“Put me to bed quickly, Achilles, Prince. Time to rest, to enjoy the sweet relief of sleep. Not once have my eyes closed shut beneath my lids from the day my son went down beneath your hands…day and night I groan, brooding over the countless griefs, groveling in the dung that fills my walled in court. But now, at long last, I have tasted food again and let some glistening wine go down my throat. Before this hour I had tasted nothing.” (pg. 609)

While before this passage Homer makes it obvious how similar Achilles and Priam are in terms of losing their beloveds, I find this to be the best summary of these similarities. Like Achilles after the death of Patroclus, Praim has defiled his face in filth in grief. Also, like Achilles, Priam has neither slept nor eaten for days because of his son’s death. It is interesting to see these two characters, though on two different sides of a war, react the same way to the loss of a loved one.

This passage also shows a major theme within the poem, grief and sacrifice. Those reading this poem hundreds of years ago saw this poem as a guide to how to live life, an ancient Bible if you will. In reading these passages, the readers are told how to react to the death of a loved one: sacrifice your own well being for them. Do not eat, do not sleep, go through pain and suffering to fully comprehend the lose that has occurred.

But this passage also shows how kinships and friendship, especially between males, are imperative in living a proper life. To go into a frenzy of grief and sacrifice because of the death of a son or close friend shows how much the poem values friendships and kinships. This respect for those relationships are so strong, in fact, that it can surpass enemy lines, where a king can go into enemy territory alone and bargain with the man who killed his son.