Priam in the tent

Twelve days have passed since Hector died. Achilles is still dragging the body around Patroclus's tomb each morning, in fury that will not subside. Apollo, on Olympus, finally protests — Achilles is dishonoring a dead man and a body the gods themselves are protecting from decay. The gods debate. Hera and Athena and Poseidon, Greek partisans, oppose. Zeus rules. He sends Thetis down to Achilles to tell him the gods are angry; he sends Iris to Priam with instructions to go alone, by night, to Achilles's tent, with a great ransom, and ask for the body.

Priam prepares. Against his wife Hecuba's pleading he loads a wagon with treasure and goes out into the dark with one driver. Hermes meets him on the way, in the disguise of a young Greek soldier, and walks him safely past the Greek sentries to Achilles's tent. He puts the guards there to sleep, opens the gate, slips away. Priam goes in alone.

Achilles is at his table; Patroclus's bones are in the urn behind him. The old king kneels and kisses Achilles's hands — the hands, Homer notes, that have killed so many of his sons. He says: think of your father, alone, missing you, longing to see you again. I am that man. I have come to ask for what no man before me has asked: my son's body. Achilles is moved. He weeps for his own father, then for Patroclus. Priam weeps for Hector. The two men sit in the firelight together, share food, look at each other and admire each other. Achilles offers Priam a bed in the tent and a guarantee of safe passage; he gives Hector's body back, washed and wrapped. He promises eleven days of truce so Troy can mourn. Hermes wakes Priam before dawn and leads him out of the camp safely. The body is brought back into Troy. Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen each take a turn weeping over it. The pyre is built. The bones are gathered. The tomb is raised. The Iliad ends, in its very last line, with the funeral of Hector. The fall of Troy will happen offstage, in a story the poem trusts you to know.