Priam

Who He Is

Priam is the old king of Troy, father of Hector, of Paris, and of many other sons. He has governed a city at war for nine years, and the poem shows him more as a watcher than an actor: from the Scaean Gates and the towers he sees the duel, the fighting, and the deaths of his sons. The poem says that Ilion, Priam, and his people are hateful to the gods, although Zeus confesses that Ilion was the city he loved most. It is Priam, however, who performs the last act of the poem: he leaves home at night, in a mule cart, with a herald and a ransom, and goes alone to the tent of Achilles, the man who killed so many of his sons, to ask for Hector's body.

Trajectory

In Book II, Iris, in the form of the lookout Polites, speaks to the assembly of Priam and says she has never seen an army so numerous, and Hera, when she sends Athena to stop the Achaeans from fleeing, recalls that Athena would leave Priam and the Trojans the glory of Helen. In Agamemnon's prayer, Priam's palace is the target: the king of the Achaeans asks that the sun not set before he tears it down and burns its gates.

In Book III, Priam, with the elders, is at the Scaean Gates when Helen comes to watch the duel. The elders whisper that she should go back in the ships, but Priam calls her to his side, treats her as a dear daughter, and tells her that he does not blame her, but the gods, who launched against him the war of many tears of the Achaeans. He asks her to name the Achaean chiefs. When Menelaus demands that he himself, and not the proud sons, swear the pact, Priam goes down to the field between the armies with Antenor. He hears Agamemnon's oath, but says he cannot bear to see his son fight Menelaus, and he returns to Troy taking the lambs of the sacrifice.

In Book IV, Zeus asks Hera what great harm Priam and his sons have done that she should want to raze Ilion, and confesses that, of all the cities under the sun, Ilion was the one he loved most, where his altar never lacked its due share. In Book VI, the house of Priam is seen from within: polished stone chambers for fifty sons and twelve sons-in-law, Queen Hecuba, who comes out to meet Hector, and Hector, who wishes the earth would swallow Paris, whom Zeus created as a curse for Troy, Priam, and his sons.

In Book VII, after the duel, Antenor proposes returning Helen, and Paris refuses to give back the woman and offers only the goods. Priam orders that the men be fed, kept on watch, and that Idaeus take to the Atridae Paris's offer and the request for a truce to burn the dead. When both sides burn their bodies, Priam forbids weeping, and the Trojans burn their dead in silence.

In Book XI, Agamemnon kills Isus and Antiphus, sons of Priam whom Achilles had captured and released for a ransom, and Agamemnon recognizes them. In Book XIII, Priam appears in the lines: he valued Imbrius, married to his bastard daughter Medesicaste, as if he were one of his own sons, and he had promised Cassandra, the most beautiful of his daughters, to Otryoneus, who asked for her without a dowry in exchange for driving the Achaeans away from Troy. Aeneas stands at the back of the crowd, resentful because Priam, though he is brave, gives him no honor.

In Book XX, the youngest son, Polydorus, the youngest and most loved, whom the father forbade to fight, runs among the front ranks to show the speed of his feet, and is struck in the back by Achilles. Achilles, thinking of Aeneas as king, recalls that Priam has sons and judgment. In Book XXI, watching from the tower the flight of the Trojans, Priam comes down groaning and orders the guards to open the gates until the fugitives are inside, and to close them afterward, fearing that Achilles will leap in. His son Lycaon, whom Achilles had already captured and sold, reminds Achilles that his mother bore Priam two sons, and that Achilles, having killed Polydorus, will slaughter both of them.

In Book XXII, Priam begs Hector from the top of the wall not to wait alone for Achilles, who is far stronger, and speaks of the sons Lycaon and Polydorus, whom he does not see among those who returned to the city. He describes what awaits him, he whom Zeus will destroy on the threshold of old age after he has seen his sons dead, his daughters dragged away, his grandchildren thrown to the ground, and the dogs he raised devouring him at his door. For a young man killed in battle everything is beautiful, he says, but dogs dishonoring the white head of an old man who is dead are the most pitiable thing among mortals. He tears out his white hair and does not persuade Hector.

When Achilles drags his son's body in front of the city, Priam wants to go out through the gates, and the people can barely hold him back. The old man rolls in the dung and calls each man by name: he wants to go alone to the ships to beg that violent and insolent man, to see whether he respects his age and takes pity on his old age, for Achilles too has a father, Peleus. Of the many sons Achilles has killed for him, he weeps most for one, Hector.

In Book XXIV, Iris finds him covered in the dung that he himself gathered by rolling on the ground, with his sons seated around him, soaking their clothes with tears. She speaks quietly, and a trembling seizes the old man. She brings Zeus's message: he is to go alone, with only one older herald, without fear of death, because Hermes will guide him, and Achilles is neither foolish nor careless nor impious, and will spare the suppliant with great care.

Priam tells Hecuba the message, and she cries out and asks him where his judgment has gone: how can he go alone before the eyes of the man who killed so many of his sons, with a heart of iron? Achilles will have no pity or respect, and she wishes she could eat his liver. Priam answers that the order came from a goddess he saw face to face, and that he would have doubted an oracle or a priest. He goes, and if it is in his destiny to die by the ships, let Achilles kill him at once, after he has embraced his son.

He opens the chests and takes out twelve robes, twelve cloaks, twelve rugs, twelve blankets, twelve tunics, ten talents of gold, two tripods, four cauldrons, and a cup that the Thracians gave him. He drives out with insults the Trojans in the porch, who add their own mourning to his, and he shouts at the sons who remain, whom he calls bad and shameless, and wishes they had died in Hector's place. Hecuba brings him wine for the libation and asks him for a sign. He prays in the middle of the courtyard, and Zeus sends a black eagle on the right.

On the plain, Hermes, disguised as a young man, takes his hand and leads him to the tent. He says that Hector lies intact, beside Achilles' ship, and Priam rejoices. He enters unseen, embraces Achilles' knees, and kisses the hands that killed so many of his sons.

He asks Achilles to remember his father, who is of the same age, and who perhaps is mistreated by his neighbors but rejoices each day to hear that his son is alive. He had fifty sons when the Achaeans arrived, nineteen of them from the same mother, and Ares killed almost all of them. Achilles takes his hand and gently pushes him away, and the two weep, one for his dead son, the other for his father and at times for Patroclus.

Achilles lifts him up by the hand, says that he has a heart of iron, and recounts the two jars of Zeus. Priam refuses to sit while Hector lies uncared for, and Achilles asks him not to provoke him, so that he does not spare him even in the tent and does not violate the commands of Zeus. Priam fears and obeys. After the feast, he admires the size and appearance of Achilles, who seems to him like a god, and asks for nine days of mourning at home, the burial on the tenth, the tomb on the eleventh, and the war on the twelfth, if it must be. Achilles agrees and takes his right wrist to drive away his fear. Priam sleeps in the porch, and Hermes wakes him before any Achaean sees him and takes him out of the camp.

In Troy, Cassandra sees him arrive from the height of Pergamum, standing in the chariot with the dead man on the bier, and calls the city to see Hector. Near the gates, the wife and the mother throw themselves on the cart, and Priam asks for passage: once he has taken the son home, they will have time to satisfy their grief with tears. He orders the Trojans to gather wood without fear of ambush, because Achilles has promised him not to attack before the twelfth dawn.

Themes Embodied

Priam embodies Loss and mourning in its longest form: he loses Polydorus, Lycaon, and Hector over the course of the poem, and the last book is that of the body he brings back to the lament of the city. He embodies Compassion and charity from the side of the one who asks: the whole scene in the tent is a supplication that works only because the request touches what Achilles already holds within himself, the father. He embodies Death through the fear of what will happen to the body, and he worries more about his son's than about his own life, and Fate and free will in telling Hecuba that, if his destiny is to die by the ships, let it be after the embrace. War reaches him as a father: he watches his sons die from the tower and, in his supplication, counts those who did not return to the city.

The poem gives Priam two images that do not cancel each other. In the first, the old king is the one who watches from the tower and begs from the wall, unable to prevent anything, and rolls in the dung before the city. In the second, he is the one who decides to go to the tent of his sons' killer and risks his own life, even though the order came from Zeus. Hecuba, Apollo, and Zeus make different predictions about Achilles, and the one who decides among them is Priam himself, by entering and by kissing his hand. What the text shows of the old man is a man who trades safety for the embrace, and who, in the same book, drives the Trojans out of the porch and curses the sons who remain, as one pours out on what is left the grief he has no way of giving to Hector.

Relationships

• Hector: the son whom he begs from the wall in Book XXII and whom the father goes to fetch in Book XXIV.
• Achilles: the man who killed so many of his sons, whose hands he kisses, and with whom he shares tears and a meal.
• Zeus: the god who loved Ilion more than any city and who protects him on the journey to the tent, through Iris and Hermes.
• Helen: the daughter-in-law whom he calls a dear daughter and to whom he says the blame lies with the gods, in Book III.
• Paris: the son who refuses to give back Helen, and whom the father reproaches in Book XXIV.
• Andromache: the daughter-in-law who will begin Hector's lament when the body reaches Troy.
• Hera: the goddess whom Zeus accuses of wanting to raze Ilion, in Book IV.
• Hecuba: the queen who tries to stop her husband's journey and wishes she could eat Achilles' liver.