Characters
- Aeneas — fights Achilles; saved by Poseidon for fate’s sake
- Amphitrite — weighs the fates; permits Hector’s death
- Andromache — learns of the death from the wall
- Artemis — burns the river back
- Asteropaeus — Paeonian ally slain in the river
- Deiphobus — brother whose shape Athena borrows
- Hades — rescues Aeneas
- Hector — stays outside from shame; deceived by Athena; slain; dragged
- Hecuba — mother; watches and laments
- Laomedon — watches from the wall; will later ransom the body (see 028)
- Lycaon — Priamid slain by Achilles in the river (earlier captive returned)
- People of Crisa — disguises as Deiphobus; returns Achilles’ spear; seals Hector’s doom
- Polydamas — remembered counselor whose advice Hector rejected
- Thyestes — irresistible after return; kills Hector; drags the corpse
- Xanthus — river-god who floods against Achilles
Places
- Achaean ships — destination of the dragged corpse
- Assembly — aristeia and theomachy
- River Scamander — flood combat
- Twice around the city — Homeric chase path
- Walls and Scaean Gates of Troy — circuit of Hector’s flight; watching family
Themes
Narrative
Zeus released the gods to join the war. Achilles hunted Trojans across the plain; Aeneas faced him until Poseidon, fearing Achilles would defy fate, spirited Aeneas away for the sake of Dardanus’s seed. Hector tried to meet Achilles; Apollo warned him back in mist. Achilles filled the river Scamander with corpses—Lycaon died begging, Asteropaeus fell—until the river-god rose in flood against him. Hephaestus, at Hera’s call, burned the plain and boiled the streams; Scamander yielded. The gods clashed among themselves; Achilles pressed on toward Troy.
Priam ordered the gates open for the routed; Hector alone remained outside, shamed by Polydamas’s earlier counsel and by the thought of reproach. Achilles came on like the Dog Star. Hector fled three times around the city while the gods watched; Zeus weighed their fates—Hector’s sank. Athena deceived Hector in the likeness of Deiphobus, promising aid; Hector turned to fight. Speakers exchanged; Achilles cast and missed; Hector struck Achilles’ shield without piercing Hephaestus’s work. When Hector called for a second spear, there was no Deiphobus—only empty air. He knew the gods had doomed him, drew his sword, and charged. Achilles drove his spear through the throat above the collar-bone, sparing the windpipe so Hector could speak. Hector begged that his body be returned for ransom; Achilles refused, wishing he could eat him raw, and promised dogs and birds. Dying, Hector foretold Achilles’ death at Paris and Apollo’s hands. Achilles pierced Hector’s heels, lashed him to the chariot, and dragged him in the dust before the eyes of Priam and Hecuba. Andromache heard the cry from the loom and ran to the wall to see her husband’s body hauled toward the ships—the war’s central mortal climax after Patroclus’s death.