truceless

Truceless war; Carthage's fight for survival, 241 to 237 BC.

In Hector's destroyer Bespaloff sees the uncivilized man whose capacity for happiness remains undeveloped because his "appetite for happiness" has not been fully satisfied and drives him "on toward his prey and fills his heart with 'an infinite power for battle and truceless war.'" (32) Even though in his forcefulness Achilles is enviably half-divine, his dual nature adds to his discontent, his divinity and humanity being violently inharmonious: "As a god, he envies the gods their omnipotence and immortality; as a man, he envies the beasts their ferocity, and says he would like to tear his victims' bodies to pieces and eat them raw." (33)