Come, friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life
a deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 21, lines 119-124. In this passage we see Achilles at his most cynical and unforgiving. Consumed with rage and the desire for revenge for Patroclus’s slaying, he believes that all enemies must die as he is fated to die – foreshadowing his own death. He cruelly mocks the plea to be spared from Priam’s son Lycaon, telling him that better men than him have died.