something apt to the day...

     'Achilles pays for nothing; to Hector everything comes dear. Yet it is not Hector, but Achilles, whose insatiable rancor feeds even on victories, and who is forever "gorging himself with complaints." The man of resentment in the Iliad is not the weak man but, on the contrary, the hero who can bend everything to his will. With Hector, the will to greatness never pits itself against the will to happiness. That little bit of true happiness which is more important than anything else, because it coincides with the true meaning of life, will be worth defending even with life itself, to which it has given a measure, a form, a price. Even in defeat, the courage of Hector does not give way before the valor of Achilles, which has been nurtured on discontent and irritable anxiety. But the capacity for happiness, which rewards the efforts of fecund civilizations, puts a curb on the defender's mettle by making him more aware of the enormity of the sacrifice exacted by the gods of war. This capacity, however, does not develop until the appetite for happiness has been stilled, the appetite the drives the aggressor, who is less civilized, on toward his prey and fills his heart with "an infinite power for battle and truceless war," Rachel Baspaloff, On The Iliad.