by Joshua Jones

Created on: May 05, 2010

I was Priam, King of Troy. Now, I am not. I have no being.

Here, from the walls from which I received my coronation, when the Pythian priest announced the favor of all the gods,  I see the dispensations of Zeus- for they say, he pours the sands of fate on good and bad alike. The sands have fallen here on Troy; we are buried under the mountainous dunes of the uncaring gods.

But is it true that dust controls the fate of kings and men? Is it true that no malice is harbored towards my people? Even now I see it. I realize it now as the rugged Pyrrhus stalks towards this keep. The swan, atop the glorious Leda, the refusal to answer such a simple question "Who is fairest?"- all malicious deceptions by the father of gods. The progenitor of all these ancient adolescents. Is his undeserved ire or blessing the thing which men call fate? And can we change it? Can any man, from here to some far off African shore, circumvent the will of any god, much less the god who brought the rest from Cronus' mouth?

I see this Fate. I see the outcome of a thousand insignificant simplicities. Do I send Paris or Hector to Sparta? Do I rise today or sleep? An offering to the gods is laid at my gates? Inexorable outcome of my woefully ignorant choices! Why do you haunt me fate? What have the people of Troy done to the gods? Are you so petty, that for a slight against your beauty you tear the walls, that were here before my grandfather’s father, apart?

I was Priam. I am no more. Fate has undone me.

Was this destined by some great force before Zeus? His rapes and indecisions may yet be no slight to men. We are insignificant! Why would he step on a cockroach when he hurls thunderbolts at titans? Time and Cause. These the cruelest of gods, who have no shrine among men, have brought about this ruin.

I am myself a product of fate. Fated was my birth to be of royal stock, but what good is royalty at such a price? A happy man is there in Ithaca, a man among the swine even, I am sure. The same must be in Thebes, and one again in any city in Achaea. But here the Royalty and poor alike are ravished by fortune and fate: fortune the wheel, and fate the spoke. Would this wheel had stopped before my life began.

I was. I will be no more. Pyrrhus comes.

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