I have already willed it so: such is the path I knowingly chose when for sacred Ilios I set sail all those years ago. It was my mother, Thetis the silver-footed goddess, who whispered to me my two-fold fate when as a boy she took me upon her knee. I was to either win glory in war but die in the height of my vigor, or live a long and peaceful life but fade into wretched obscurity. How can you, a warrior yourself, not understand how my heart howled for glory? I could not bear the thought that my name might be unknown for all my life, no worthy deeds to burnish it, my great strength gone to waste.

[Even here at the end of his life, he can remember the youth he once was, growing restless like a bird held in a cage, wishing that he might spread his wings and soar free.]

Long have I known the price I must pay for the fame I have seized, but I could make no other choice.