Achilles’ Desire for Lament: Variations on a Theme

In Iliad’s final books, the appearance of the formula “desire for lament” echoes a key narrative arc: Achilles’ shift from cyclical grief and vengeance to releasing his relentlessness along with Hektor’s body. The formula has no stated object when Achilles desires to weep for Patroklos, but, when Priam stirs Achilles to weep for his father, desire leaves Achilles and he takes pleasure in lament. The contextual variations of the formula “desire for lament” reinforce the poem’s final insights. In the Iliad, grief drives actions that do not satisfy; satisfaction comes only when such aimless desires for action are released.