Chapter 19 Closer Look 3: Priam and Achilles

Morford 11e Chapter 19 Image 19.10

Priam and Achilles

Priam and Achilles. Red-figure skyphos, by the Brygos painter, ca. 490 B.C. This is one of the finest and most striking renderings of the Ransom of Hector. Priam, white haired and holding a walking staff, approaches Achilles from the left. Behind Priam four attendants, two men (shown here) followed by two women, bring the gifts. Achilles reclines on a banquet couch alongside the banquet table still laden with food. The couch, covered with mattress and blanket, is handsomely built and decorated. Achilles is turning to address a serving boy. He holds a piece of meat in his left hand, which rests on two large cushions, and a dagger in his right, which he has brought to his lips. Achilles has not yet noticed Priam’s arrival. Hector’s wounded body can clearly be seen beneath the couch in full view. While this detail is contrary to Homer’s tale, vase painters often included the body of Hector for dramatic effect. Another added feature is the presence of Hector’s (formerly Achilles’) armor on the wall and a shield with a gorgoneion (a representation of a stylized head of a gorgon). The artist has also taken liberties with the timing of the scene. In Homer Achilles has just finished eating when Priam enters. This slight change has resulted in a stark contrast that is particularly gruesome: Achilles eating meat with the corpse beneath, while grease from the food drips onto the bloody body. The horror of the scene is fully realized when one recalls both Achilles’ vow to refrain from eating until he has avenged the death of Patroclus and his threat to Hector, just before he kills him, that if he had the heart he would tear his flesh apart and eat him raw.

Source: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

Questions to Consider

1.The death of Achilles follows not long after the death of Hector, and in Homer’s Iliad it is clear that Achilles himself knows this. In what ways might the careful arrangement of the figures and the objects on this skyphos—especially in the dramatic center, which stretches from the standing Priam to the reclining Achilles— foreshadow the looming death of Achilles himself?

2.As the caption notes, some of the details on this skyphos are different from the famous narrative of the scene in the final book of Homer’s Iliad. If you are familiar with that account, what other significant departures from Homer’s version do you notice here? What might these differences tell us about the ways that mythological details circulate in a predominantly oral society? Moreover, if the Brygos painter felt free to depart from Homer’s account all the way back in the fifth century B.C., why shouldn’t we extend the same license to contemporary writers and artists (including filmmakers!) who recount ancient myths but change up some of the details?