Hector
Tamer of Horses
HEK-tor
Troy's first defender, fighting a war he never wanted for a brother's mistake, and the only figure in the Iliad with a home worth losing.
The Story
Eldest son of Priam and the wall the city actually stood behind. He knows the war is Paris's fault, says so, and fights it anyway. The scene that fixes him is domestic: he reaches for his baby son on the ramparts, the child screams at the horsehair crest, and both parents laugh before he goes back out.
He kills Patroclus wearing Achilles's armour, which is the mistake that ends him. Achilles runs him three times around the walls, kills him in front of his family, and drags the body behind a chariot for twelve days. The Iliad, a poem told by Greeks, closes not on their victory but on Hector's funeral.
Did You Know?
- To hector, meaning to bully or browbeat, comes from his name by way of seventeenth-century London gangs who called themselves Hectors. The word turned on the man.
- He is the only major figure in the Iliad shown at home with his wife and child, which is generally read as the poem deliberately making Troy's loss cost something.
- The poem ends with his funeral, not with Achilles or the fall of the city. A Greek audience was left on a Trojan's grave.