Mark Gagnon

Homer writes that Hector runs.

The greatest Trojan warrior ever sees Achilles and just books it three times around the walls of the city because he knows what's coming next.

Finally, tricked by the goddess Athena into standing his ground, Hector turns and fights, and Achilles kills him.

But Achilles isn't done.

He ties Hector's body to the back of his chariot and drags it around the walls of Troy, around the tomb of Patroclus, day after day.

And it's in this act of desecration that shocks everyone, even the gods.

But again, Achilles was going crazy.

He's blind with rage.

Now, the Iliad doesn't end with the fall of Troy, but with something...

I guess, in a lot of ways, like more, more poetic, a lot more powerful from a rhetorical perspective.

Old King Priam, Hector's father, crosses the battlefield alone at night and enters the Greek camp and he kneels before Achilles.

the man who literally killed his son, and he just asks for Hector's body.

He's begging him, like, please.

He says, think of your own father.

And Achilles, for the first time, sees his enemy as a human being.

And he weeps.

And the two of them just hold each other and they weep together.

And Achilles gives Hector's body back to his dad.

Now, that is where Homer ends the poem.

Not with victory, not with the fall of Troy, just two enemies, I guess, like, you know, the father of an enemy and, you know, Achilles himself sharing this moment of grief.