And now death, grim death is looming up beside me,
no longer far away. No way to escape it now. This,
this was their pleasure after all, sealed long ago –
Zeus and the son of Zeus, the distant deadly Archer –
though often before now they rushed to my defense.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 22, lines 354-358. When Hector shouts out to his brother Deiphobus for another spear and finds that he has vanished, he realizes that he has been tricked by Athena. The goddess had appeared to him in the form of Deiphobus saying that they would face Achilles together. This is a good example of dramatic irony, because the audience already knows about Athena’s deception and the gods’ decision that Hector should die. With death looming before him, Hector knows that his fate was sealed by the gods long ago, despite Zeus and Apollo coming to his aid often before now.