This is CBS Eye on the World, here's John Batchler.

Achilles, the wrath of Achilles, when Achilles learning his good friend and older stepbrother

Patroclus is dead, Achilles rouses himself from the Greek camp, puts on his shining armor

and swears he will revenge Patroclus's death and the mistreatment of Patroclus's body.

He swears he will make the Trojan's pay.

He fills the commander river with corpses, that is not enough.

He demands Hector fight him, Hector the son of Priem, the number one warrior in Troy.

Achilles says, I will kill you.

I will kill you and I will not back off even slightly.

Achilles does, kill Hector and then because it's not enough for Achilles, he mistreats

Hector's corpse.

He drags him around the city.

Hector's corpse is protected by the gods, but in any event Achilles goes beyond your expectation

of a threat.

What is important here is the threat is acted upon and I welcome Victor Davis Hansen of

the Hoover Institution, a classicist who knows this story very well, writing most recently

about the threats being issued by opponents in the mid-east war, there are two wars underway

right now in Eurasia, a third war is threatened, but one war is dominated by threats not acted

upon.

Victor, a very good evening to you Achilles made threats, Hector made threats, and then

they were honor bound to act on them.

That is not apparently the way modern diplomacy is working.

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