Why Achilles Weeps Before Priam

Near the end of the Iliad, an old man walks alone into an enemy camp, kneels before the warrior who killed his son, and kisses his hands. And the man who receives that kiss begins to weep along with him. It is the most talked-about scene in the poem, and the question it leaves with the reader is simple: why does Achilles weep? Book XXIV provides the answer, and it lies less in pity than in the memory of a father.

What comes before the tent

To feel the weight of those tears, one must recall the state in which Achilles arrives there. He killed Hector in Book XXII, and for twelve days, every morning, he dragged the body around the tomb of Patroclus. He was victorious, yet he cannot stop: he killed the man he had to kill, and still the wrath endures. The one who condemns this is not a Greek, but a god. In Book XXIV, Apollo tells the other gods that Achilles has lost all pity (Iliad, XXIV, 44), calling him the Pelides, that is, the son of Peleus. Denying funeral rites to the dead was, for the Greeks, an enormous outrage, and it is that outrage which the gods command an old man to repair.

The gods send a man to do the impossible. Priam, the king of Troy, sets out into the night bearing ransom treasures, crosses the Greek camp guided by Hermes, enters Achilles' tent, and kneels down.

Priam's supplication

What Priam says is what makes the scene unforgettable. He declares that he has brought himself to do what no mortal on earth has ever done: to press his lips to the hands of the man who slaughtered his sons (XXIV, 505-506). A king who kisses the hand of the slayer of his children measures the deed by the distance he has traveled, and the poem measures it alongside him. Priam even adds that if Achilles wishes to kill him, let him, provided he may first embrace his son one last time.

Yet Priam's speech does something else, and therein lies the answer to the title's question. He begs Achilles to remember his own father, of the same age, on the threshold of old age.

What Achilles sees in that old man

It is at this moment that something pierces Achilles' heart. He weeps because he sees his own father in the old man. Peleus too is growing old, and he will never see his son again, for, as destiny had already foretold, Achilles will die at Troy. Achilles' tears are the concrete consequence of a choice made midway through the poem, when he chose glory and, with it, staying at Troy to die. Glory carried that price, and the price has a face: an aging father, at home, waiting.

The poem is precise in what it says. The text does not say that Achilles forgives, nor that he repents. What it says is that the two of them, remembering, weep: Priam, prostrate at Achilles' feet, weeps for Hector, slayer of men; Achilles weeps for his father and, at other times, for Patroclus, and their lament fills the house (XXIV, 509-512). These are two kinds of weeping. Achilles had already wept for Patroclus, ashes upon his head and a cry that reached the depths of the sea. This is different: he weeps like a child.

Two men with broken hearts

There is a detail the text adds that is worth noting: Achilles himself tells Priam that he had already resolved to return the body, following the command of Zeus conveyed by his mother, Thetis. The command of the gods impels him, but it does not explain what takes place inside the tent. What the supplication adds is the father remembered and the shared tear. When Achilles has had his fill of weeping, he stands, raises the old man by the hand, and invites him to sit. The fire that would not die across all those pages begins, right there, to fade. Achilles returns Hector's body to Priam and grants an eleven-day truce for the funeral.

Hence the phrase that sums up the scene: victory did not extinguish the rage, the grief of another did.

Ivanov's painting

Whoever wishes to see this without words can turn to the painting made by Russian artist Alexander Ivanov in 1824, Priam Asking Achilles for the Body of Hector, now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The canvas shows Priam on his knees, bringing Achilles' hands toward his lips. And Achilles shows no posture of a victor: he is seated, his face turned aside, like someone who cannot look into the eyes of a father humbling himself to beg for the body of his son.

There is also a detail on the floor, the staff with two serpents, the symbol of the god Hermes, who was the one who led Priam to the tent. The painter grasped what the poem conveys: in that tent, there is no victor. Priam has lost his son. Achilles will never again see his father and has lost his friend. What remains are two men with broken hearts.

What the scene teaches

The Iliad begins with the word wrath and spends most of its course showing what wrath does. The scene in the tent does not say that Achilles had no reason for his fury: he did. What it shows is that even righteous anger wounds those who do not deserve it, and that it only yields when someone looks upon the suffering of another. That is why the question the poem leaves behind is not who was in the right, but what the person on the other side endures.

The scene grows even stronger when one knows how the poem ends: not with the fall of Troy, but with a funeral. It is worth reading next how the Iliad ends.

Continue: Hector Flees from Achilles: The Detail of the Three Laps · How the Iliad Ends · The Iliad, by Homer: Summary and Analysis · Palazzo Barberini and Caravaggio
Source class: Ilíada, de Homero