Tom Palaima on the power of mentors

Prof. F. Stephen Halliwell, author of the book *Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity*, has kindly written to me and pointed out that I made a mistake in writing that Achilles smiled at Priam at the end of the *Iliad*. Leon Golden had reminded me that in books 23 and 24, as Achilles goes through the process of becoming human again, he smiles. I transferred Achilles's smiling at Antilochus in Book 23.555 (during the funeral games that Achilles is conducting) to the meeting with Priam in Book 24, where a smile would be out of place. As Prof. Halliwell reminds us, the real power in Book 24 is in how Achilles struggles with his strong feelings in order to recognize in the father of his hated enemy Hector a human being worthy of sympathetic treatment who should be granted his son's body and a suitable period in which to carry out rituals of public mourning for him. My apologies for nodding about Homer. Tom Palaima