Wishing the Impossible
Hektor in Iliad 8
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Book 8 offers us our third vision of Hektor in as many books. In book 6, he takes us inside the city of Troy as he speaks to his mother, Helen, and Andromache. Book 7 shows him challenging Ajax to a duel before returning the focus on the city itself. In book 8, Hektor (eventually) takes control of the battlefield and leads the Trojans to remain outside the city walls over night for the first time in the war (according to the Iliad).
At first glance, Hektor seems to be one of the epic’s most straightforward characters: he is the leader of the Trojan war effort, a father and husband, and brother to the prince who started the conflict. The Greeks almost unanimously describe him as a danger on the field: Achilles evokes this by calling him “man-slaying Hektor” from the beginning. And his named-murder count supports his menace: he kills the most named heroes of everyone in the epic. But from our perspective, the Iliadic presentation isn’t without question: Hektor fails to match up to Ajax and Diomedes and ultimately runs when faced with Achilles.
This particular Hektor may be more complex than a stock Trojan leader from the mythical tradition. Compare, for example, the Hektor depicted in Euripides’ Rhesos: he is much more menacing and authoritarian—to the point of being tyrannical—than the Iliad version. Homer’s Hektor wistfully wishes for his son’s future, upbraids and then humors his brother, and is eulogized at the end of the epic as the only Trojan who was kind to Helen. Over a century ago, J. A. Scott argued that the remarkable nature of Hektor’s character was because he was a Homeric innovation, central and special to our Iliad. F. M. Combellack, writing decades later, diagnosed that much of this argument was based on Scott’s own love for the Trojan hero.
Indeed, readers seem to respond to Hektor: I frequently hear that he is the one noble character in the epic, the one person we root for no matter what. (There’s something about our psychological attraction for the victim, for the oppressed here, but I will leave that for another time). James Redfield and Lynn Kozak have both written about Hektor’s character in different ways, but I think both of them get something right: Hektor is different from all of the other characters in the epic.
I used to try to explain that difference with students by saying that Hektor isn’t divine like Achilles or surpassingly clever like Odysseus—he is closer to what a decent person can hope to be: steadfast and strong in the face of adversity, loyal and dear to his family. At the core, he is a clear instantiation of that archaic definition of justice, to help one’s friends and hurt his family. At the core, however, there’s a sadness, a withdrawal to Hektor. And I think we find this in his language, and his resistance to it.
Hilary Mackie (1996, 11 and 107-9) positions Hektor as the archetypal Trojan speaker even though many features of his speeches are idiosyncratic. He is intensely concerned with his fame (kléos) and frequently imagines other people talking about him. His imagination produces a capacity for self-delusion, a desire for a different world, as he is forever trying to fit the world to his words with impossible wishes and paradoxical desires (8.165-6, 179 and 196-7). Hektor does not “converse” normally. Frequently he commands a subordinate or family member and then leaves without response (6.116, 6.286, 6.369, 6.494-5, 6.529-7.1, 12.442 and 17.491.); Hektor often reacts only with action, cf. 3.75, 5.493, 6.342, 12.80, 13.787, 20.379, 22.78, and 22.91). This summary of Hektor, however, goes against our typical emotional responses.
Il. 8.529-542
“But let’s keeps ourselves safe out here for the night,
Then at first light we will arm ourselves and
Wake up sharp Ares alongside the grey ships.
I will find out then if Tydeus’ son, strong Diomedes,
Will push me back to the wall from the ships
Or if I will savage him with bronze and carry away his bloody weapons.Tomorrow will show the proof of our excellence, if he will stand
To face my spear’s approach. But I think that he will fall there
Struck among the first ranks and many of his companions
Will be there around him as the sun sets toward the next dear.
But I wish I were deathless and ageless for all time,
Then I would pay them back as Athena or Apollo might,
And now on this day bring evil to the Argives.”So Hektor spoke and the Trojans cheered in response.
ἀλλ’ ἤτοι ἐπὶ νυκτὶ φυλάξομεν ἡμέας αὐτούς,
πρῶϊ δ’ ὑπηοῖοι σὺν τεύχεσι θωρηχθέντες
νηυσὶν ἔπι γλαφυρῇσιν ἐγείρομεν ὀξὺν ῎Αρηα.
εἴσομαι εἴ κέ μ’ ὁ Τυδεΐδης κρατερὸς Διομήδης
πὰρ νηῶν πρὸς τεῖχος ἀπώσεται, ἤ κεν ἐγὼ τὸν
χαλκῷ δῃώσας ἔναρα βροτόεντα φέρωμαι.
αὔριον ἣν ἀρετὴν διαείσεται, εἴ κ’ ἐμὸν ἔγχος
μείνῃ ἐπερχόμενον· ἀλλ’ ἐν πρώτοισιν ὀΐω
κείσεται οὐτηθείς, πολέες δ’ ἀμφ’ αὐτὸν ἑταῖροι
ἠελίου ἀνιόντος ἐς αὔριον· εἰ γὰρ ἐγὼν ὣς
εἴην ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως ἤματα πάντα,
τιοίμην δ’ ὡς τίετ’ ᾿Αθηναίη καὶ ᾿Απόλλων,
ὡς νῦν ἡμέρη ἧδε κακὸν φέρει ᾿Αργείοισιν.
῝Ως ῞Εκτωρ ἀγόρευ’, ἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν.
This is typical of Hektor’s speeches: he expresses an eagerness to fight that nears being boastful; like many Trojan speakers committed to the either/or proposition of kill or be killed. But he rallies his people. His wish to be immortal isn’t praised in the scholia: (“Praying for the impossible is barbaric” βαρβαρικὸν τὸ εὔχεσθαι τὰ ἀδύνατα, Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 8.538-539b). Hektor’s language here evokes the ‘bipartite’ immortality that appears often in epic poetry. In Homer’s Thebes, Elton and I note:
“The quasi-magical formula with which the goddess offers Odysseus the chance to become immortal—“to be deathless and ageless for all days” (θήσειν ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀγήραον ἤματα πάντα, 5.136)—resonates through the epic cosmos. We hear it when Demeter tries to make Demophoon immortal in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter or when Eos succeeds in making Tithonus deathless but not ageless in the Hymn to Aphrodite. Homer’s Thebes 2020, 99
To see how Hektor’s wish here is different from these other instances, it is useful to look at a famous passage from a speech from Sarpedon.
Il. 12.322-328
“Oh, if the two of us could really escape this war,
And would somehow become ageless and deathless,
I wouldn’t fight among the foremost myself
Nor would I send you into man-ennobling battling.
But since death’s fates stand ready around us now
Countless, those ends no mortal is permitted to escape or avoid,
Let us go and give glory to someone else or take it ourselves.”ὦ πέπον εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε
αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε
ἔσσεσθ’, οὔτέ κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην
οὔτέ κε σὲ στέλλοιμι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν·
νῦν δ’ ἔμπης γὰρ κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο
μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν βροτὸν οὐδ’ ὑπαλύξαι,
ἴομεν ἠέ τῳ εὖχος ὀρέξομεν ἠέ τις ἡμῖν. ”
The Scholia are a little more generous to Sarpedon’s wish:
Schol bT Ad Hom. Il. 12.322-328
“This is a noble statement. For he says that death is common to all, but dying with a good reputation is only for the good. For he means to say that there’s no ultimate safety or escape from death, just a minor delay in time with ignominy.
ex. εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε<— ἡμῖν>: εὐγενὴς ἡ γνώμη· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀποθανεῖν κοινὸν ἀποφαίνει πάντων (cf. 326—7), τὸ δὲ μετ' εὐκλείας τῶν ἀγαθῶν μόνων. καὶ τὴν παραυτίκα σωτηρίαν οὐκ ἀπαλλαγὴν θανάτου, ἀλλ' ἀναβολὴν χρόνου μικρὰν μετ' ἀδοξίας γινομένην φησὶν εἶναι
Where Hektor imagines that if he were immortal, he would fight forever, Sarpedon imagines that if he were immortal, he would not fight at all. He most clearly articulate that essential notion of Homeric kleos, that human life has meaning because it is limited and that b giving up so precious a thing, warriors may gain some qualified type of immortality through renown. While Hektor flirts with this in his speech to the Achaeans in book 7, here in front of the Trojans he rallies them by promising that he would spend his immortality on an eternal war. Troy is fated to live only as long as Hektor lasts and fights; he imagines that his immortality might translate similarly into a city that cannot end, braced by him against a war that ever rages. At the core of the difference between Sarpedon and Hektor is the fiction of the choice, the very one Achilles claims he has in book 9. There’s a sadness at the core of Hektor’s characterization that is powerful. Exchanging life for glory is meaningless, if not impossible, if everyone you loves dies without you there to protect them.
Short bibliography on Hektor
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address kleos and Trojan politics
Clark, Matthew. “Poulydamas and Hektor.” College Literature 34, no. 2 (2007): 85–106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115422.
Combellack, Frederick M. “Homer and Hector.” The American Journal of Philology 65, no. 3 (1944): 209–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/291490.
Farron, S. “THE CHARACTER OF HECTOR IN THE ‘ILIAD.’” Acta Classica 21 (1978): 39–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24591547.
Lynn Kozak, Experiencing Hektor: Character in the Iliad. Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. xiv, 307.
Hillary Mackie. Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.
W. R. Nethercut. “Hektor at the Abyss.” Classical Bulletin 49 (1972) 7-9.
Pantelia, Maria C. “Helen and the Last Song for Hector.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 132, no. 1/2 (2002): 21–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20054056.
James Redfield. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hektor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
Scott, John A. “The Parting of Hector and Andromache.” The Classical Journal 9, no. 6 (1914): 274–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3287165.
Scott, John A. “Paris and Hector in Tradition and in Homer.” Classical Philology 8, no. 2 (1913): 160–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/262449.
Traill, David A. “Unfair to Hector?” Classical Philology 85, no. 4 (1990): 299–303. http://www.jstor.org/stable/269583.