39 pages • 1 hour read
Barry StraussThe Trojan War: A New History
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Hector’s Charge”
Andromache begs her husband not to go onto the plains, invoking his pity on their infant son. He leaves, and she expects never to see him again. After the encampment on the plain, Hector relaunches his frontal attack on the Greeks. The Greeks push the Trojans back, but many of their heroes are wounded. The Greeks in turn are driven behind their trenches. Consulting a seer, Hector launches a siege of the Greek encampment. In a moment of divine intervention, he hurls a huge stone at the gate, smashing an opening through which the Trojans pour. Poseidon rallies the Greek troops, who fall back and regroup, wounding two of Priam’s sons and killing a third.
Hector pulls back, but disregards the seer Polydamas’s warning against attacking Achilles. Hector is hit in the chest by Ajax; he is saved by his men but loses consciousness. The Greeks force the Trojans back onto the plain, by which time Hector has recovered, thanks to Zeus’s intervention. The Trojans slay the Greeks until they reach the ships. Both sides fight urgently, and despite Ajax’s determination, Hector drives the Greeks back. The Trojans set fire to the ship that first landed at Troy. Nestor persuades Patroclus to fight and lead the Myrmidons to defend the Greek camp. They drive the Trojans back and cut off the path of retreat to Troy. Sarpedon is slain on the Trojan side.
Patroclus disobeys Achilles and makes three assaults on the wall. Apollo calls both Patroclus and Hector back to the battlefield. Patroclus kills Hector’s charioteer and makes three charges at the Trojan ranks. Patroclus loses his armor and is speared by a Trojan, and then by Hector. The fight for Patroclus’s body rages; Hector claims Achilles’s armor and drives the enemy back to camp. Achilles is furious at the news. Polydamas, the seer, advises the Trojans to retreat behind the city walls. Hector rejects this and decides to camp on the plain again. Achilles returns to the battle and hunts down Hector, killing him. Achilles also kills two more sons of Hector. King Priam and Queen Hecuba are inconsolable. Andromache watches as Achilles attaches Hector’s naked body to his chariot by his legs, dragging his body behind him.
Chapter 9 Analysis
The tragic education, the cutting down of a youthful hero in his prime, is a literary motif that stretches back to Mesopotamia’s Epic of Gilgamesh, dating to c. 2000 BCE. The loss of Hector, a prince of the Trojans and related to Troy’s founders, would have been a crushing blow. Achilles, shown as especially merciless here, is nonetheless likely typical of warlords of the time. Further, the loss of Achilles’s armor to Hector would have likely incited a level of rage in the warrior that at least to Achilles justified his actions of dragging Hector’s corpse behind his chariot. Also telling is that Andromache’s begging of her husband Hector to not join in battle is ignored by Hector; repeatedly, we see the wisdom of females largely overlooked by the warring males. Strauss writes that “The events of these second and third days of pitched battle take up fully one-half of the Iliad” (146), illustrating just how important this moment was in the larger conflict.
