THE LIMITS OF DIVINE WISDOM

The immortal nature of the gods not only imbues them with a comic character, it also significantly limits their understanding of mortal human beings. Indeed, on two occasions in the Iliad, Homer clearly presents human beings as surpassing the gods in understanding: Odysseus in comparison with Zeus, Hera, and Athena in Book II; and Priam in comparison with Zeus and Hermes in Book XXIV.

During the tenth year of the war between the Achaians and the Trojans, a crisis erupts within the Achaian camp. The crisis begins when the Achaians, led by Achilles, sack the nearby city of Thebe, and assign as a captive mistress to King Agamemnon Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo. When the priest of Apollo comes to the Achaian camp to offer ransom for his daughter, as well as prayers for the success of the Achaians in their war against Troy, all of the Achaians agree to return her, but Agamemnon refuses to do so and the Achaians obey him. Thereupon the priest prays to the god Apollo to punish the Achaians, and the god sends a plague. For nine days the plague kills Achaians. Finally, Achilles intervenes on behalf of the Achaians, on behalf of the

priest of Apollo, and, it would seem, on behalf of Apollo himself, to bring this crisis to an end and to save the army from disaster. He calls an assembly, asks the prophet Calchas to reveal publicly the cause of the plague, and guarantees his safety (1.53-92). Achilles then succeeds in inducing Agamemnon to return his mistress to her father, the priest of Apollo, and thereby brings the deadly plague to an end. Agamemnon, however, rewards Achilles' good deed by dishonoring him. He denounces Achilles and then humiliates him by depriving him of his own captive mistress (1.101-187). And even though Achilles has just saved the army from disaster, not a single man in the army speaks up forthrightly on Achilles' behalf or intervenes in his defense.^[132] Forsaken by all, overcome by anger and frustration, Achilles looks to the gods for justice, as Chryses had looked to the gods for justice.

Now, Zeus's “plan,” in accordance with the prayers of Achilles and Thetis, to kill “many” Achaians beside their ships and thereby drive them to honor Achilles, is the central example of divine providence in the Iliad.^[134] During the four days after he agrees to grant the prayer of Achilles and Thetis - recounted in Books II-XVIII - we see Zeus's plan apparently succeed completely. By the end of the first day, the Achaians have been so badly beaten by the Trojans that they are driven to build a wall to protect their ships (7.336-344). The Achaians, who for nine years have been besieging the Trojans, are now besieged by them. At the end of the third day, Agamemnon begs Achilles to return to the war and offers him boundless gifts and honors of all kinds, which Achilles refuses. On the fourth day, the Trojans smash the Achaian forces, break through their wall, and start to set their ships on fire. This impending catastrophe prompts Achilles to send his companion Patroclus and his soldiers to save the Achaians. When Patroclus is killed, Achilles accepts the honors offered by Agamemnon and the Achaians and returns to the war. Insofar as the Achaians acted unjustly against Achilles by dishonoring him, then, Zeus effectively punishes them for their injustice and induces them to shower him with honors. As Thetis remarks to her son, “These things have been accomplished through Zeus, as before you prayed.”^[135] In this way, the Iliad appears to vindicate the wise, just, and caring providence of Zeus, the Father of Gods and Men.

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Yet, as Homer indicates in Book II, Zeus’s plan almost fails utterly, right from the start, and this failure reflects a great failure of understand­ing on the part of Zeus. Once he has promised to answer the prayer of Achilles and Thetis to punish the Achaians, Zeus, after pondering “in his mind,” resolves that he shall “destroy many men beside the ships of the Achaians” so that they may “honor Achilles” (2.3-4). The “plan” that appears “best” to him is to send a deceptive dream to Agamemnon to urge him to lead the Achaians on a frontal assault against Troy. By encouraging such a rash attack that will prove futile and destructive to the Achaians, Zeus hopes to induce the Achaians to repent of their dishonoring of Achilles and to make amends for their injustice to him.

Zeus’s plan here is based on two assumptions: that Agamemnon will simply follow the deceptive dream and, more importantly, that the Achaians will be eager to launch an assault on Troy. However, both of these assumptions, especially the second one, prove to be mistaken. Even though the deceptive dream Zeus sends to Agamemnon does convince the king to attack Troy on this day, Agamemnon, on his own, decides first to “test” the Achaians’ eagerness to attack Troy by telling them a lie of his own. He tells them, falsely, that great Zeus commands that all the Achaians leave Troy and go home and that he, Agamemnon, agrees that they should all flee “with our ships to the beloved land of our fathers” (2.73-74, 2.110-141). Agamemnon evidently believes that the Achaians are so eager to keep fighting the Trojans that his deception will provoke them to reaffirm and renew their determination to conquer Troy rather than retreat in shame, though he does take the precaution of urging the commanders of the army “to restrain with words” any soldier who might choose to flee (2.75). But Agamemnon wholly misjudges the spirit of his soldiers after nine years of war. For his words stir in “all” of them the desire to run to their ships and sail away from Troy (2.142-154).

Now, this whole episode highlights, of course, the folly of Agamemnon, who is evidently himself so eager to conquer Troy, so unfamiliar with the hardships of warfare, and so unenthusiastic about returning to his own wife and home that he grossly underestimates the fatigue and homesickness of his soldiers.^[136] But this episode also high­lights the folly of Zeus. For, as we have seen, Zeus evidently sent the dream to Agamemnon in the expectation that the Achaians would rashly attack Troy, that they would then be driven back in headlong flight to their ships by the Trojans, and that so many Achaians would be killed that they would turn to Achilles, in desperation, and honor him (2.3-5). But the dream backfires, for it almost leads all of the Achaians to return home, safe and sound, without honoring Achilles at all. Zeus does not foresee the folly of Agamemnon. He does not understand either the gulf that separates Agamemnon, who is eager for a conquest which imposes no hardships on him, from his long-suffering warriors, who are sick of war and eager to return home, or the failure of Agamemnon to under­stand that gulf. But furthermore, Zeus, like Agamemnon, evidently takes it for granted that the Achaians are eager to continue fighting because, even more than Agamemnon, he himself is, by virtue of his immortal nature, necessarily unfamiliar with the terror and pain of deadly conflict (and the possible appeal of monogamous marital life) and hence grossly underestimates the fatigue and homesickness of the human soldiers. The episode is, then, a comedy of errors about these two rulers, divine and human, each of whom tries to manipulate his subjects through deception. For each ruler’s scheme backfires because each ruler fails fundamentally to understand his subjects.^[137] But while Agamemnon’s mortal nature renders him at least capable of understanding his subjects’ fatigue and homesickness because it renders him capable of experiencing such emo­tions, Zeus’s immortal nature renders him incapable of such an understanding.

Now, the goddess Hera does, as Homer suggests, effectively prevent the Achaians from going home by sending Athena to stop them (2.155-156). Yet Homer’s account of her intervention shows that it is not Hera, nor Athena, but a human being, Odysseus, who stops the Achaian retreat and thereby saves the Achaian expedition against Troy, and also the plan of Zeus, from failure, and that he does so by surpassing the goddesses in his understanding of his fellow soldiers.^[138]

Hera instructs Athena to go through the fleeing Achaian army and “restrain each mortal with your gentle words” (2.168-169). Athena, however, does not simply obey Hera but rather finds one mortal, Odysseus, and instructs him to go throughout the army and “restrain each mortal with your gentle words” (2.180). Now, both goddesses evidently believe that all the soldiers can be easily persuaded, by gentle words alone, to postpone their homecoming and return to the war against Troy. They evidently assume, as Zeus evidently assumes, that it is reason­able and congenial for men to fight in wars, far from home, and hence that it is only necessary to remind the Achaians, gently, of their desire to continue the war in order to induce them to stay and fight. And Odysseus does go on to effectively restrain all of the Achaians from sailing home (2.207-211).

Odysseus, however, departs from the goddesses’ instructions in three crucial ways. First, before even attempting to dissuade any of the Achaians from leaving Troy, he runs to Agamemnon and obtains from him “the scepter of his fathers, always imperishable,” handed down from Zeus, the symbol of his royal and divine authority.^[139] It is only once he has this scepter in his hands that he attempts to restrain any of the Achaians from fleeing. Unlike Hera and Athena, Odysseus, then, under­stands that “gentle words” alone cannot induce men from fleeing the battlefield and returning home but that a symbol of royal and divine authority is also necessary.

Indeed, it is not clear that gentle words suffice to persuade even most of the leading commanders and warriors to continue fighting. For while Homer does state that, “whenever he overtook some king or outstanding man,” Odysseus “was restraining him with gentle words,” the words he reports Odysseus as speaking are far from being simply gentle:

Daemonic one, it is not seemly for you to be afraid like an evil man, but you yourself sit down and sit the other people down. For you do not yet know with certainty the mind of the son of Atreus. Now he was testing, but soon he will smite the sons of the Achaians. For did we not all hear what sort of thing he said in the council? May he not become enraged and do something evil to the sons of the Achaians? For great is the spirit of kings reared by Zeus, and their honor is from Zeus, and Thoughtful Zeus loves them. (2.188-197)

While Odysseus does not strike these men, he clearly appeals to their fear of possible punishment at the hands of the angry king and of the mighty god who loves him. And while Odysseus does go on to attempt to persuade the Achaians to stay at Troy and continue to fight by speaking gentle words - by, for example, appealing to their sense of shame, their self-interest, and especially their pious hopes - he does also harshly rebuke and beat the leading proponent of leaving Troy and thereby implicitly threatens others as well.^[140]

We see, then, that it is Odysseus who prevents Zeus’s plan from backfiring, that it is Odysseus who prevents the Achaian army from disbanding, and that he does so by departing from the commands of the gods rather than simply following them. Unlike the gods, Odysseus understands that human beings cannot be easily persuaded - with gentle words - to risk their life and limb, far from their loved ones. And Odysseus understands this because, unlike the immortal gods, he is a mortal being who knows from experience, as a divine being cannot, the fear of death, the homesickness, and the suffering that are essential to war. As Odysseus remarks,

And indeed, anyone who remains one month away from his wife is impatient with his many-oared ship, which wintry gusts of wind and the surging sea keep back. For us now this is the ninth year that is coming around to us as we remain here. Therefore I am not indignant with the Achaians for their impatience beside their curved ships. (2.292-297)

By presenting the maladroit interventions of Zeus, Hera, and Athena in the episode of the dream and its aftermath, Homer calls into question the gods’ capacity to understand human beings. And through the case of Odysseus in particular, he invites his audience to wonder whether human beings are not capable of a wisdom and a providence that is, in some respects, at least, superior to that of the gods.

Homer also presents Priam in Book XXIV as surpassing the gods Zeus and Hermes in his understanding of Achilles, and of how to persuade him to surrender the corpse of Hector. After Hector slays Achilles’ beloved companion Patroclus, Achilles’ grief and anger - at both himself for letting Patroclus go into battle without him and at Hector - drive him first to defile himself in dust and ashes while weeping inconsolably, then to return to the war and to kill Hector, and finally to continue to punish the corpse of Hector after his death, for 12 days.¹⁴² All the Trojans grieve over the death of their beloved defender Hector, but none as intensely as his father Priam, whose grief drives him not only to weep inconsolably but also to wallow in filth; to abstain from food, drink, or sleep from the moment Hector is killed for 12 days; and to curse his surviving sons, in apparent anger at himself - for failing to follow the will of his counselors and his people by returning Helen to the Achaians - and at his surviving sons for outliving Hector.¹⁴³ Zeus finally intervenes to induce Achilles to return the corpse of Hector by sending Thetis both to warn him that Zeus is angry with him and to assure him that Priam will bring gifts in return for the body, and by sending Iris to Priam to instruct him to go alone to Achilles with an old servant and to bring gifts in return for the body of Hector. And Zeus orders Iris to assure Priam that Achilles will not slay him but rather will, in a “kindly” spirit, surrender the corpse of Hector. Zeus confidently takes it for granted that a forthright appeal to Achilles’ personal self-interest - a fear of divine disfavor and a desire for wealth - will be sufficient to overcome Achilles’ intense grief over the death of Patroclus and intense anger at the man responsible for that death.¹⁴⁴

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144

l8.l8-27, l8.79-93, l8.98-i26, l8.3i6-327, 22.26θ-267, 22.338-354, 22.395-409, 24.i4-l8.

3.39-57, 3.i46-i65, 4.45i-454, 6.279-285, 7.345-397, 22.405-4i5, 24.i59-i68, 24.237-267, 24.635-642.

24.112-119, 24.144-158. See also Athena’s appeal to Achilles’ desire for gifts at

i.2i0-2i4.

Now, Priam does follow Zeus’s instructions by going alone, with an old servant, to Achilles, with a ransom, but he departs from Zeus’s advice in two ways. First, even though he brings much ransom to Achilles, he only mentions the ransom twice, in passing, in his first two speeches to Achilles and never in his subsequent two speeches, and he only remarks, in passing, that Achilles should honor the gods, thereby alluding to Zeus’s command to return the body of Hector (24.502, 24.503, 24.555-556). Priam understands that a man like Achilles cannot be moved by forthright appeals to self-interest alone - to a desire for wealth or a fear of divine disfavor - and that such appeals run the risk of backfiring. For Achilles understands himself to be driven to punish the corpse of Hector by his righteous anger against the man who killed his beloved friend and by loyalty to his beloved friend. Were Priam to appeal too directly to Achilles’ self-interest and to appear to offer a simply self-interested exchange of wealth for his son’s corpse, he might seem to be suggesting that Achilles cares more for his own narrow well-being, for the accumu­lation of wealth, than for justice or friendship, and hence might risk provoking Achilles to reassert his noble superiority to self-interest - his attachment both to justice and friendship - by reaffirming his implacable anger at the corpse of Hector and at Hector’s father and city. Indeed, this is precisely the mistake that both Odysseus (following Agamemnon) and Hector made in their efforts to persuade Achilles to curb his wrath (9.119-181, 22.338-343). In Book IX, when the desperate Achaians face destruction at the hands of the Trojans, Agamemnon sends Odysseus, Phoenix, and Ajax to induce Achilles to abandon what he considers to be his just wrath against the Achaians and to return to the war against the Trojans in exchange for promises of vast wealth, power, prestige, and pleasure. Ajax and Phoenix, apparently surmising that such a brazen appeal to Achilles’ desire for wealth would backfire, decide to have Phoenix, Achilles’ longtime tutor and family friend, speak first and invoke their long-standing friendship (9.222-223; see 9.163-170). However, Odysseus insists on addressing Achilles first and on spending almost half of his speech (38 out of 82 lines) itemizing the fabulous gifts - including gold, horses, captive mistresses, one of Agamemnon’s daughters in mar­riage, and seven prosperous cities to rule - that Agamemnon offers in return for a renewal of Achilles’ military services (9.222-306). Achilles responds with an intensified anger:

Hateful to me are his gifts. I honor them as I would a wood shaving. Not if he gave me ten times and twenty times as much as he possesses now, not if more should

come to him from elsewhere, as much as is brought into Orchomenus, as much as is brought into Egyptian Thebes, where the greatest possessions lie up in houses, where there are a hundred gates, and two hundred men go forth from each with horses and chariots. Not if he gave me gifts as many as the sand or the dust is, not even thus would he yet persuade my spirit. Nor will I marry a daughter of Agamemnon, the son of Atreus, not even if her beauty challenged that of golden Aphrodite, or her works equaled those of owl-eyed Athena. Not even thus would I marry her. (9.378-391)

Odysseus does appeal to Achilles' compassion and friendship, and Phoenix and Ajax elaborate on and refine those appeals, with some effect, but the damage done to their mission by Odysseus's direct appeal to Achilles' personal self-interest evidently cannot be undone on this occasion.^[145]

Similarly, when dying, Hector pleads with Achilles to return his corpse to his parents by appealing indirectly to compassion with a brief reference to Achilles' own parents, but by appealing primarily to his desire for wealth:

I beseech you, by your soul, your knees, and your parents, do not let the dogs feed on me, beside the ships of the Achaians, but do you, on the one hand, accept the bronze and gold in abundance that my father and the lady my mother will give you as gifts, and, on the other hand, give my body back, to be taken home, so that the Trojans and the wives of the Trojans may give me the fire that is due to me when I am dead. (22.338-343)

Achilles responds to the offer of gifts with a harsh assertion of the justice of his wrath - “such are the things you have done” - and of his noble superiority to mere gifts:

Do not, dog, entreat me by my knees nor by my parents. Indeed, if only somehow my fury and spirit would stir me up so that I would cut away your flesh and eat it raw - such are the things you have done. So it is not possible for anyone to keep the dogs away from your head, not if they should bring and set here ten times and twenty times the ransom and promise me other things as well, not if Priam son of Dardanus should order that you yourself should be weighed out in gold. Not so would your lady mother, laying you on your bed, weep for you, whom she bore, but dogs and birds will feast on all of you. (22.345-354)

Priam understands, better than Hector, Odysseus, and Agamemnon, and better than Zeus, the power of the anger and grief that Achilles feels in the aftermath of the death of his beloved companion. And Priam understands the power of that anger and grief because he himself feels a comparable anger and grief over the deaths of his beloved son Hector and his other beloved sons. It is the experience of loving another human being intensely that Priam shares with Achilles and that enables him to under­stand Achilles. Indeed, Priam may not appeal directly to Achilles' self­interest - either by emphasizing the gifts he brings or even mentioning the threat of divine disfavor - because he knows from his own experience that a powerful love may lead one to act against one's apparent self-interest. For it is evidently Priam's powerful love for his “beloved son” Paris that leads him to resist all efforts to return Paris's wife Helen to the Achaians, even though Priam has reason to believe, thanks to his wise counselors, especially Antenor, but also thanks to the opinion of “all” the Trojans, that it is in Troy's interest and his own interest to return Helen.^[146] The fact that Achilles himself fears that his anger may lead him to kill Priam - “I may transgress the commands of Zeus” - demonstrates that Priam is wise not to share Zeus's confidence that, thanks to the offer of gifts and the threat of divine disfavor, Achilles will be “kindly” to him (24.560-570, 24.582-586, 24.144-158).

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The second way in which Priam departs from the instructions of Zeus is by focusing his entire speech to Achilles on a bold, explicit appeal to his love for his father and to his sympathetic imagination. In this way, Priam hopes effectively to “melt” Achilles' anger by arousing his compassion and even his admiration for the father of the man who killed his beloved Patroclus (24.147).^[147]

From the very moment that he sees his beloved Hector killed and his corpse desecrated by Achilles, the grieving Priam conceives of the plan to recover the corpse by going to Achilles, reminding Achilles of his love for his own father, and thereby awakening in Achilles compassion for himself, even though his family restrains him from executing this plan immediately:

Hold back, loved ones, even though you care for me, and let me, in such a state as I am, go out of the city to the ships of the Achaians. I will beseech this reckless man of violent deeds, if somehow he may have reverence for my years and have pity for my old age. And indeed his father is such as I am, Peleus, who begot him and reared him to become an affliction for the Trojans. And especially to me, beyond all others, he has given woe. For he killed so many of my flourishing children. For all of them I do not sorrow, even though I do grieve, as much as for one - the sharp pain for him will carry me down into Hades - Hector, since he ought to have died in my arms. In that way the two of us would have had our fill of wailing and crying, his unhappy mother who bore him, and I myself. (22.416-428)

It is truly remarkable that, as Priam staggers under the devastating blow of seeing his beloved son killed and his corpse desecrated, even though he would seem to be too overwhelmed by grief and also anger at the killer of his son to think clearly or at all, he nonetheless at this moment sees clearly - more clearly than even the shrewd Odysseus and the immortal Zeus - how to persuade Achilles to overcome his anger and return his son. And Priam is able to see clearly how to melt the heart of Achilles precisely because, as a result of his own grief and anger over the deaths of his beloved sons, he can understand the grieving and raging heart of Achilles. It is by drawing on the experience of his own passions, passions whose depth Odysseus evidently has not experienced and whose depth the immortal gods can never experience, that Priam attains an understanding that surpasses theirs.^[148]

Priam’s entire speech to Achilles is an appeal to his pity by reminding him of his father and by identifying himself with his father. It is true that Zeus’s son Hermes does advise Priam to invoke Achilles’ family as a whole, as Hector had done: “[G]o in yourself and clasp the knees of Peleus’s son and beseech him in by his father, his fair-haired mother, and his child, and so rouse the spirit within him” (24.465-67). Priam, however, departs from the god’s advice in two crucial respects. First, he not only clasps the knees of Achilles, but he also kisses his hands, the very hands that killed his son. Secondly, Priam is silent about Achilles’ divine mother and his son and speaks to him only of the one member of his family with whom Priam may be compared, his mortal father. These are Priam’s words:

“Achilles like the gods, remember your father, one who is of years just like mine, and on the destructive door-sill of old age. And they who dwell nearby encompass him and afflict him, nor is there anyone to defend him against harm and disaster. Yet surely, when he hears of you and that you are still living, he rejoices within his spirit and all his days he hopes that he will see his beloved son come home from the Troad. But I myself had no such destiny. For I have sired the best sons in wide Troy, but I say not one of them is left to me.... Have reverence, then, for the gods, Achilles, and take pity on me, remembering your father. Yet I am still more pitiful. I have endured what no other mortal on earth has endured; I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my children.” So he spoke and stirred in him a longing to grieve for his own father... and Achilles wept now for his own father, now again for Patroclus. (24.486-512)

Priam understands that the only way that he can melt Achilles' heart and overcome his anger and hatred toward Hector and Priam and all the Trojans, is by appealing to his sympathetic imagination and to his own experience of love. Priam must induce Achilles to see in Priam, not the father of the man who killed his beloved friend, but the image of his own father, Peleus, and to imagine the sorrow that Peleus will feel when he, Achilles, is dead. Priam must induce Achilles to think of the love his father bears for him and even to think of the love he himself bears for his beloved friend Patroclus and, drawing on that experience of love, to imagine a love so great that it can inspire the king of Troy to risk his life and to sacrifice every shred of his dignity and honor and pride by going virtually alone to the hut of the man who killed his son and kissing his hands in order to recover the corpse of his beloved son. The only way, then, that Priam can arouse such humanity and pity in Achilles is by reminding him of the experiences of human love and human sorrow that he shares with Priam and hence by appealing to his compassion rather than to his desire for gifts or fear of the gods and also by speaking to him only of his human father and not at all about his divine mother.^[149] Now, this strategy of Priam's is remarkably successful.^[150] Achilles goes on to weep both for his loving father and his beloved friend and to reflect on the grief that he shares with Priam. Achilles remarks to Priam: “Such is the way the gods spun life for wretched mortals, that we live our lives in grief, but the gods themselves have no sorrows” (24.525-526). And Achilles does proceed to return the corpse of Hector. But it is important to see that Priam's strategy is based on an essentially human wisdom that surpasses the wisdom of the gods. For the gods Zeus and Hermes do not recognize the importance for Priam of reminding Achilles of their common human sorrows because the gods Zeus and Hermes have never felt such sorrows, can never feel such sorrows, and therefore cannot appreciate their import­ance. No god can truly know the heart of Achilles because no god can feel the human passions that burn in that human heart. Only a fellow human being who has felt the hatred and anger that Achilles feels can know how to move Achilles to overcome them.

Priam is able to understand Achilles because he can draw on his own experience of loving someone so much that his whole happiness depends on him, of losing that loved one and hating the man who killed him, and also of blaming himself for that loss. Just as Achilles loves Patroclus, “most beloved of my companions,” “whom I honored beyond all my companions, equal to my own self,” and even more than he loves his father and his son, so does Priam love Hector, his “beloved offspring,” on whom he and all the Trojans depend for their defense, for whom he mourns even more than all of the other sons he has lost, “who was a god among men” (19.315, 18.80-82, 19.321-327, 22.38, 22.56-76, 22.422-428, 24.258, 24.499-502). Just as Achilles tells Hector, “des­troyer of a dear life,” that “dogs and birds will feast on all of you,” then kills him and pitilessly desecrates his corpse, so Priam wishes - even before Achilles, who has killed so many of Priam’s sons, kills Hector - that Achilles “were loved by the gods as much as he is loved by me. Soon the gods and vultures would eat him as he lay, and the terrible pain would leave my breast” (18.114, 22.354, 22.41-43). And as Achilles explicitly blames himself for the death of Patroclus - “I destroyed him [τον 'απωλεσαp^,;'⁵¹ “I would die soon, since I was not to protect my companion as he was killed. He perished far away from the land of his fathers, and he did not have me to be his protector from harm” (18.82, 18.98-100) - and punishes himself for that death first by covering himself in ashes and dust, tearing at his hair, and abstaining from food and drink and then by returning to battle even though he knows he will certainly be killed soon after killing Hector, so Priam, albeit implicitly, blames himself for the death of Hector and punishes himself by wallowing in filth and abstaining from food, drink, and sleep for 12 days after that death.^{[151] [152] It is Priam’s experience of love and loss, an experience that leads him to hate}

Achilles, that paradoxically also leads him to understand Achilles better than the gods do or can, since the carefree gods can never experience such love and such loss. Indeed, it is also that experience of love and loss that Priam and Achilles share with one another, that leads Achilles to under­stand Priam, and specifically the importance of Priam’s “beloved son” to him, better than the gods themselves. For, in an act of singular compas­sion, Achilles decides to grant Priam and the Trojans a 12-day truce during which to honor their beloved Hector with burial, even though Priam had not dared to ask it of him, his fellow Achaians would almost certainly oppose it, and the gods themselves did not think of demanding this of Achilles.^[153] The mutual understanding of Priam and Achilles at the end of the Iliad is one that surpasses that of the gods, because it is borne of their experience of intense love and intense grief that the carefree gods can never experience. In this way, the gods’ immortality, a manifestation of their perfection, paradoxically limits their understanding of human beings and therefore renders it imperfect.