Delahoyde & Hughes Orpheus HOMER'S ILIAD: BOOK VI

Questions for Book VI:

• The epic is supposed to be about the wrath of Achilles, but flip ahead to the last line of the entire work. Why is Hector given this moment -- why is Hector the subject of the last line of the Iliad? Material in this book (VI) may offer some perspective on this peculiarity.
• Helen says some surprising things about herself. How do you explain her character?
• What is Hector's attitude about returning to the battle despite the pleas of his kin?

After some battlefield encounters, we turn to Hector in a portion of the epic often anthologized. In his brief encounter with his mother, he turns down wine and, shockingly perhaps, expresses his wish that Paris his brother were dead (6.336-337).

Paris, like Achilles, is sulking. When Hector visits, he has a moment with Helen, who is really odd. She says, "My dear brother, / dear to me, bitch that I am, vicious, scheming -- / horror to freeze the heart!" (6.407-409). She wishes she had never been born, and somewhat habitually self-lacerates: "slut that I am" (6.422). How does one explain this attitude on her part?

The scene between Hector and Andromache is effective. He's in his war-gear, so his kid, Scamandrius (named after the river Skamander), a.k.a. Astyanax, is afraid (6.557ff). (After it's all over, this kid will be thrown to his death from the wall of Troy.) Hector listens to more pleas for him to forego battle, but he says something interesting:

All this weighs on my mind too, dear woman.
But I would die of shame to face the men of Troy
and the Trojan women trailing their long robes
if I would shrink from battle now, a coward.
(6.522-525)

And then the key line:

Nor does the spirit urge me on that way.
(6.526)

In other words, aside from all the heroic code material involved in one's rep in a warrior culture, and aside from some more platitudes about all of us dying sooner or later, Hector in this one line acknowledges being in touch with whatever force it is that assuures him that it's the right thing to do at this time. He is in touch with and trusts his own inclination. Here's more, even better:

Andromache,
dear one, why so desperate? Why so much grief for me?
No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate.
And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
neither brave man nor coward, I tell you--
it's born with us the day that we are born.
(6.579-584)

The ancient Greek notion of Fate can come across as very oppressive, but Hector's attitude here shows the rarely expressed flip side. Some days you just are at the top of your game and you know you're not going to die, that you're not fated to croak today. You just know this. What a paradoxically freeing notion!

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Iliad: Book VII
Iliad Index
Orpheus: Greek Mythology