Priam

"Sons of Atreus," he cried, "and all other Achaeans, may the gods who dwell in Olympus grant you to sack the city of Priam, and to reach your homes in safety;

Surely Priam with his sons would rejoice, and the Trojans be glad at heart if they could hear this quarrel between you two, who are so excellent in fight and counsel.

They were gathered in assembly, old and young, at Priam's gates, and Iris came close up to Priam, speaking with the voice of Priam's son Polites, who, being fleet of foot, was stationed as watchman for the Trojans on the tomb of old Aisyetes, to look out for any sally of the Achaeans.

and he said that if men were so disposed, Troy would never have been taken, nor would Priam, the king of the Phrygians, descended from Zeus, have been slaughtered at the altar of Zeus.

And coming with much wealth and equipment as for a wooing, and excelling in beauty, he entered into conversation with Tyndareus and the brothers of Helen, speaking of the empire of Priam and the multitude of treasures and the rest of his power, and that the kingdom would be his;

and Priam and Hector and all the rest rejoiced at the marriage, and received Helen with sacrifices and prayers.

"My friend," answered Nestor, "you recall a time of much sorrow to my mind, for the brave Achaeans suffered much both at sea, while privateering under Achilles, and in that district [ dêmos] when fighting before the great city of king Priam.

He says that you have here the most ill-starred of all those who fought nine years before the city of King Priam and sailed home in the tenth year after having sacked it.

Yet when we had sacked the city of Priam he got his handsome share of the prize wealth and went on board (such is the fortune of war) without a wound upon him, neither from a thrown spear nor in close combat, for the rage of Ares is a matter of great chance.

For many reverses and vicissitudes of all sorts occur in the course of life, and it is possible that the most prosperous man may encounter great disasters in his declining years, as the story is told of Priam in the epics;

though it is true he will not be supremely blessed if he encounters the misfortunes of a Priam.

just as Homer has represented Priam as saying of Hector, on account of his surpassing valor— nor seemed to be The son of mortal man, but of a god.

(Although Callimachus says, not amiss, that Priam wept far oftener than Troilus.

Priam, bereft of so great an offspring, when he had fled to the altar, an enemy's hand slew.

"Nay, in very truth I gave back the body to Priam;

I have come from out of the charnel-house and gates of gloom, where Hades dwells apart from gods, I Polydorus, a son of Hecuba, the daughter of Cisseus, and of Priam.

And with me my father sent much gold by stealth, so that, if ever Ilium’s walls should fall, his children that survived might not want for means to live.

Aged Priam is no more;

—I will stretch a deadly noose about my neck, or drive inward a murderous thrust of slaughter that gushes from the throat, a contest of the blade through my flesh, as a sacrifice to the three goddesses and to the son of Priam, who once sat on the hollows of Ida, near the ox-stalls.

she gave to the son of king Priam not me, but an image, alive and breathing, that she fashioned out of the sky and made to look like me;

when he sped over the surging plains with foreign oar, when he came, came bringing to Priam’s race from Lacedaemon you, Helen, his unhappy bride— Paris, fatally wedded, under the guidance of Aphrodite.

to what utter ruin Paris, the son of Priam, the cause of these troubles, has brought me by his union with Helen!

The son of Atreus, encircling Pergamus, the Phrygians’ town, with murderous war around her stone-built towers, dragging Paris’s head backward to cut his throat and sacking the city from roof to base, shall be a cause of many tears to maids and

Priam’s wife.

Groves stand forsaken and temples of the gods run down with blood, and at the altar’s very base, before the god who watched his home, Priam lies dead.

with these my eyes I saw their father, Priam, butchered on his own hearth, and my city captured, nor did others bring this bitter news to me.

Priam, the father of fifty children;

but the Greeks, for the sake of a Lacedaemonian woman, recruited a great armada, came to Asia, and destroyed the power of Priam.

Even if it were conceded that they were so inclined in the first days, yet when not only many of the Trojans were slain in fighting against the Greeks, but Priam himself lost to death two or three or even more of his sons in every battle (if the poets are to be believed), in this turn of events, had Helen been Priam 's own wife, I cannot but think that he would have restored her to the Greeks, if …

For surely Priam was not so mad, or those nearest to him, as to consent to risk their own persons and their children and their city so that Alexandrus might cohabit with Helen.

That I didn't know and was much astonished when I saw Priam come upon the stage in the tragedies with a bird, which kept watching Lysicrates to see if he got any present.

O city of Thebes, glory of Asia, whence on a day I came to Priam’s princely home with many a rich and costly thing in my dower, affianced unto Hector to be the mother of his children,

Would God his mother had smitten him a cruel death-blow on the head before he made his home on Ida’s slopes, in the hour Cassandra, standing by the holy bay-tree, cried out, Slay him, for he will bring most grievous bane on Priam’s town.

Here is no Hector, no Priam with his gold, but a city of Hellas.

Aye, and we destroyed the whole family of Priam.

After he had slain Priam, the ruler of Ilium, and captured the famous city of Dardanus, he came here to Argos and set up on the high temples many spoils of the barbarians.

To Priam and the Elders of the Wall

So that the massacre of the aged, like that of Priam by Pyrrhus, is no way surprising.

For not much later when strife arose among the goddesses for the prize of beauty, and Alexander, son of Priam, was appointed judge and when Hera offered him sovereignty over all Asia, Athena victory in war, and Aphrodite Helen as his wife, finding himself unable to make a distinction regarding the charms of their persons, but overwhelmed by the sight of the goddesses, Alexander, compelled to make …

nor yet Priam, near kinsman of the gods, making supplication and rolling in the dung, Calling aloud unto each, by name to each man appealing.

His memory was so bad that now the name of Ulysses would slip from him, now that of Achilles, now of Priam, men whom we know as well as our own tutors.

Did he not dissemble his anger and embrace the king's knees, and carry to his lips the murderous hand drenched with his son's blood, and dine?