The Iliad - Book 24 - Achilles and Priam 
- Reading time: about an hour
- Even Apollo finds Achilles' wrath
excessive.
- Achilles continues to dishonor Hector's body by
dragging it round the walls.
- Apollo says that "murderous Achilles" is a
"man without a shred of decency in his
heart…like a lion." The word Homer uses for
murderous is oloos ( ÙloÒw
). It means destructive, fatal, deadly, murderous,
but this is the only time it is applied to a human.
It is always an adjective modifying natural forces.
That is what Achilles has become—no longer a
human but a destructive force of nature.
- Priam prepares to go to Achilles
- What courage Priam shows in resolving to go alone on
the mission to Achilles to ransom his son's body.
While Hecuba rightly mistrusts Achilles and wishes to
eat Achilles' liver, Priam feels that he must go and
even if he is wrong, he must hold his son's body one
last time.
- The poem ends with one of the most moving scenes in
all literature. Priam kneels, hugs Achilles' knees
and kisses Achilles' hands, "those terrible,
man-killing hands that had slaughtered Priam's many
sons in battle" (561-2). Priam opens himself to
Achilles and asks Achilles to think of his own
father. They sit together in silence, both weeping.
Achilles and the two jars of Zeus
- Mueller sees in the speech of Achilles the solidarity of humans "in the face of divine indifference and persecution" (p. 74).
- [Discuss some aspect of the meeting of Achilles and Priam in Book 24]