An Iliad by Alessandro Baricco

house, but only to die, suddenly, of grief. Hector, you are my father, and mother, and brother, and you are my husband, and young. Have pity on me. Stay here, on the wall. Don’t fight out in the open plain. Lead the army back to the wild fig tree, which marks the onlyweak point of the wall, where the bold Achaeans have already attacked three times.”
    But Hector answered, “I know all this, woman. But the shame I would feel if I were to stay away from the battle would be too great. I was taught, growing up, always to be strong, and to fight in the front line of every battle, for the glory of my father and for my own. How could my heart now allow me to flee? I well know that the day will come when the sacred city of Troy will perish, and with it Priam and the people of Priam. And if I imagine that day it’s not the grief of the Trojans that I imagine, nor that of my father, or my mother, or my brothers, slaughtered by their enemies and lying in the dust. When I imagine that day I see you. I see an Achaean warrior who seizes you and drags you away in tears, I see you a slave, in Argos, weaving clothes for another woman and fetching water for her at the fountain, I see you weeping, and I hear the voices of those who, seeing you, say, ‘Look there, that’s the wife of Hector, the bravest of all the Trojans.’ May I die before I know you are a slave. May I be under the earth before I have to hear your cries.”
    Thus spoke glorious Hector, and then he came toward me. I was holding his son in my arms, you see? And he approached and was going to take the boy. But the child hugged my breast and burst into tears. It frightened him seeing his father. The bronze armor frightened him, and the fluttering crest on the helmet scared him, and so he burst into tears. And I remember that then Hector and Andromache looked at each other and smiled. He took off the helmet and set it on the ground. Then the child let himself be held, and Hector took him in his arms and kissed him. And lifting him up high he said, “Zeus, and you other gods in heaven, let my son be like me, the bravest ofall the Trojans, and lord of Ilium. And may people seeing him return from battle say, ‘He is even braver than his father.’ May he return one day bearing the bloody spoils of his enemies, and may his mother be there, that day, to rejoice in her heart.” And as he was speaking these words he put the child in Andromache’s arms. And I remember that she smiled and wept, hugging the child to her breast. She wept and smiled, and Hector, looking at her, took pity on her and caressed her and said to her, “Don’t grieve too much in your heart. No one will kill me unless fate wills it; and if fate wills it, then remember that no man, once he is born, can escape fate. Whether he is a coward or brave. No one. Now go home and take up your work at the spindle and the loom with your women. Let the men take care of the war, all the men of Troy, and I more than any other man of Troy.”
    Then he bent down and picked up his helmet from the ground, the helmet with the fluttering crest. We went home. Andromache wept as she walked, and kept turning to look back. When the women saw her coming, a great sadness arose in all of them. They burst out crying. They wept for Hector. They wept for him in his house, wept for him while he was still living, because not one felt in her heart that he would return from the battle alive.

Nestor
    W e saw Hector come hurrying out of the Scaean gates. ‘ We thought he had returned to fight, but in fact what he did was strange. He strode along the front ranks of his men, with his spear lowered, ordering them to stop. So Agamemnon, too, ordered us Achaeans to lower our arms. Thus the two armies faced each other, suddenly silent, almost motionless: they were like the sea when the wind begins to blow and the surface lightly ripples. In the middle of that sea was Hector, and he spoke out.
    “Hear me, Trojans, and you, Achaeans. I will tell