles is the victor, Priam the defeated, but when they meet over the body of Hector, they are both mourners, father and son. Achilles knows he himself will soon be killed, and when he looks at Priam he thinks how his own father will mourn as Priam does. Finally, Achilles can feel compassion, and embraces Priam. Ironically, in post-Homeric tradition, it will be a son of Achilles who kills Priam when the city falls.

The final book of the Iliad shows the funeral rites given Hector within the walls of Troy, much more subdued than those of Patroclus, without the games or the barbarity of human sacrifice. There is nothing left for Priam but grief. Even though Hector gave his own life in honorable sacrifice, the gods have not been appeased, and the Trojans are doomed, facing death or enslavement at the hands of the Greeks. The anger of Achilles has brought destruction to his enemies and glory to himself, but no comfort in his own mortality. His approaching death will be particularly ignoble, and inglorious.

The poem ends here, before the end of the war, because as Alexander Pope notes, the whole subject of the poem is the anger of Achilles and its consequences, not the war itself or its outcome. That is, how should men behave toward one other, even in war, when death is inevitable? Achilles is at once the model of martial skill and courage, but not of self-control or humility before the gods. It’s not until he accepts the futility of his anger that he becomes fully human, and the tragedy is complete.