Priam, son of Laomedon (the king who cheated Heracles, and suffered defeat in the first Trojan War). An amiable old man in the Iliad - seen in Book 3 asking Helen about the Greek warriors he can see from the battlements of Troy (teichoscopia), and trying to persuade Hector to come back into Troy in Book 22. In Book 24 he goes secretly by night to Achilles' hut, to ransom the body of his son. After Homer, he is killed brutally at the altar by Neoptolemus.