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.