Iliad, Book 22 — The Death of Hector

Reading Troy — chapter 22 of 74 · Iliad, Book 22

Iliad, Book 22 — The Death of Hector (Late afternoon of Day 27 of the Iliad; ~1184 BCE traditional date for the Trojan War; the Scaean Gate, the plain before Troy, and the city walls)

The Trojans inside the city stream behind the closed gate, huddled like frightened deer, drying the sweat from their bodies, drinking. Hector alone remains outside — fate had bound him there — leaning against the Scaean Gate's outer projection. Achilles meanwhile breaks off the Agenor-chase, the god-phantom finally vanishing, and turns toward the city like a horse at the racecourse, his armour flashing, his pace devouring the ground. Priam sees him coming first from the watchtower; he beats his head with both hands and calls down to his son. Hector, do not stand against him alone; come inside; he is too much for you. He pictures himself dead in the dust before his palace, his old body torn by his own dogs who lap up the blood of their master at the threshold of his own door. Hecuba comes to the wall beside him, bares her breast in the gesture of supplication, holds it out toward her son: Hector, by this breast, remember what you sucked at; come inside the walls. Hector hears them both. He does not move.

He stands and thinks. Polydamas was right — he should have retreated last night when Polydamas advised; now the army has been cut to pieces because of his pride. He cannot face Polydamas or the men he led into ruin. He could put down his shield and helmet, walk out unarmed, and offer Achilles half the city's treasure and Helen back; but Achilles will not respect a suppliant in his armour, he will kill me as a woman is killed, naked of arms. Better to fight; if I die, at least I die fighting, and a glory will be left for after.

Achilles arrives. Hector's nerve breaks. He runs. Achilles pursues. They circle the city walls three times — past the watchtower, past the wild fig-tree, past the two springs where the Trojan women used to wash clothes in peacetime, one hot, one cold, one with smoke rising from it like fire and the other cold as hail or snow or ice — as a hawk on the mountains, swiftest of birds, sweeps after a dove; she dives below and he with a cry follows close behind, his heart bent on the kill. Zeus on Olympus weighs the two fates in his golden scales for the second time; Hector's portion sinks toward Hades. Apollo, who has held Hector up to now, withdraws.

Athena meanwhile takes the shape of Hector's favourite brother Deïphobus and meets Hector on the third circuit. Brother, I have come out to stand with you against this man. Hector, who has not seen Deïphobus, takes heart and turns to face Achilles. They throw together. Achilles's spear misses; Athena retrieves it for him. Hector's spear hits Achilles's shield square and bounces off. Hector calls for another spear from Deïphobus — and Deïphobus is not there. Hector then knows. The gods have called me to my death. Polydamas was right; the city was lost. He draws his sword and charges, as an eagle swoops down from the dark cloud on the plain to seize a lamb or a frightened hare. Achilles meets him with his spear lifted high.

Achilles has studied the armour as he closes — the armour Hector took from Patroclus, his own old armour, which he knows perfectly — and sees the one gap, the narrow strip of throat exposed between the cuirass and the helmet where the collar-bones come together. He drives the spear through it. Hector fell with a great crash; his armour rang upon him. The blow does not kill at once; Hector lies dying in the dust, the throat punctured but not severed (Homer is careful: Hector can speak). He begs Achilles for ransom — let his father pay for the body to be returned to Troy for burning. Achilles answers as he answered Lycaon: do not entreat me by my knees or by my parents. If only my rage would let me carve and eat your flesh raw, for the wrongs you have done me. As for ransom, no man living shall lay your head on the bier; the dogs and birds shall divide every scrap of you. Hector dying says: be careful then, lest I become the cause of the gods' wrath against you on the day Paris and Apollo destroy you at the Scaean Gate. His soul flies down to Hades, bewailing its fate, leaving manhood and youth.

Achilles strips the armour. The Greeks come up and each man stabs the body in turn and no man failed to wound it. Achilles then pierces the tendons behind both ankles, runs an ox-hide thong through them, ties them to his chariot, and drags Hector face-down behind it across the plain, the head trailing in the dust. The Trojan women on the wall see it. Hecuba shrieks and tears her veil. Priam tries to throw himself from the gate to run after his son's body and is held back by his servants. Inside the city Andromache, who has been weaving a purple cloth with flowers worked into it for her husband's return, hears the screams from the wall and the loom-shuttle falls from her hands. She runs to the wall, sees Hector dragged behind the chariot, faints away. Her women catch her. She comes back to herself and laments — Hector, you were father and mother and brother to me, and tender husband. Astyanax will grow up an orphan, hungry at his cousins' tables; the day a man loses his father is the day he loses his friends. The book closes on Andromache fainting again into her women's arms, the city wailing, and Achilles dragging Hector's body back across the plain to the ships.

Analysis

The cycle's central death

Book 22 contains the death the cycle has been moving toward since Book 1. Achilles's wrath, the absent warrior, the Trojan tide that broke the wall, Patroclus's death, the reconciliation, the new armour, the river-fight, the Theomachy — all the cycle's twenty-one books to this point are the preparation. Hector's death is the moment the wrath's chain reaches its end. Everything after is the assimilation — Book 23 (the funeral games of Patroclus), Book 24 (the ransom of Hector's body), Posthomerica 1–14, Aeneid 2's account of the city's fall, Odyssey 11's account of Achilles and Hector in the underworld. The cycle's whole long arc bends to this one moment, and Homer treats it with extreme structural care.

The three circuits

The three circuits of the walls is the cycle's clearest single piece of formal patterning. The number three has been everywhere — three failed duels, three flights of Agamemnon, three Iris-missions, three rescues of Hector by Apollo, three thrusts of Achilles at empty air. Three is the cycle's number for completed mortal action. The third circuit is the moment Apollo withdraws and Hector's protection is over. The simile that frames the chase — as a hawk on the mountains, swiftest of birds, sweeps after a dove — pairs the warriors with the cycle's archetypal predator-prey image. Hector is the dove, Achilles the hawk. The simile is the cycle's clearest single picture of the wrath's redirection: the same Achilles who in Books 5–9 was a warrior among warriors is now a predator, his pursuit no longer combat but hunt. The Aeneid quotes the simile at Aeneas-pursues-Turnus in Aeneid 12 — the same hawk-and-dove, the same three circuits, the same divine withdrawal at the third. Virgil's Book 12 is Iliad 22 transposed to Italy.

The springs at the wall

Watch the description of the two springs the warriors pass on each circuit — one hot, one cold, one with smoke rising from it like fire and the other cold as hail or snow or ice; and beside them are the wide stone troughs, beautifully made, where in peacetime the wives and daughters of the Trojans used to wash their fine linen, before the sons of the Achaeans came. The image is the cycle's most concentrated single piece of pre-war pastoral inset into a killing-scene. The springs were where Trojan women did the laundry; the killing of Hector is happening exactly where, in peacetime, his sisters and his wife used to wash his cloak. The Iliad does this consistently — pairs the moment of greatest violence with a small piece of remembered domesticity — but Book 22's springs is the cycle's clearest single example. The Posthomerica picks up the springs in its account of the fall of Troy in Book 13; the Aeneid quotes the technique in Aeneid 2 (Aeneas seeing the women's quarters of his palace burning, the marriage-bed of Helen as the site of a long detour of memory) and in Aeneid 8 (the pastoral of Pallanteum, the future site of the Roman Forum, recalled as a peaceful pasture).

Athena as Deïphobus

Watch what Athena does. She does not save Hector; she tricks him into staying. Hector, on the run, would have completed the circuits and survived another night. Athena in Deïphobus's shape gives him the false courage to stop and turn — and the moment he turns, Apollo withdraws and the killing-stroke is possible. The cycle's principle here is that Athena's deceptions are the engine that brings kleos-conscious mortals to their fated deaths; Hector dies because he was deceived into believing he was not alone. The detail is one of the cycle's most painful single moves — Hector's last moment of confidence is a lie put into his ear by a goddess he never sees. The Aeneid will quote the pattern in Aeneid 12 (Juturna takes her brother's chariot-driver's shape to delay Turnus's death, then must abandon him at the last; the structural quote is exact and the moral charge inverted). Quintus's Achilles-death in Posthomerica 3 is the same structure — Apollo guides the arrow into Achilles after the hero has been led to the wrong place.

The cycle's most studied scene: the throat-wound

Achilles's killing-stroke through the narrow strip of throat exposed between the cuirass and the helmet, where Hector wears Achilles's own old armour and Achilles knows every weak point, is the cycle's most concentrated single piece of dramatic irony. The man being killed is wearing the killer's own armour; the killer knows the armour's only weakness because he wore it for nine years. The killing-stroke is therefore Achilles erasing his own former self — the warrior he was before the wrath, the armour that was given to Peleus by the gods at his marriage, is destroyed in the man it has not yet killed. The Iliad's principle of armour-as-identity reaches its full demonstration here: the armour that briefly made Patroclus look like Achilles in Book 16, and that made Hector look like Achilles for one day in Book 17, is here killed by the new god-forged armour that has replaced it. The cycle's identity-confusion is resolved in a single throat-thrust.

The hostility of the corpse-treatment

Achilles refusing Hector's dying plea for ransom, refusing every code of mercy the cycle has tracked across twenty-two books, threatening to carve and eat your flesh raw, and then dragging the corpse face-down behind the chariot — is the cycle's hardest single passage to read. Homer does not gloss; he prints. The reader is asked to register the violation. The cycle's principle is that grief past a certain threshold makes the warrior cease to be a warrior and become something more elemental. Achilles in the late books of the Iliad is no longer one of the Greeks; he is a force outside the heroic-code system. The wrath's redirection from Agamemnon (whose injury was a transferable property) to Hector (whose injury is irreplaceable Patroclus) has crossed the threshold where heroic-code mercies make sense. Book 24 will pull Achilles back from this threshold — Priam's visit will reawaken his humanity. Book 22 is the moment the threshold is crossed; the readers should mark that the cycle does not endorse what Achilles does, but allows him to do it.

Andromache's lament

Andromache's lament at the wall is the cycle's third and most piercing female lament (after Briseis in Book 19 and Helen's various self-condemnations). She is weaving a purple cloth with flowers worked into it for her husband's return when the screams reach her; the shuttle falls; she runs to the wall; she sees the body dragged behind the chariot. Her lament is structured around Astyanax — the same baby who in Book 6 shrieked at his father's helmet now an orphan whose cousins will treat him as a beggar at their tables. The line the day a man loses his father is the day he loses his friends is the cycle's most concentrated single piece of social observation about the relation between fatherhood and survival. Quintus picks up Andromache directly in Posthomerica 13 (her capture by Neoptolemus during the sack); Aeneid 3 (Andromache at Buthrotum, still grieving twenty years later, weeping over Ascanius because he is the age my Astyanax would be). The cycle's permanent picture of Andromache is the picture Book 22 establishes — the wife at the wall, the shuttle fallen, the city around her wailing.

What to watch for

Watch Andromache's loom. The shuttle that falls from her hands in Book 22 will be picked up again in Penelope's loom in Odyssey 19 — the cycle's two great picture of women's craft pressed into service of grief. Watch Hector's dying prophecy. He tells Achilles Paris and Apollo will destroy you at the Scaean Gate — the prophecy is fulfilled in Posthomerica 3. The death-prophecy pattern (the dying tells the killer his own death) is the cycle's most concentrated single piece of formal foreshadowing. Watch the dragging. The body of Hector will be dragged daily by Achilles for eleven days (Books 23–24); Apollo will preserve the body's beauty from harm; the ransom of Book 24 will return the body finally intact. Watch the springs. They are the cycle's only sustained pre-war pastoral image; Quintus's Trojan women at Posthomerica 13's laundry-fountains are quoted from them, and the springs at Aeneas's Tiber-mouth in Aeneid 8 are their Roman cousin. And watch Achilles's threat to eat your flesh raw. The line is the cycle's clearest single statement that grief has passed beyond mortality's manageable limits; only the visit of Priam in Book 24 will pull him back.

Echoes across the cycle

Backward echoes

Book 22 is the formal payoff of every Hector-arc since the cycle's beginning. The duel with Ajax in Book 7 (interrupted by the heralds); the killing of Patroclus in Book 16 (in Achilles's own armour); the killing of the army's captains in Books 8 and 11; the wounding by Ajax in Book 14 (the stone, the spitting of black blood); the rescues by Apollo in Books 7, 17, and 20 (the stone, the mist, the mist again) — all converge here. Achilles's die, friend speech to Lycaon in Book 21 is the philosophical foundation of his answer to Hector's plea here. Athena's deceptions in Books 4 (Pandarus), 5 (Diomedes-chariot), and 10 (Diomedes-Odysseus mission) are the structural pattern for her Deïphobus-trick here. The two springs the warriors pass — Trojan women's laundry-fountains — connect backward to Book 6 (Hector at the Scaean Gate with Andromache; the laundry-life of Troy was its peacetime setting). The throat-wound through the gap in the old armour is the structural payoff of every Patroclus-arming and Hector-armour-stripping scene since Book 16. The cycle's whole long arc converges in one spear-thrust.

Forward echoes

Inside the Iliad. The dragging of Hector's body extends into Books 23 (Patroclus's funeral pyre, with Hector's body dragged daily around it) and 24 (Apollo preserves the body's beauty; Priam comes to ransom it). Andromache's lament here is rehearsed at fuller length in Book 24's three-women-lamenting-Hector scene (Andromache, Hecuba, Helen all speaking over the bier). The cycle's last book is structured as the answer to Book 22's violation — Achilles will give the body back; the wrath will resolve.

Into the Posthomerica. Quintus's Book 3 (the death of Achilles) is the formal mirror of Iliad 22 (the death of Hector). The same divine machinery (Apollo guides Paris's arrow); the same single mortal wound (the heel of Achilles, the throat of Hector); the same dying-speaks-prophecy pattern; the same struggle for the body afterward (Iliad 17 / Posthomerica 3). Quintus is explicit about the structural quote — Hector's dying speech to Achilles is the prophecy Paris fulfils, and Quintus reads the prophecy as the Posthomerica's authorising premise. The body of Hector dragged behind the chariot is the structural seed of the body of Achilles being recovered by Ajax and Odysseus in Posthomerica 3. Andromache's lament here is rehearsed in Posthomerica 13 (her capture during the sack; the killing of Astyanax). The cycle's whole post-Iliadic Trojan-women arc descends from her lament here.

Into the Aeneid. Virgil reads Book 22 as the cycle's master-template for Aeneid 12. The duel of Aeneas and Turnus is Iliad 22 with the moral charge differently weighted. The same three circuits (Aeneid 12.745–765, quinque orbibus — five times in Virgil, who increases the count to emphasise the prolongation); the same divine withdrawal at the last circuit (Juturna pulled back by Jupiter); the same trick-by-divine-impersonation that opens the killing-moment (Juturna as charioteer); the same final spear-thrust; the same dying-suppliant-ignored. Aeneid 12 ends abruptly, on Aeneas's killing-stroke — Virgil's deliberate truncation is his commentary on Iliad 22, refusing the long aftermath. The Aeneid is Iliad 22 without the Book 24 redemption (or rather, with redemption postponed indefinitely; Aeneas's killing of Turnus is the cycle's hardest single ending). Andromache's lament returns in Aeneid 3 (Buthrotum, where Andromache lives in a miniature replica of Troy, still grieving Hector).

Into the Odyssey. Hector's death is the structural cost the Odyssey reads back into the Iliad. Achilles in Odyssey 11 (the Nekyia) speaks of his Iliadic life as a mistake — I would rather be a serf to a poor man on earth than king of all the dead — and the line is impossible without Iliad 22's hard ending. The throat-wound through the gap in the old armour is the cycle's source for the bow-shot through the iron axe-heads in Odyssey 21 — the killing-stroke that requires knowledge of the weapon-gap. Andromache's loom-shuttle falling here is the cycle's source for Penelope's loom in Odyssey 2 and 19 — both are women's craft pressed into service of grief and waiting. The Iliad ends with the women weaving and lamenting; the Odyssey begins with women weaving and waiting; the same picture, with the difference that the man returns. Andromache is the Iliadic Penelope without the homecoming.

The cycle's central death is past. Two books to go.

Cast in this chapter

On stage

Hector — stands alone outside the wall; runs three circuits; tricked by Athena-as-Deïphobus; killed by spear through the throat; the death-prophecy to Achilles
Achilles — pursues Hector around the walls; kills him through the throat-gap in his own old armour; drags the body behind his chariot
Athena — takes Deïphobus's shape, deceives Hector into turning to face Achilles
Apollo — withdraws from Hector at the third circuit; his Trojan-saving role is finished
Zeus — weighs the two death-fates in the golden scales; Hector's sinks
Priam — calls down from the wall begging Hector to come inside; tries to throw himself from the gate when the body is dragged
Hecuba — bares her breast in supplication to her son; shrieks and tears her veil at the dragging
Andromache — weaving when the screams reach her; the shuttle falls; runs to the wall; the cycle's most piercing female lament
Astyanax — named only through Andromache's lament: the orphan-child whose cousins will reject him

Mentioned / off-stage

Patroclus — the body still on the bier in Achilles's tent; the grief that drives the killing
Paris — named in Hector's death-prophecy as Achilles's eventual killer
Helen — the cause; not named in this book
Polydamas — named in Hector's pre-fight monologue (Polydamas was right)
Deiphobus — the brother whose shape Athena takes; the real Deïphobus is inside the city
Thetis — implicit in every reference to Achilles

This post is part of Reading Troy, a slow daily readalong through the four canonical Trojan-cycle epics — Homer's Iliad, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Virgil's Aeneid, and Homer's Odyssey — read in chronological narrative order.