Meeting between Priam and Achilles:
Priam resolves to meet with Achilles, “as a plain man white haired and old” and to “entreat the killer of his son” to “give me back the body of my son”
Priam realises that this ‘new’ and ‘unheard of’ approach to regaining Hector’s body risks besmirching the royal image, but he is vindicated by the success of his mission.
He returns home as the “hero of the deed that till now was never attempted”.
Priam is determined to engage with Somax, an “ordinary carter” rather than the royal carter, Idaeus.
Priam’s royal self is the “accidental” self; it is “representational” and “ideal” (124).
He announces his return as a “man remade” who has been able to recreate a different story about his life. I return home as a “hero of the deed until now …”.
Resistance
Polydamas is adamant that Priam is committing a serious error of judgement by exposing himself “to the hazards of war” and to the “indignities that Achilles and any other Greek who happens along might heap upon you”.
The first ransom
As a “slave like any other, a nameless thing” he is granted a “second breath” by his sister Hesione owing to the back-handed nobility of Heracles). Priam later tells Hecuba, “I have made my own way down into the underworld and sought him out, that small frightened child”.
Using the symbolic concept of the ransom, as the “fee paid in advance for the debt of life”, Malouf focuses more heavily than Homer on concepts of duality and chance and on human agency rather than divine control.
Human emotions: father to son
Belatedly, Priam comes to realise just how much he has sacrificed in discarding his identity as a “father” in order to lead as a “king”. As a “ceremonial figurehead” he realises that personal emotions have been stifled and his human side almost emotionally paralysed. During his encounter with Somax, he wonders whether “to lose a son, really did mean the same for him as it did for the driver”. (136).
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