Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

While Hector fights and dies before the city, Andromache is within the house, weaving a purple double cloak with flower patterns and ordering the household to heat a bath for Hector’s return from battle—ignorant that he will never need it. The cry from the wall reaches her; she trembles, drops the shuttle, and calls the nurses to follow, fearing that Achilles has cut off Hector alone and driven him to the plain. She runs like a maenad to the tower, looks out, and sees Hector dragged behind Achilles’ chariot toward the ships, dust fouling his dark hair, his head that she had bound with cloth and fillets when he left for war. Darkness covers her eyes; she falls, gasping, and casts from her head the bright bindings—diadem, cap, woven band, and the veil Aphrodite gave her on her wedding day to Hector. Sisters-in-law hold her as she recovers enough breath to speak the lament. The scene is the Homeric hinge from domestic expectation to public widowhood: bath prepared for a living husband; eyes opened on a corpse already trophy.