Hecabe

Hecabe appears in Iliad VI when Hector returns to the city and visits the palace. She offers him wine, urges him to pour a libation to Zeus, and tries to keep him indoors. Her concern is practical and religious rather than heroic, and Hector refuses the wine because he is still in battle gear.

She is also the mother of Paris, and the poem’s scenes in the palace show a household divided by its own sons. Hecabe’s authority is domestic and ritual; she cannot command the army, but she can speak to her children and to the gods.

In Iliad XXIV Hecabe opposes Priam’s plan to go to Achilles, and she refuses to touch the ransom or eat until the body is returned. Her mistrust of the enemy is bitter and realistic. When Priam insists, she gives way and prepares the gifts, and her grief is one of the voices that frame the poem’s final reconciliation.

Later tradition makes her a captive after the fall and gives her a violent revenge on Polymestor, the Thracian king who killed her youngest son. The Iliad does not go that far. It leaves her inside Troy, mourning Hector and watching the city that her children have defended.