Get to your work! My vicious sons – my humiliations!
If only you’d all been killed at the fast ships
instead of my dear Hector…
But I – dear god, my life so cursed by fate! –
I fathered hero sons in the wide realm of Troy
and now, now not a single one is left, I tell you.
Mestor the indestructible, Troilus, passionate horseman
and Hector, a god among men – no son of a mortal man,
he seemed a deathless god’s. But Ares killed them all
and all he left me are these, these disgraces – liars,
dancers, heroes only at beating the dancing-rings,
you plunder your own people for lambs and kids!
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 24, lines 299-310. Speaking after Hector’s death, Priam’s love for his son is very clear. He wishes all his other sons were killed instead of Hector, whom he calls a god among men. The god of war Ares killed his hero sons Hector, Mestor and Troilus. The other sons he has left he brands liars and disgraces.