In Book 24 of The Iliad, in perhaps the most moving scene of the epic poem, the elderly Trojan king Priam meets the Greek hero Achilles, who has already killed his beloved son Hector and is intent on bringing doom to his city.
Begging for the return of his son’s body, the frail old man supplicates Achilles and asks him to think of his own father, Peleus,…
