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.