The magnanimity of the self-giving act to the Other is also an act of free choice. Crying before the shins of the murderous Achilles, Lycaon implores the Myrmidon captain to have mercy on him. However, Achilles soon realizes both he and Hector were cursed by the gods. Once King Priam has been notified that Achilles will allow him to claim the body, he goes to his strongroom to withdraw the ransom. The Iliad does not end with the burning of Troy, the death of Achilles, or the flight of Aeneas to Lavinian shores. Achilles granted his wish. Behind Priam four attendants, two men (shown here) followed by two women, bring the gifts. Priam begs Achilles for Hector's body. certainly does have violent force coursing through its pages. The reality of Homer’s deconstruction of force and violence is also subtly interwoven in his descriptions of violence. I have an essay due about Hector, Achilles, and Priam and I am supposed to compare and contrast them. Apollo, meanwhile, protects Hectors corpse from damage and rot and staves off dogs and scavengers. Nearly three millennia later, Homer’s message still reverberates and is even more relevant now than in times past, Achilles, Priam, and the Redemptive Power of Forgiveness. Here, we witness a recapitulation of a familiar image to us: a helpless Trojan shamelessly and helplessly tossing himself at the feet of murderous Achilles and begging for compassion. He was ridiculed by the institutional and educational elite of his day; the discovery was too small to be the magnificent city described by Homer. Afterward Achilles and Hector duel, with Achilles killing the great Trojan prince. In Book 3 of Homer's Iliad, Priam tells Helen of Troy that he once helped King Mygdon of Phrygia in a battle against the Amazons. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions The magnanimity of forgiveness reveals forgiveness to be the ultimate expression of heroism. He is an old man like me, approaching the end of his life. He let go of the spear, he sank back down…spreading both arms wide. Homer does not celebrate violence for violence’s sake; his seemingly grotesque and painfully intimate descriptions of death are meant to expose us to the horror of war and false gospel of glory through violence. Homer does not locate the heart of justice with the cold gods of Olympus (as nearly all the human characters do in the poem through their prayers and invocations of the gods), but in the agency and heart of humans. Nearly three millennia later, Homer’s message still reverberates and is even more relevant now than in times past. When the first description of mass battle begins, Homer tells us that the Greeks and Trojans were “mauling each other there like wolves.” The animalization of war is visibly seen, but, in this manifestation of carnage, we also see tenderness, love, and empathy from the hand of the poet: “And Telamonian Ajax struck Anthemion’s son, the hardy stripling Simoisius, still unwed. “The Iliad accepts violence,” as Bernard Knox wrote, “as a permanent factor in human life and accepts it without sentimentality.” From the very onset of the poem, Agamemnon holds Chryseis captive and only frees her after the god Apollo sends a plague upon the Greek army. © 1963 Prairie Schooner It is in the tent of Achilles with Priam begging the return of Hector’s body that the whole cosmic movement of the poem is made manifest; and, in this moment, we witness what Homer considers the truest and grandest act of heroism: compassion in the form of forgiveness. 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