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.