24.707–745

The slow and steady movement of the animals and their burden gives way to sudden action and violent emotion, Andromache and Hecuba flinging themselves on the wagon and tearing their hair, then embracing the dead hero’s head. The latter gesture might remind us of Thetis holding Achilles’s head as he rolls in the dust after hearing of Patroclus’s death at Hector’s hands (18.71). The three warriors are joined earlier in Zeus’s prophecy:

Ἕκτορα δ᾽ ὀτρύνῃσι μάχην ἐς Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων,
αὖτις δ᾽ ἐμπνεύσῃσι μένος, λελάθῃ δ᾽ ὀδυνάων
αἳ νῦν μιν τείρουσι κατὰ φρένας, αὐτὰρ Ἀχαιοὺς
αὖτις ἀποστρέψῃσιν ἀνάλκιδα φύζαν ἐνόρσας,
φεύγοντες δ᾽ ἐν νηυσὶ πολυκλήϊσι πέσωσι
Πηλεΐδεω Ἀχιλῆος: ὃ δ᾽ ἀνστήσει ὃν ἑταῖρον
Πάτροκλον: τὸν δὲ κτενεῖ ἔγχεϊ φαίδιμος Ἕκτωρ
Ἰλίου προπάροιθε πολέας ὀλέσαντ᾽ αἰζηοὺς
τοὺς ἄλλους, μετὰ δ᾽ υἱὸν ἐμὸν Σαρπηδόνα δῖον.
τοῦ δὲ χολωσάμενος κτενεῖ Ἕκτορα δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.

Let Phoebus Apollo drive Hector into battle,
and breathe strength into him, and he forget his wounds
which now wear out his senses. Let him stir up feeble panic
in the Achaeans, turning them back again,
and they fleeing fall on the on the many-oared ships
of Achilles, son of Peleus, and he rouse up his companion
Patroclus. And let shining Hector kill him with his spear
before Ilion, after he has killed many other strong warriors,
and among them my son, Sarpedon.
And brilliant Achilles in his anger shall kill Hector.

Iliad 15.59–68

The symbolic union of the three heroes, one death leading to the next, driven by love and hatred, now approaches its conclusion. Thetis’s gesture in Book Eighteen points backward, to the loss of Patroclus, whose death Achilles’s mortification reflects, and forward, to Hector’s death and, beyond the bounds of the poem, to death of Achilles.

The three laments for Hector that follow have a more formal structure, with professional singers, than the earlier responses in Book 22 (405–515). There, the horror of seeing Achilles drag the corpse behind his chariot prompts spontaneous outbursts of raw pain; here, the tone is more reflective, as the implications of their loss has had time to settle in the mourners. It is appropriate that these three women deliver the last farewell to Hector: his character is defined for us, to a greater extent than any other hero in the poem, by his interactions with women. That process begins with Hector’s return to Troy from the battlefield in Book 6, where he encounters the same three women, though in a different order, Hecuba first, then Helen, and finally Andromache (6.237–502) (ref. to essays on Book 6?). Each exchange highlights a different aspect of his character, but the common thread that runs through the entire episode is Hector’s alienation from his family, enforced by his inability to shed his warrior persona. Hecuba offers him wine and invites him to pour a libation to Zeus, but he refuses. The wine will make him “forget his courage” (265), and his bloodstained hands prevent him from any ritual honoring the gods. He finds Helen in the bedroom she shares with Paris. She invites him to sit and rest from his labors, but he again refuses, saying that he must return to his comrades on the battlefield, who are missing him. The meeting with Andromache occurs at the city walls, on the boundary between the civilized community of Troy and the battlefield. Andromache begs him to wait for Achilles and Greeks inside the city, at a well-fortified place. He refuses:

‘ἦ καὶ ἐμοὶ τάδε πάντα μέλει γύναι: ἀλλὰ μάλ᾽ αἰνῶς
αἰδέομαι Τρῶας καὶ Τρῳάδας ἑλκεσιπέπλους,
αἴ κε κακὸς ὣς νόσφιν ἀλυσκάζω πολέμοιο:
οὐδέ με θυμὸς ἄνωγεν, ἐπεὶ μάθον ἔμμεναι ἐσθλὸς
αἰεὶ καὶ πρώτοισι μετὰ Τρώεσσι μάχεσθαι
ἀρνύμενος πατρός τε μέγα κλέος ἠδ᾽ ἐμὸν αὐτοῦ.

All these things are a care to me also, my dear. But I would be bitterly
ashamed before the Trojan men and Trojan women with trailing robes,
if like a coward I were to skulk away from the battle;
nor will my spirit allow it, since I have learned to be excellent
and always to fight among the foremost Trojans,
winning great glory for my father and for myself.

Iliad 6.442–46

These words, some of which will echo in his last poignant monologue as he waits in front of the walls to fight Achilles (22.105), reflect the terrible conflict in his heart between the desire to be with his family and the need to fight in the forefront, to be ἐσθλός, winning κλέος for himself and his father. The word ἐσθλός (443) carries tremendous weight here, encompassing the whole complex of masculine heroic values, the need to separate from the mother and come to terms with the world of the father, understanding your identity as the product of imposing your will on the world outside yourself, becoming the person you are supposed to be by working your will in the world. As much as he loves Andromache, he cannot understand himself as a man unless he performs in the persona of a masculine hero. Hector is the only warrior in the poem into whose heart the poet lets us see, revealing the seemingly irresolvable conflicts that his loyalty and bravery create. Earlier in their encounter, Andromache addresses her husband as daimonie (6.407), usually translated as “strange man.” The etymology of the Greek word (δαίμων = “supernatural being,” “god”) suggests something stronger, the uncanny strangeness of the gods, whose purposes mortals can never understand. Hector uses the same word of her (6.485), echoing the fundamental estrangement that his inner conflict creates between them.

Andromache echoes here many of the themes in her lament in Book 22, Hector’s early death, her widowhood, the fate of their child. She foresees slavery and sexual violation for herself, either slavery or immediate death for Astyanax. Her final thoughts are painfully intimate: Hector will not stretch out his hands to her from his deathbed or speak a last word by which she could remember him. At the end of her lament in Book 22, she struck a similar note, speaking of the clothes she would use for his funeral, which she will now burn. The common theme is the absence of normal consolations and rites associated with death. Hector’s need to separate himself from those he loved, to stand in the forefront of battle to protect his city, has led inevitably to a more permanent chasm. He can return to Troy only in death.

Further Reading

Alexiou, M. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.