“The purest triumph of love, the crowning grace of war, is the friendship that floods the hearts of mortal enemies. Before it a murdered son or a murdered friend no longer cries out for vengeance. Before it — even more miraculous ­the distance between benefactor and suppliant, between victor and vanquished, shrinks to nothing […] These moments of grace are rare in the Iliad, but they are enough to make us feel with sharp regret what it is that violence has killed and will kill again.”

– Simone Weil, “The Iliad or The Poem of Force”