How his spirit leapt when he heard those horrors –
and buckling his gleaming armor round his body,
out he rushed to war.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 9, lines 723-725. The Myrmidon warrior Phoenix tells Achilles the story of the great Aetolian warrior prince Meleager, that foreshadows Achilles’s return to battle. During the Aetolians war with the Curetes, Meleager left the battle to stay in bed with his wife Cleopatra. Eventually Cleopatra prevailed on him to rush back to war by "recounting all the griefs that fall to people whose city’s seized and plundered – the men slaughtered, citadel burned to rubble, enemies dragging the children, raping the sashed and lovely women." Achilles will also rush back to war when the grief falls close to home with the killing of his closest friend Patroclus by Hector.