- Ares (Mars in Latin) is the god of war (315).
- Even Hector realizes the inevitability of his impending death. Homer sets the scene: Priam sees Achilles coming on and advises Hector not to wait outside the walls to meet Achilles but to fight from inside the walls. Priam realizes that his death will be wretched.
- Hector considers an alternative plan in which he would offer reparations for Paris stealing Helen, but he rejects any other course of action than meeting Achilles as unacceptable to the implacable Achilles (150).
- Notice that Hector would be more useful, here again, retreating back to the walls of Troy and defending his city. However, his personal heroic code takes precedence over his social role (130).
- He recognizes that it is his “reckless pride” that has brought defeat and that shame will come to him if he returns to Troy.
- Mueller points out the parallel between Achilles' and Hector's recognitions of their prior mistakes, how their choices now bind them, in their eyes, to courses of action that will bring their destructions. But Hector, unlike Achilles, sees less clearly and believes that he may be the equal of Achilles (Mueller 62).
- Hector is filled with fear, and Homer compares him to a cringing dove (167) while Achilles is seen as a hound pursuing a fawn (225), as Achilles chases Hector around and around the walls of Troy.
- But notice, as Mueller interprets the passage, that Homer does not judge Hector harshly for fleeing: "and the one who fled was great but the one pursuing greater, even greater" (189). Mueller sees Hector's flight as his first honest act (p. 62).
- All the gods observe the race. Zeus has pity for Hector, but Athena shames him into letting her do as she pleases to help Achilles (210).
- Zeus formally holds his scales and Hector's fate weighs down, and so now there is no possibility but death (250).
- Athena disguises herself as Hector's brother Deiphobus and urges him to fight. He is deluded into a renewed courage and is ready (293). How beyond bounds is Athena's trickery, yet Hector's acting under delusion matches his self-delusion all along (Mueller 63).
- Hector proposes a pact in which both would promise that the winner allow the loser's comrades to rescue the corpse for proper burial (306).
- But Achilles rejects all pacts with vehemence: "There are no binding oaths between men and lions." (310)
- Athena repeatedly assists Achilles in the fight, deflecting a spear or retrieving one.
- Hector throws his spear, futilely, and asks Deiphobus for another. At that moment Hector realizes his fate when he no longer sees Deiphobus (350): "My time has come! …Well let me die…not without glory…in some great clash of arms that even men to come will hear of down the years." These words echo the words spoken about Patroclus in Book 16. Mueller concludes: "What Homer says about Patroclus, Hector says about himself. The simple change of pronous distinguishes the pathos of Patroclus' end from the heroic defeat of Hector. At this moment, and only at this moment, Hector is equal to Achilles, and superior to all other Iliadic characters, in the depth and intensity of his consciousness of life as limited and valorized by the fact of death" (p. 64).
- Hector accepts his fate acting in accordance with the heroic code, manfully, not cowardly.
- Finally (386), Achilles stabs Hector with a fatal thrust.
- A reader must come to terms with his or her response to the killing of Hector and with Hector's death and with Achilles' victory.
- Examine the relevant lines:
- Achilles: "I smashed your strength! And you—the dogs and birds will maul you, shame your corpse while Achaeans bury my dear friend in glory!" (395-7)
- Hector: "I beg you, beg you by your life, your parents—don't let the dogs devour me by the Argive ships!"
- Achilles: "Beg no more, you fawning dog…The dogs and birds will rend you—blood and bone!"
- Achilles: "For my own death, I'll meet it freely."
- Compare Homer's words at Hector's death (425-29) with the words at Patroclus's death (16. 1000-1005).
- How do you respond to the killing of Hector? [Discuss Iliad Bk22 Q01]
- Each soldier comes up to stab the dead body of Hector.
- Achilles remembers the unburied body of his friend Patroclus.
- Achilles sates his anger by piercing Hector's heels and, threading strips of rawhide through the feet, dragging Hector's body behind his chariot as he rides around the walls of Troy.
- Priam, Hecuba, and Andromache each grieves for Hector.
- So, how do you respond to Hector's death and Achilles' victory?
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| Achilles dragging Hector's body. Image from Perseus disk. |