Priam’s appeal to Achilles has an entirely different tone from Hector’s and Thetis’s. Hector asked Achilles to return his body without giving a reason, but the implication was that it would be the honorable thing to do. Thetis told Achilles to return the body because failing to do so would anger Apollo. Priam is asking Achilles to return the body based on an experience of shared grief. In this grief, Priam confirms to Achilles that the concept of Greek honor no longer matters: even if Hector was justified in killing Patroclus and Achilles was justified in killing Hector, Priam now sees them as so irrelevant that Priam is willing to apologize on Hector’s behalf. Priam’s comment that there’s no peace for the living explicitly recalls the story Chiron told about Heracles. At the time, Achilles couldn’t understand why the gods punished Heracles by forcing him to kill his wife and children and leaving him alive. Now, Achilles understands Heracles’s pain, because he’s alive and Patroclus is gone. Priam and Achilles have nothing in common except their shared grief at loss of a loved one, but that’s enough for Achilles to do the right thing and return the body. In this way, Achilles’s love ends up redeeming him, and allowing him to see outside himself and his own grief. Priam’s visit therefore also spurs Achilles to tend to Patroclus’s soul by burning his body—this is the first thing he’s done since Patroclus’s death that’s truly for Patroclus’s sake. (As a side note, the novel
Ransom tells the story of Priam’s trip into the Greek camp and meeting with Achilles from Priam’s point of view.)