Odysseus tries to comfort him. You are honored among the dead as you were among the living, your name is sung in every hall, take comfort in the glory. Achilles looks at him the way a tired adult looks at a child speaking of foolish things. Do not comfort me for dying. I would rather work another man’s dirt. Be a landless poor man hiring myself out for a meal. I would rather do that and breathe and feel the sun on my neck than be king of this forsaken place. This is the Iliad’s whole bargain unmade. Achilles took the short, glorious life over the long quiet one, and the song of his name was supposed to be the compensation. Standing in the dark with no body, he says it wasn’t worth it. Kleos is a story the living tell each other. The dead get nothing. Odysseus hears it and says nothing, because he made the same bargain, and his cost is still being totaled.
The Glory-vs-Life Inversion
Achilles, greatest of the Greeks, tells Odysseus he would rather be a poor man's hired hand alive than king of the dead.