Hector

Prince of Troy and its greatest warrior — son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba. Through the *Iliad* he carries the city's defense knowing the gods have decreed its fall: his last meeting with his wife Andromache and his infant son Astyanax at the Scaean Gate is the poem's signature image of mortal helplessness, the moment when his helmet's horsehair plume frightens his own baby. He kills Patroclus while Achilles withdraws, but Achilles returns the next morning and Hector — abandoned by Apollo, deceived by Athena — meets him alone outside the walls; Achilles runs him three times around the city before driving the spear into his throat, and the dragging of his body ends in the ransom-scene of book 24.

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