◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

Priam Came to My Tent I am Achilles, son of Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis. My mother told me the choice: live long, die old, be forgotten as king of Phthia. Or go to Troy, die young, be remembered as long as men told stories. I chose the second. I chose the short life. I chose the name that would outlast the body. I knew what I was choosing. I was young. I believed the wager was worth what it cost. The first word of the poem you call the Iliad is menis — wrath. My wrath. Agamemnon took my war-prize Briseis. I withdrew from battle. My fellow Greeks died because my pride had been touched. I asked my mother to have Zeus turn the war against my own side. She asked. Zeus agreed. The Greeks died. Patroclus was the person I loved best. He wore my armor into battle so the Trojans would think I had returned. I let him go. Hector killed him. I had refused to fight for my pride. My refusal killed the one I loved most. I returned to battle in a rage. I killed Hector. Then I did what I should not have done. I tied his body to my chariot and dragged him around Troy for twelve days. I dishonored the body of a man I had already killed. The rage had no bottom. On the twelfth day, Priam came alone into my tent at night. King of Troy. Father of the man I had killed. He knelt. He kissed my hands — the hands that had killed his son. He asked for his son's body to bury. I saw my own father Peleus in Priam. I wept with him. I gave back the body. This was the highest thing I did in my life. Not the killing. Not the withdrawal. Not the dragging. The night in the tent when I gave a father back his son. Then I was killed by Paris. An arrow to the heel — the one place my mother missed when she dipped me in the Styx. Every warrior has one heel. Even me. Especially me. When Odysseus came down to the dead, I told him what I had learned. I would rather be a slave to a poor man above the earth than king of all the dead. The name did not warm me. The name did not know me. The name did not miss me. In your country I see a man who wants my name without paying my price. He wants to be remembered without being killed. He wants the wrath without the grief. He does the withdrawal. He does the rage. He drags the bodies of the dead for spectacle. But he does not do what saved me. He does not receive Priam. He does not weep with the father. He does not see his own father in the enemy. He believes he has no heel. He is wrong. Everyone has a heel. He has never been touched by grief he could not master. His heel will find him. You do not have to choose as I chose. You can choose the long life. The old age and grandchildren I did not know. My mother was right and I chose against her. Choose the short life, if you must, for what I learned with Priam. Not the wrath. Not the name. The night in the tent. Receive Priam.