The Iliad Priam Quotes

Athena pleads with Odysseus to persuade men to stay and fight

Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus,
great tactician – what, is this the way?
All you Argives flying home to your fatherland,
tumbling into your oar-swept ships? Leaving Priam
and all the men of Troy a trophy to glory over,
Helen of Argos, Helen for whom so many Argives
lost their lives in Troy, far from native land!
No, don’t give up now. Range the Achaean ranks,
with your winning words hold back each man you find –
don’t let them haul their rolling ships to sea!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 2, lines 201-210. As the Achaeans prepare to sail for home, Athena tells Odysseus to hold the men back from readying the ships. She pleads with him not to give Priam and the Trojans the glory of keeping Helen, for whom many Achaeans have died in Troy. She inspires him to appeal to the men to stay and fight the Trojans, in spite of their fears.
But ceaseless war's upon us - quote with picture of Hector

But ceaseless war’s upon us!
Time and again I’ve gone to battle, fought with men
but I’ve never seen an army great as this. Too much –
like piling leaves or sand, and on and on they come,
advancing across the plain to fight before our gates.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 2, lines 906-910. Zeus sends messenger goddess Iris to Troy, alerting them to assemble their armies to meet the Achaeans advancing towards the city. She warns Trojan King Priam and his son Hector that she has never seen an army as great as this. She likens them in a simile to piling leaves or sand.

But when Odysseus sprang up, the famed tactician
would just stand there, staring down, hard,
his eyes fixed on the ground,
never shifting his scepter back and forth,
clutching it stiff and still like a mindless man.
You’d think him a sullen fellow or just plain fool.
But when he let loose that great voice from his chest
and the words came piling on like a driving winter blizzard –
then no man alive could rival Odysseus! Odysseus…
we no longer gazed in wonder at his looks.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 3, lines 260-269. Antenor, one of the wisest of the Trojan elders, is speaking to King Priam of Troy about how commanding the great Achaean warrior Odysseus is. Remarking on Odysseus’s incredible speaking ability, he says that no man alive can rival him. We are told that words come piling on like a driving winter blizzard (simile).

Just as the sun began to strike the plowlands,
rising out of the deep calm flow of the Ocean River
to climb the vaulting sky, the opposing armies met.
And hard as it was to recognize each man, each body,
with clear water they washed the clotted blood away
and lifted them onto wagons, weeping warm tears.
Priam forbade his people to wail aloud. In silence
they piled the corpses on the pyre, their hearts breaking,
burned them down to ash and returned to sacred Troy.
And just so on the other side Achaean men-at-arms
piled the corpses on the pyre, their hearts breaking,
burned them down to ash and returned to the hollow ships.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 7, lines 488-499. The opposing Achaean and Trojan armies may have had important differences that brought them into bloody conflict with one another. But they had one thing in common. They both shared the time-honored tradition of stopping to grieve for and attend to their dead. While Priam forbade his people to wail aloud, after battle they burned the bodies of their fallen, then went home with "their hearts breaking." Regardless of who or what they were fighting for, the soldiers on both sides were men with real feelings and human emotions who honored and mourned their dead.

Think how a lion, mauling the soft weak young
of a running deer, clamped in his massive jaws,
cracks their backbones with a snap – she’s stormed in,
invading the lair to tear their tender hearts out
and the mother doe, even if she’s dose by,
what can she do to save her fawns? She’s helpless –
terrible trembling racks her body too – and suddenly
off she bounds through the glades and the thick woods,
drenched in sweat, leaping clear of the big eat’s pounce.
So not a single Trojan could save those two from death,
they fled themselves before the Argive charge.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 11, lines 132-142. Comparing Agamemnon to a predatory lion mauling and tearing apart weak and young deer, this epic simile describes how the Achaean king brutally kills Isus and Antiphus, two of Trojan king Priam’s sons. The mother doe, like the Trojans, is unable to save her young deer from the lion. The Iliad is full of epic similes, especially ones like this involving predators and their prey.

Achilles rushed with his spear at noble Polydorus
son of Priam. His father would not let him fight,
ever, he was the youngest-born of all his sons –
Priam loved him most, the fastest runner of all
but now the young fool, mad to display his speed,
went dashing along the front to meet his death.
Just as he shot past the matchless runner Achilles
speared him square in the back where his war-belt clasped,
golden buckles clinching both halves of his breastplate –
straight on through went the point and out the navel.
down on his knees he dropped –
screaming shrill as tile world went black before him –
clutched his bowels to his body, hunched and sank.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 20, lines 463-475. This is an account of Polydorus dying by the spear of Achilles. Homer humanizes his victims of war, telling us the name, family background and person details of the dead and dying. We learn that Polydorus is the youngest son of Priam. The king loved him most and would not let him fight, but mad to display his speed he foolishly went dashed up to the front to meet his death. We are also given an intimate account of Polydorus’s pain and fear as he dies. Behind each death statistic in this war there is a real human being with family and feelings.

So the illustrious son of Priam begged for life
but only heard a merciless voice in answer: "Fool,
don’t talk to me of ransom. No more speeches.
Before Patroclus met his day of destiny, true,
it warmed my heart a bit to spare some Trojans:
droves I took alive and auctioned off as slaves.
But now not a single Trojan flees his death,
not one the gods hand over to me before your gates,
none of all the Trojans, sons of Priam least of all!"

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 21, lines 110-118. Lycaon, half brother to Hector and son of Priam, pleads with Achilles for his life. But an unforgiving Achilles is full of rage and hatred for the Trojans over the death of his friend Patroclus at the hands of Hector that he has no intention of sparing any son of Priam.

And old King Priam was first to see him coming,
surging over the plain, blazing like the star
that rears at harvest, flaming up in its brilliance –
far outshining the countless stars in the night sky,
that star they call Orlon’s Dog – brightest of all
but a fatal sign emblazoned on the heavens,
it brings such killing fever down on wretched men.
So the bronze flared on his chest as on he raced.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 31-38. King Priam watches as Achilles runs towards Troy, his bronze armor shining like the brightest star in the night sky, according to one of Homer’s beautiful epic similes.

That man who robbed me of many sons, brave boys,
cutting them down or selling them off as slaves,
shipped to islands half the world away…
Even now there are two, Lycaon and Polydorus –
I cannot find them among the soldiers crowding Troy,
those sons Laothoe bore me, Laothoe queen of women.
But if they are still alive in the enemy’s camp,
then we’ll ransom them back with bronze and gold.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 51-58. As Priam watches Achilles coming towards the city of Troy, he is unaware of the fate of his two sons Lycaon and Polydorus. He speaks of paying a ransom for their return if they are still alive in the enemy’s camp. This is an example of dramatic irony, as the audience has already heard that Achilles killed them both in battle (Books 20, 21).

Pity me too! –
still in my senses, true, but a harrowed, broken man
marked out by doom – past the threshold of old age…
and Father Zeus will waste me with a hideous fate,
and after I’ve lived to look on so much horror!
My sons laid low, my daughters dragged away
and the treasure-chambers looted, helpless babies
hurled to the earth in the red barbarity of war…
my sons’ wives hauled off by the Argives’ bloody hands!
And I, I last of all – the dogs before my doors
will eat me raw, once some enemy brings me down
with his sharp bronze sword or spits me with a spear,
wrenching the life out of my body, yes, the very dogs
I bred in my own halls to share my table, guard my gates –
mad, rabid at heart they’ll lap their master’s blood
and loll before my doors.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 68-83. A father’s love speaks loudly through the words of King Priam, who pleads with Hector not to fight a fuel with Achilles, a confrontation in which he says his son will meet his doom. He mourns the loss of his other children in the war. He asks Hector to take pity on him and stay within the walls of Troy. Priam also speaks of his own terrible future: eaten by his own guard dogs after he is brought down by some enemy.

Ah for a young man
all looks fine and noble if he goes down in war,
hacked to pieces under a slashing bronze blade –
he lies there dead…but whatever death lays bare,
all wounds are marks of glory. When an old man’s killed
and the dogs go at the gray head and the gray beard
and mutilate the genitals – that is the cruelest sight
in all our wretched lives!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 83-90. King Priam talks about how noble it is for a young man to die in war and battle. While he lies there slashed to pieces, all his wounds are marks of glory. But the death of an old man is not an honorable thing, when he is killed and dogs mutilate his body, that is the cruelest sight of all. Priam is speaking to his son Hector, trying to dissuade him from fighting Achilles. He doesn’t want to lose Hector, but he also realizes that Hector’s willingness to die on the battlefield is his best chance for glory.

So the old man groaned
and seizing his gray hair tore it out by the roots
but he could not shake the fixed resolve of Hector.
And his mother wailed now, standing beside Priam.
weeping freely, loosing her robes with one hand
and holding out her bare breast with the other,
her words pouring forth in a flight of grief and tears:
"Hector, my child! Look – have some respect for this!
Pity your mother too, if I ever gave you the breast
to soothe your troubles, remember it now, dear boy –
beat back that savage man from safe inside the walls!
Don’t go forth, a champion pitted against him –
merciless, brutal man. If he kills you now,
how can I ever mourn you on your deathbed."

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 90-103. Priam literally tears his hair out but cannot shake the resolve of his son Hector to go outside the walls of Troy to face Achilles. Hector’s mother Hecuba weeps and pleads with her son not to pit himself against this merciless and brutal champion. If Achilles kills him, she says that she will not be able to mourn him on his deathbed. This foreshadows how Hector’s corpse will be disrespected by Achilles. The love of two parents for their child comes through strongly in this passage.

I beg you, beg you by your life, your parents –
don’t let the dogs devour me by the Argive ships!
Wait, take the princely ransom of bronze and gold,
the gifts my father and mother will give to you –
but give my body to friends to carry home again
so Trojan men and Trojan women can do me honor
With fitting rites of fire once I am dead.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 399-405. Struggling for breath and about to die, the injured Hector pleads with Achilles to give his body to friends to bring home so that he may a proper funeral. He promises that his parents Priam and Hecuba will provide Achilles with a princely ransom. Hector is dying after his windpipe was slashed by Achilles’s spear.

Beg no more, you fawning dog – begging me by my parents!
Would to god my rage, my fury would drive me now
to hack your flesh away and eat you raw –
such agonies you have caused me! Ransom?
No man alive could keep the dog-packs off you,
not if they haul in ten, twenty times that ransom
and pile it here before me and promise fortunes more –
no, not even if Dardan Priam should offer to weigh out
your bulk in gold! Not even then will your noble mother
lay you on your deathbed, mourn the son she bore…
The clogs and birds will rend you – blood and bone!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 407-417. Achilles’s response to Hector’s plea for his body to be given to friends is so full of rage and hatred and lacking in compassion. He vows that no man or ransom will keep the dog packs from Hector’s body. Even if his father Priam gave him Hector’s weight in gold, not even then would Hector’s mother lay her son out on his deathbed.

How can you think of going down to the ships, alone,
and face the glance of the man who killed your sons,
so many fine brave boys? You have a heart of iron!
If he gets you in his clutches, sets his eyes on you –
that savage, treacherous man – he’ll show no mercy,
no respect for your rights!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 241-246. Hecuba tries to convince Priam not to go down to the Achaean ships to ask Achilles for their son Hector’s body back. She believes that Achilles is a savage without compassion and will kill her husband, having already killed his sons.

Get to your work! My vicious sons – my humiliations!
If only you’d all been killed at the fast ships
instead of my dear Hector…
But I – dear god, my life so cursed by fate! –
I fathered hero sons in the wide realm of Troy
and now, now not a single one is left, I tell you.
Mestor the indestructible, Troilus, passionate horseman
and Hector, a god among men – no son of a mortal man,
he seemed a deathless god’s. But Ares killed them all
and all he left me are these, these disgraces – liars,
dancers, heroes only at beating the dancing-rings,
you plunder your own people for lambs and kids!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 299-310. Speaking after Hector’s death, Priam’s love for his son is very clear. He wishes all his other sons were killed instead of Hector, whom he calls a god among men. The god of war Ares killed his hero sons Hector, Mestor and Troilus. The other sons he has left he brands liars and disgraces.

Here, quickly – pour a libation out to Father Zeus!
Pray for a safe return from all our mortal enemies,
seeing you’re dead set on going down to the ships –
though you go against my will. But if go you must,
pray, at least, to the great god of the dark storm cloud,
up there on Ida, gazing down on the whole expanse of Troy!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 339-344. Hecuba tries to protect her husband Priam from harm as he sets out against her wishes for the enemy Achaean camp to beg for the return of Hector’s body. She asks him to honor the gods by pouring a libation out to Zeus and praying for his safe return.

and straightaway the Father launched an eagle –
truest of Zeus’s signs that fly the skies
the dark marauder that mankind calls the Black-wing.
Broad as the door of a rich man’s vaulted treasure chamber,
well-fitted with sturdy bars, so broad each wing of the bird
spread out on either side as it swept in through the city
flashing clear on the right before the king and queen.
All looked up, overjoyed – the people’s spirits lifted.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 374-381. When King Priam prays to Zeus that Achilles will receive him with kindness in his bid to take back his son Hector’s body, Zeus sends him an eagle as a sign to reassure him. A beautiful epic simile describes the magnificence of the broad-winged bird.

Awesome – as when the grip of madness seizes one
who murders a man in his own fatherland and flees
abroad to foreign shores, to a wealthy, noble host,
and a sense of marvel runs through all who see him –
so Achilles marveled, beholding majestic Priam.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 563-567. Achilles is amazed to see Trojan king Priam in his hut. His reaction is captured in an epic simile about a man who murders someone in his own land, then flees to the home of a rich man in a foreign land, where those who see him are seized with wonder.

Remember your own father, great godlike Achilles –
as old as I am, past the threshold of deadly old age!
No doubt the countrymen round about him plague him now,
with no one there to defend him, beat away disaster.
No one – but at least he hears you’re still alive
and his old heart rejoices, hopes rising, day by day,
to see his beloved son come sailing home from Troy.
But I – dear god, my life so cursed by fate…
I fathered hero sons in the wide realm of Troy
and now not a single one is left, I tell you.
…But one, one was left me, to guard my walls, my people –
the one you killed the other day, defending his fatherland,
my Hector!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 570-579, 584-586. Priam pleads with Achilles for the return of Hector’s body for a proper funeral. He attempts to gain the sympathy of Achilles by making a comparison between himself and Achilles’s father Peleus. Appealing to any sense of compassion Achilles might have, Priam speaks of Peleus alone and surrounded by enemies with no one to defend him. But at least he still had the hope of seeing his beloved son returning home from Troy. Priam tells Achilles that he now has no hero son left to protect him since he killed Hector.

"Revere the gods, Achilles! Pity me in my own right,
remember your own father! I deserve more pity…
I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before
I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son."
Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire
to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man’s hand
he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory
both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
before Achilles’ feet as Achilles wept himself,
now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,
and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 588-599. Priam begs Achilles for his son Hector’s body so that he can give it proper funeral rites. When the Trojan king pleads with Achilles to remember his own father, the Achaean hero’s heart is touched and he weeps for his father and his slain friend Patroclus. His mood turns from rage to compassion.

Poor man, how much you’ve borne – pain to break the spirit!
What daring brought you down to the ships all alone,
to face the glance of the man who killed your sons,
so many fine brave boys? You have a heart of iron.
Come please sit down on this chair here…
Let us put our griefs to rest in our own hearts.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 605-610. Achilles says this when Priam comes to beg for the return of his son Hector’s body. The Greek warrior recognizes the humanity in even his enemies and is overcome by compassion at the sadness a father mourning for his son. He admires the bravery of Priam in facing the man who killed his sons. There is certainly a heroism about the Trojan king in his willingness to face Achilles.

Feel no anger at me, Patroclus. if you learn –
even there in the House of Death – I let his father
have Prince Hector back. He gave me worthy ransom
and you shall have your share from me, as always,
your fitting, lordly share.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 695-699. As Achilles lifts Hector’s body up and lays it down on a bier to return to his father Priam, he calls out to the ghost of his friend Patroclus. He asks Patroclus not to be angry with him for letting Priam have his son back.
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