(6.476-81)
The urge to gain heroic glory kills both Hector and his son, for it demands a loser as well as a winner. The
Iliad never shirks this two-sidedness. Near the end of the poem Hera compares the two men:
Hector was mortal, and suckled at the breast of a woman,
while Achilles is the child of a goddess ... you all
went, you gods, to the wedding ...(24. 55ff.)
Hector is a great man; Achilles is mortal as other men, but there are ways in which he is close to the
divine. He has possessions which were presents from the gods-his spear, his horses, the great shield and
armour which Hephaestus makes for him in Book 18. His mother Thetis, caught between the two worlds,
can tell him more than other men know, and can give him special help. She can even gain him special
favours from Zeus, as is shown in the first book. Even so Achilles is a man and cannot see everything that
this means. Only too late can he see:
My mother, all these things the Olympian has brought to accomplishment.
But what pleasure is this to me, since my dear companion has perished ...(18.78ff.)
There is one thing, however, which Thetis can tell Achilles for certain, while for all other men it remains
the great unknown. He has a choice of long life or young death, which is also a choice between uneventful
obscurity and eternal glory (9. 410-16).
So when Achilles decides, without hesitation ('then let me die soon', 18.98), that he must return to the
fight for vengeance on Hector, he does so without any doubt that his own death will follow soon after.
Hector, on the other hand, must, like everyone else, hope against hope for a long and prosperous life.
Even when the dying Patroclus prophesies his death (16. 843 ff.), Hector retorts:
Patroclus, what is this prophecy of my headlong destruction?Who knows if even Achilles, son of lovely-haired Thetis,
might before this be struck by my spear, and his own life perish?