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Thetis
Priam, the elderly king of Troy, is husband to Hecuba and father to Hector, Paris, and Polyxena, among others. When Briseis is an adolescent, she travels to Troy to stay with her sister Ianthe, who is married to one of Priam’s many sons. There she meets Priam, who treats her with kindness, performing sleight-of-hand magic tricks for her. After Greek warrior Achilles kills Hector and defiles his corpse in revenge for Hector’s killing of Achilles’s beloved friend Patroclus, Priam bravely visits the Greek war camp disguised as a peasant to beg Achilles for his son’s body. Yet when Briseis, now an enslaved prisoner of war in Achilles’s compound, asks for Priam’s help in escaping to Troy, Priam chooses his mission to retrieve his dead son and his obligations to honor his “host” Achilles over any moral obligations he might feel to Briseis, and he refuses her request. When the Greeks finally take Troy, Achilles’s 15-year-old son Pyrrhus cuts Priam to pieces.
Priam Quotes in The Silence of the Girls
The The Silence of the Girls quotes below are all either spoken by Priam or refer to Priam. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 18
Quotes
What I came away with was a sense of Helen seizing control of her own story. She was so isolated in that city, so powerless—even at my age, I could see that—and those tapestries were a way of saying: I’m here. Me. A person, not just an object to be looked at and fought over.
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Chapter 31
Quotes
The defeated go down in history and disappear, and their stories die with them.
Chapter 36
Quotes
He looked hollow, I thought. All that killing, all that revenge . . . Perhaps he’d managed to convince himself that if he did all that—killed Hector, defeated the Trojan army, broke Priam—Patroclus would keep his side of the bargain and stop being dead. We all try to make crazy deals with the gods, often without really knowing we’re doing it.
Chapter 42
Quotes
I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.
These words echoed round me, as I stood in the storage hut, surrounded on all sides from the wealth Achilles had plundered from burning cities. I thought: And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and brothers.
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Chapter 43
Quotes
“You won’t do it.”
“He’s a guest.”
“Not invited.”
“No, but accepted.”
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Chapter 44
Quotes
So this was no longer, straightforwardly, a meeting of owner and slave. There was an element of choice. Or was there? I don’t know[.]
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Priam Quotes in The Silence of the Girls
The The Silence of the Girls quotes below are all either spoken by Priam or refer to Priam. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 18
Quotes
What I came away with was a sense of Helen seizing control of her own story. She was so isolated in that city, so powerless—even at my age, I could see that—and those tapestries were a way of saying: I’m here. Me. A person, not just an object to be looked at and fought over.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31
Quotes
The defeated go down in history and disappear, and their stories die with them.
Chapter 36
Quotes
He looked hollow, I thought. All that killing, all that revenge . . . Perhaps he’d managed to convince himself that if he did all that—killed Hector, defeated the Trojan army, broke Priam—Patroclus would keep his side of the bargain and stop being dead. We all try to make crazy deals with the gods, often without really knowing we’re doing it.
Chapter 42
Quotes
I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.
These words echoed round me, as I stood in the storage hut, surrounded on all sides from the wealth Achilles had plundered from burning cities. I thought: And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and brothers.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 43
Quotes
“You won’t do it.”
“He’s a guest.”
“Not invited.”
“No, but accepted.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44
Quotes
So this was no longer, straightforwardly, a meeting of owner and slave. There was an element of choice. Or was there? I don’t know[.]
