The Dragging Of Hector's Body By Achilles. On this late-sixth-century Athenian vase the artist expresses
several different aspects of the story. The hero leaps on to his chariot to which Hector's corpse is already
attached. At the left Hector's parents (Priam and Hecuba) mourn in a setting which represents the Trojan
palace. At the right the white mound is the tomb of Patroclus whose shade (the little winged warrior
above it is to be appeased by this act. The winged woman in the foreground is not easily identified but
may be Iris, who was sent by Zeus (in Iliad 24) to tell Priam to ransom his son's body (see next
illustration)
The plain which lies between the two sides is much less specific in topography and in human associations.
For much of the war it has been an empty no-man's-land, or it has been occupied by the armies in the
morning and emptied again in the evening. After their victory in Book 8 it is the first time in nine years
that the Trojans have even contemplated camping out in the plain; the next night in Book 18 is the second
and last time. In peacetime the plain may have been the deep tilth and horse pasture of Troy's traditional
epithets, but in the Iliad it is dusty and almost barren. It is simply the place where warriors win glory and