Page 20 - GALIET THE WALL, THE SPEAR, THE ROSE AND THE QUEST FOR THE 4 CARDINAL CORNERS: Hektor of Troy IV

Andromache in Book 6, is what endows Hektor with a sense of security that leads him to his final and glorious moment of death.
From Hektor’s soliloquy, Eustathius, in Pope’s criticism, wrongly deduces that Hektor had the “power of making peace.” Based on this inference, he blames Hektor for “breaking the treaty in the third book”, for “continuing the war” and for “involving the Greeks and Trojans in blood” (p.1032). These actions lead Eustathius to conclude that Hektor is a “criminal” whose punishment is poetically just. Eustathius does not consider that Hektor arranges the truce and that it is the intervention of the gods that break the truce. Though Hektor is responsible for rejecting Polydamas’ advice and his intransigence given the turn of events (Mueller), he is intuitively aware of the impossibility of making peace with a wrathful and charging Achilles. Let us remember that Achilles, before the duel with Hektor, had harshly rejected Hektor’s oath proposal to return the body of the fallen warrior to his family for proper burial rites.
Contrary to Eustathius’ false assumption, Mueller reiterates that Achilles cannot be interested in settlements or agreements of any kind resulting from their mutual
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