The Iliad Hecuba Quotes

So the old man groaned
and seizing his gray hair tore it out by the roots
but he could not shake the fixed resolve of Hector.
And his mother wailed now, standing beside Priam.
weeping freely, loosing her robes with one hand
and holding out her bare breast with the other,
her words pouring forth in a flight of grief and tears:
"Hector, my child! Look – have some respect for this!
Pity your mother too, if I ever gave you the breast
to soothe your troubles, remember it now, dear boy –
beat back that savage man from safe inside the walls!
Don’t go forth, a champion pitted against him –
merciless, brutal man. If he kills you now,
how can I ever mourn you on your deathbed."

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 90-103. Priam literally tears his hair out but cannot shake the resolve of his son Hector to go outside the walls of Troy to face Achilles. Hector’s mother Hecuba weeps and pleads with her son not to pit himself against this merciless and brutal champion. If Achilles kills him, she says that she will not be able to mourn him on his deathbed. This foreshadows how Hector’s corpse will be disrespected by Achilles. The love of two parents for their child comes through strongly in this passage.

I beg you, beg you by your life, your parents –
don’t let the dogs devour me by the Argive ships!
Wait, take the princely ransom of bronze and gold,
the gifts my father and mother will give to you –
but give my body to friends to carry home again
so Trojan men and Trojan women can do me honor
With fitting rites of fire once I am dead.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 399-405. Struggling for breath and about to die, the injured Hector pleads with Achilles to give his body to friends to bring home so that he may a proper funeral. He promises that his parents Priam and Hecuba will provide Achilles with a princely ransom. Hector is dying after his windpipe was slashed by Achilles’s spear.

Beg no more, you fawning dog – begging me by my parents!
Would to god my rage, my fury would drive me now
to hack your flesh away and eat you raw –
such agonies you have caused me! Ransom?
No man alive could keep the dog-packs off you,
not if they haul in ten, twenty times that ransom
and pile it here before me and promise fortunes more –
no, not even if Dardan Priam should offer to weigh out
your bulk in gold! Not even then will your noble mother
lay you on your deathbed, mourn the son she bore…
The clogs and birds will rend you – blood and bone!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 407-417. Achilles’s response to Hector’s plea for his body to be given to friends is so full of rage and hatred and lacking in compassion. He vows that no man or ransom will keep the dog packs from Hector’s body. Even if his father Priam gave him Hector’s weight in gold, not even then would Hector’s mother lay her son out on his deathbed.

Quickly –
two of you follow me – I must see what’s happened.
That cry – that was Hector’s honored mother I heard!
My heart’s pounding, leaping up in my throat,
the knees beneath me paralyzed – Oh I know it…
something terrible’s coming down on Priam’s children.
Pray god the news will never reach my ears!
Yes but I dread it so – what if great Achilles
has cut my Hector off from the city, daring Hector,
and driven him out across the plain, and all alone? –
He may have put an end to that fatal headstrong pride
that always seized my Hector – never hanging back
with the main force of men, always charging ahead,
giving ground to no man in his fury!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 22, lines 527-540. Hearing the cries of Hector’s mother Hecuba, Andromache fears the worst for her husband Hector on the battlefield. She is afraid for his life because of Achilles and also his own stubborn pride, always wanting to charge forward and give ground to no man. She turns out to be correct, Hector has been cut down by Achilles.

How can you think of going down to the ships, alone,
and face the glance of the man who killed your sons,
so many fine brave boys? You have a heart of iron!
If he gets you in his clutches, sets his eyes on you –
that savage, treacherous man – he’ll show no mercy,
no respect for your rights!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 241-246. Hecuba tries to convince Priam not to go down to the Achaean ships to ask Achilles for their son Hector’s body back. She believes that Achilles is a savage without compassion and will kill her husband, having already killed his sons.

Here, quickly – pour a libation out to Father Zeus!
Pray for a safe return from all our mortal enemies,
seeing you’re dead set on going down to the ships –
though you go against my will. But if go you must,
pray, at least, to the great god of the dark storm cloud,
up there on Ida, gazing down on the whole expanse of Troy!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 339-344. Hecuba tries to protect her husband Priam from harm as he sets out against her wishes for the enemy Achaean camp to beg for the return of Hector’s body. She asks him to honor the gods by pouring a libation out to Zeus and praying for his safe return.

Hector, dearest to me by far of all my sons…
and dear to the gods while we still shared this life –
and they cared about you still, I see, even after death.
Many the sons I had whom the swift runner Achilles
caught and shipped on the barren salt sea as slaves
to Sarnos, to Imbros, to Lemnos shrouded deep in mist!
But you, once he slashed away your life with his brazen spear
he dragged you time and again around his comrade’s tomb,
Patroclus whom you killed – not that he brought Patroclus
back to life by that. But I have you with me now…
fresh as the morning dew you lie in the royal halls
like one whom Apollo, lord of the silver bow,
has approached and shot to death with gentle shafts.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 880-892. Hecuba speaks to the body of her son Hector, eulogizing him and the other sons Achilles took from her, many of them shipped across the sea as slaves. Achilles dragged her son’s body around his comrade’s tomb, after Hector killed Patroclus. But the gods cared for Hector even in death, by allowing his body to return home, where he now lay "fresh as the morning dew" (simile). She says that Hector appears to have been shot by an arrow from Apollo – this foreshadows that Achilles will die from an arrow guided by Apollo.
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