Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.

…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.

You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!

Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.

But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well—for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels—I’ve lost the will to live, to take my stand in the world of men—

The son of Peleus pressed on in search of glory, bespattering his unconquerable hands with gore.

And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself—more birds than women flocking round his body!

When Achilles heard this he sank into the black depths of despair. He picked up the dark dust in both his hands and poured it on his head...he cast himself down on the earth and lay there like a fallen giant, fouling his hair and tearing it out with his own hands...[the maidservants] beat their breasts with their hands and sank to the ground beside their royal master.

However, what is done is better left alone, though we resent it still, and we must curb our hearts perforce...as for my death, when Zeus and the other deathless gods appoint it, let it come.