Homer. The Iliad (transl. Robert Fagles)

At last the armies clashed at one strategic point,
they slammed their shields together, pike scraped pike
with the grappling strength of fighters armed in bronze
and their round shields pounded, boss on welded boss,
and the sound of struggle roared and rocked the earth.
Screams of men and cries of triumph breaking in one breath,
fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed blood.
Wildly as two winter torrents raging down from the mountains,
swirling into a valley, hurl their great waters together,
flash floods from the wellsprings plunging down in a gorge
and miles away in the hills a shepherd hears the thunder--
so from the grinding armies broke the cries and crash of war. (4.517-28)

"I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son."

Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire
to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man's hand
he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory
both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,
now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,
and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house. (24.591-99)

They reached out for the good things that lay at hand
and when they had put aside desire for food and drink,
Priam the son of Dardanus gazed at Achilles, marveling
now at the man's beauty, his magnificent build --
face-to-face he seemed a deathless god . . .
and Achilles gazed and marveled at Dardan Priam,
beholding his noble looks, listening to his words.
But once they'd had their fill of gazing at each other,
the old majestic Priam broke the silence first:
"Put me to bed quickly, Achilles, Prince.
Time to rest, to enjoy the sweet relief of sleep." (24.738-48)

(In Preface to Paradise Lost, C.S. Lewis speaks of Homer's despair, but I disagree. There is no more moving passage in western literature than the reconciliation of Achilles and Priam -- the exhausted killer and the grief-stricken father of Hector, whom Achilles has slain. In a world that pits us against them, the victor against the enemy, the profoundly silent moment in the close of this tumultuous, bloody epic, in which the two take their fill of one another -- this moment speaks more in its silence and peace than most of us, with all of our words and ideologies.)