Book Mars Him Her Him Again the End of Him

The Iliad - Book 22 - The death of Hector

• Reading time: about 42 minutes

• Powerpoint of Achilles in Books eighteen-24

• Ares (Mars in Latin) is the god of state of war (315).

• Preparation for Hector'southward death.

• Even Hector realizes the inevitability of his impending decease. Homer sets the scene: Priam sees Achilles coming on and advises Hector not to wait exterior the walls to meet Achilles only to fight from inside the walls. Priam realizes that his death will be wretched.
• Hector considers an alternative plan in which he would offering reparations for Paris stealing Helen, but he rejects whatever other course of action than meeting Achilles every bit unacceptable to the implacable Achilles (150).
• Observe that Hector would be more useful, here again, retreating back to the walls of Troy and defending his city. Withal, 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 volition come to him if he returns to Troy.
• Mueller points out the parallel betwixt Achilles' and Hector's recognitions of their prior mistakes, how their choices now bind them, in their eyes, to courses of activity that will bring their destructions. But Hector, unlike Achilles, sees less conspicuously 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 every bit a hound pursuing a fawn (225), as Achilles chases Hector effectually and around the walls of Troy.
  • But notice, as Mueller interprets the passage, that Homer does not judge Hector harshly for fleeing: "and the i who fled was peachy but the i pursuing greater, fifty-fifty greater" (189). Mueller sees Hector's flying as his first honest act (p. 62).
• All the gods observe the race. Zeus has compassion for Hector, but Athena shames him into letting her do as she pleases to assistance Achilles (210).
• Zeus formally holds his scales and Hector's fate weighs down, then now there is no possibility merely decease (250).
• Athena disguises herself as Hector'southward brother Deiphobus and urges him to fight. He is deluded into a renewed courage and is ready (293). How beyond premises is Athena's trickery, even so Hector'southward acting nether delusion matches his self-delusion all along (Mueller 63).

• Hector and Achilles meet

• Hector proposes a pact in which both would promise that the winner allow the loser'due south comrades to rescue the corpse for proper burial (306).
• But Achilles rejects all pacts with vehemence: "There are no bounden oaths betwixt men and lions." (310)
• Athena repeatedly assists Achilles in the fight, deflecting a spear or retrieving ane.
• 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 permit me die…not without glory…in some slap-up disharmonism of arms that fifty-fifty men to come will hear of downwards 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' terminate 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 express and valorized past the fact of death" (p. 64).
• Hector accepts his fate acting in accordance with the heroic lawmaking, manfully, not cowardly.
• Finally (386), Achilles stabs Hector with a fatal thrust.

• Achilles kills Hector

• A reader must come to terms with his or her response to the killing of Hector and with Hector'southward death and with Achilles' victory.
• Examine the relevant lines:
  • Achilles: "I smashed your strength! And you—the dogs and birds volition maul y'all, shame your corpse while Achaeans bury my dearest friend in celebrity!" (395-7)
  • Hector: "I beg you, beg you by your life, your parents—don't allow the dogs devour me by the Argive ships!"
  • Achilles: "Beg no more, yous fawning dog…The dogs and birds will rend you lot—claret and bone!"
  • Achilles: "For my own death, I'll meet information technology freely."
  • Compare Homer'south words at Hector'south death (425-29) with the words at Patroclus's decease (16. 1000-1005).
  • How do you answer to the killing of Hector? [Talk over Iliad Bk22 Q01]

• After the death

• Each soldier comes up to stab the dead trunk of Hector.
• Achilles remembers the unburied trunk of his friend Patroclus.
• Achilles sates his anger by piercing Hector'south heels and, threading strips of rawhide through the feet, dragging Hector's torso behind his chariot as he rides around the walls of Troy.
• Priam, Hecuba, and Andromache each grieves for Hector.
• And so, how practice y'all reply to Hector'south expiry and Achilles' victory?

Achilles dragging Hector's body. Paradigm from Perseus disk.

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Source: https://pages.cabrini.edu/jzurek/homer/iliad22.htm

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