“This is how hard it is for at least some of the politicians on both sides of the sectarian divide. The violence was local, intimate, not international. The killer lives, not in a distant country, but in a neighbouring village or street. Revenge is instinctive, peace-making counter-intuitive. In the Iliad, incensed by the fact that Hector had killed Achilles’ friend Patroclus, Achilles has disrespected and defiled his victim’s body by dragging it by the heels behind his chariot below the walls of Troy. Priam comes to Achilles to ask him for Hector’s body, so that it can be given a proper burial. Achilles, overcome with compassion, accedes to the request, has the body washed and laid out in uniform… There is no question but that, in his encounter with the conqueror, the hero, Achilles, it is Priam who is the greater human being. This moment in the Iliad might even represent a genuine leap in human consciousness.”

from “On the Nobility of Compromise,” by Moya Cannon