Hector

and the song of victory composed after this by the Muses, such as Achilles bade the Achaeans sing—the paean—at the dragging of Hector to the ships, himself leading off:

'Zeus most glorious, most great, lord of the dark clouds, dwelling in the heaven, let not the sun set nor darkness come on, before I cast down headlong the smoke-blackened halls of Priam, and burn the gates with consuming fire, and tear about Hector's breast his tunic, cleft with the bronze;

and the temples should be propitiated with such adornments, just as Hector thought fit, when challenging the best of the Achaeans, saying that if he prevailed he would give the body back to the man's allies, but the arms, he said, 'I will strip off, and hang them in the temple of Apollo the far-darter.

" It was not Hector, then, that you dragged, but the body that had been Hector's.

\"From the highest resources in need of your help, Hector\" — this man we ought to succour;

(For if anyone grieve at the prosperity of one by whom he himself is hurt, he would not rightly be said to envy, as if Agamemnon at Hector;

and Diomede says Hector will make his boast at Troy hereafter:

Their masters compel them to be brave, after Hector’s fashion:

It is this citizen courage which inspires the heroes portrayed by Homer, like Diomede and Hector:

DOLON.

DOLON.

DOLON.

Hecuba:

And what of the wife of Hector skilled in arms, sad Andromache?

Do you see this, mother of that man, Hector, who once laid low in battle many a son of Argos?

For ever since I took into my hand this gift from Hector, my greatest enemy, I have gotten no good from the Greeks.

Now Ajax here had this gift from Hector, and by this he has perished in his deadly fall.

First, it is the gift of Hector, that enemy-friend who was most hateful to me and most hostile to my sight;

But since, dear comrade, after thee I go Beneath the earth, I will not bury thee Till here I bring thee Hector’ s head and arms, The spoils of that proud prince who took thy life.

And with such nobility of soul did he hasten to take vengeance on the man who slew his friend, that when all tried to comfort him and urged him to bathe and take food, he swore that he would do none of these things until he had brought the head of Hector to the grave of Patroclus.

So let them say that it was not Hector who burned the ships of the Greeks, but Achilles, because, being able to prevent Hector, he did not prevent him.

I would I had thy strong arm and spear to aid me, son of Priam.

and the son of sea-born Thetis mounted on his chariot dragged my husband Hector round the walls, ah woe is me!

for I have lived to see my husband Hector slain by Achilles, and the babe Astyanax, whom I bore my lord, hurled from the towering battlements, when the Hellenes sacked our Trojan home;

In the center of the shield the sun’s bright circle was shining on winged horses, and the heavenly chorus of stars, Pleiades, Hyades, bringing defeat to the eyes of Hector;

What message can I take for you to Hector or your aged lord?

So long then as the bulwarks of our land stood firm, and Troy’s battlements abode unshaken, and my brother Hector prospered in his warring, I, poor child, grew up and flourished, like some vigorous shoot, at the court of the Thracian, my father’s guest-friend.

and then perhaps my lot might give me to some savage master, one that would buy me for money—me the sister of Hector and many others—who would make me knead him bread within his halls, or sweep his house or set me working at the loom, leading a life of misery;

Hector of Troy or Ajax triple-plumed, as I saw him, saw him, in Priam’s gateway;

In the Homeric literature, for instance, the deceitful cunning of Ulysses appears as a virtue of the same rank with the prudence of Nestor, the constancy of Hector, and the gallantry of Achilles.

Fight on unresting by the ships;

To fall in combat for your country’s sake is no disgrace;

Thus Hector, while exhorting the Trojans to defend their country, speaks these words:

Twice in battles they sacked the city of the Trojans:

And you, son of Diodotus, emulating the warrior Meleager, emulating Hector and Amphiaraus, breathed out your blossoming youth in the front ranks, where the best men sustained the strife of war at the limit of their hopes.

In Troy Hector heard of Aias.

Indeed men say that glory blossomed for Hector beside the flowing Scamander;

Achilles, who laid low Hector, the irresistible, unswerving pillar of Troy, and who consigned to death Memnon the Ethiopian, son of the Dawn.

For according to your argument all the demigods would be bad who died at Troy, including the son of Thetis, who so despised danger, in comparison with enduring any disgrace, that when his mother (and she was a goddess) said to him, as he was eager to slay Hector, something like this, I believe, My son, if you avenge the death of your friend Patroclus and kill Hector, you yourself shall die;

Socrates.

But, my good friend, did not Homer himself also give Hector his name?

For lord (ἄναξ) and holder (ἕκτωρ) mean nearly the same thing, indicating that they are names of a king;

And again the trailings of Hector’s body round the grave of Patroclus and the slaughter of the living captives upon his pyre, all these we will affirm to be lies, nor will we suffer our youth to believe that Achilles, the son of a goddess and of Peleus the most chaste of men, grandson of Zeus, and himself bred under the care of the most sage Cheiron, was of so perturbed a spirit as to be affected …

Then, as they disembark at Ilium, the Trojans hold them off, and Protesilaus is killed by Hector.