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THE CRUELTY OF ACHILLES, AND THE RANSOMING OF HECTOR
When Achilles was asleep that night the ghost of Patroclus came, saying,
"Why dost thou not burn and bury me? for the other shadows of dead men
suffer me not to come near them, and lonely I wander along the dark
dwelling of Hades." Then Achilles awoke, and he sent men to cut down
trees, and make a huge pile of fagots and logs. On this they laid
Patroclus, covered with white linen, and then they slew many cattle, and
Achilles cut the throats of twelve Trojan prisoners of war, meaning to
burn them with Patroclus to do him honour. This was a deed of shame, for
Achilles was mad with sorrow and anger for the death of his friend. Then
they drenched with wine the great pile of wood, which was thirty yards
long and broad, and set fire to it, and the fire blazed all through the
night and died down in the morning. They put the white bones of
Patroclus in a golden casket, and laid it in the hut of Achilles, who
said that, when he died, they must burn his body, and mix the ashes with
the ashes of his friend, and build over it a chamber of stone, and cover
the chamber with a great hill of earth, and set a pillar of stone above
it. This is one of the hills on the plain of Troy, but the pillar has
fallen from the tomb, long ago.
Then, as the custom was, Achilles held games--chariot races, foot races,
boxing, wrestling, and archery--in honour of Patroclus. Ulysses won the
prize for the foot race, and for the wrestling, so now his wound must
have been healed.
But Achilles still kept trailing Hector's dead body each day round the
hill that had been raised for the tomb of Patroclus, till the Gods in
heaven were angry, and bade Thetis tell her son that he must give back
the dead body to Priam, and take ransom for it, and they sent a messenger
to Priam to bid him redeem the body of his son. It was terrible for
Priam to have to go and humble himself before Achilles, whose hands had
been red with the blood of his sons, but he did not disobey the Gods. He
opened his chests, and took out twenty-four beautiful embroidered changes
of raiment; and he weighed out ten heavy bars, or talents, of gold, and
chose a beautiful golden cup, and he called nine of his sons, Paris, and
Helenus, and Deiphobus, and the rest, saying, "Go, ye bad sons, my shame;
would that Hector lived and all of you were dead!" for sorrow made him
angry; "go, and get ready for me a wain, and lay on it these treasures."
So they harnessed mules to the wain, and placed in it the treasures, and,
after praying, Priam drove through the night to the hut of Achilles. In
he went, when no man looked for him, and kneeled to Achilles, and kissed
his terrible death-dealing hands. "Have pity on me, and fear the Gods,
and give me back my dead son," he said, "and remember thine own father.
Have pity on me, who have endured to do what no man born has ever done
before, to kiss the hands that slew my sons."
Then Achilles remembered his own father, far away, who now was old and
weak: and he wept, and Priam wept with him, and then Achilles raised
Priam from his knees and spoke kindly to him, admiring how beautiful he
still was in his old age, and Priam himself wondered at the beauty of
Achilles. And Achilles thought how Priam had long been rich and happy,
like his own father, Peleus, and now old age and weakness and sorrow were
laid upon both of them, for Achilles knew that his own day of death was
at hand, even at the doors. So Achilles bade the women make ready the
body of Hector for burial, and they clothed him in a white mantle that
Priam had brought, and laid him in the wain; and supper was made ready,
and Priam and Achilles ate and drank together, and the women spread a bed
for Priam, who would not stay long, but stole away back to Troy while
Achilles was asleep.
All the women came out to meet him, and to lament for Hector. They
carried the body into the house of Andromache and laid it on a bed, and
the women gathered around, and each in turn sang her song over the great
dead warrior. His mother bewailed him, and his wife, and Helen of the
fair hands, clad in dark mourning raiment, lifted up her white arms, and
said: "Hector, of all my brethren in Troy thou wert the dearest, since
Paris brought me hither. Would that ere that day I had died! For this
is now the twentieth year since I came, and in all these twenty years
never heard I a word from thee that was bitter and unkind; others might
upbraid me, thy sisters or thy mother, for thy father was good to me as
if he had been my own; but then thou wouldst restrain them that spoke
evil by the courtesy of thy heart and thy gentle words. Ah! woe for
thee, and woe for me, whom all men shudder at, for there is now none in
wide Troyland to be my friend like thee, my brother and my friend!"
So Helen lamented, but now was done all that men might do; a great pile
of wood was raised, and Hector was burned, and his ashes were placed in a
golden urn, in a dark chamber of stone, within a hollow hill. _