he body of the fallen to be buried by his
friends, but should keep his armour. But Achilles said that he could
make no agreement with Hector, and threw his spear, which flew over
Hector's shoulder. Then Hector threw his spear, but it could not pierce
the shield which the God had made for Achilles. Hector had no other
spear, and Achilles had one, so Hector cried, 'Let me not die without
honour!' and drew his sword, and rushed at Achilles, who sprang to meet
him, but before Hector could come within a sword-stroke Achilles had
sent his spear clean through the neck of Hector. He fell in the dust and
Achilles said, 'Dogs and birds shall tear your flesh unburied.' With his
dying breath Hector prayed him to take gold from Priam, and give back
his body to be burned in Troy. But Achilles said, 'Hound! would that I
could bring myself to carve and eat thy raw flesh, but dogs shall devour
it, even if thy father offered me thy weight in gold.' With his last
words Hector prophesied and said, 'Remember me in the day when Paris
shall slay thee in the Scaean gate.' Then his brave soul went to the
land of the Dead, which the Greeks called Hades. To that land Ulysses
sailed while he was still a living man, as the story tells later.

Then Achilles did a dreadful deed; he slit the feet of dead Hector from
heel to ankle, and thrust thongs through, and bound him by the thongs to
his chariot and trailed the body in the dust. All the women of Troy who
were on the walls raised a shriek, and Hector's wife, Andromache, heard
the sound. She had been in an inner room of her house, weaving a purple
web, and embroidering flowers on it, and she was calling her bower
maidens to make ready a bath for Hector when he should come back tired
from battle. But when she heard the cry from the wall she trembled, and
the shuttle with which she was weaving fell from her hands. 'Surely I
heard the cry of my husband's mother,' she said, and she bade two of her
maidens come with her to see why the people lamented.

She ran swiftly, and reached the battlements, and thence she saw her
dear husband's body being whirled through the dust towards the ships,
behind the chariot of Achilles. Then night came over her eyes and she
fainted. But when she returned to herself she cried out that now none
would defend her little boy, and other children would push him away from
feasts, saying, 'Out with you; no father of thine is at our table,' and
his father, Hector, would lie naked