Hecuba (Hecabe in Greek) is the wife of Priam, king of
Troy, and the mother of 19 of Priam's 50 sons. Among Hecabe's children are Hector,
Paris/Alexander, and Cassandra.
In Homer's
Iliad, Hecuba does not frequently appear. She is mentioned in Book
6, where she offers one of her robes to goddess Athena. Hector also makes mention of
Hecuba's anticipated grief when Troy falls.
Hecuba also
appears in Iliad 24, as Priam tells Hecuba that he is going to the
Greek camp to try to give Achilles a ransom in exchange for the return of Hector's
corpse. Hecuba tries to persuade her husband not to do this, but Priam's resolve remains
unchanged.
Hecuba is also present at the end of the epic
and leads the women in lamentation for her dead son
Hector:
Hector, far dearest to my heart of all my children,
lo, when thou livedst thou wast dear to the gods, and therefore have they had care of
thee for all thou art in the doom of death.
After the fall
of Troy, sources outside of Homer (see especially Euripides'
Hecuba) tell us that Hecuba became the property of Odysseus, who
would have taken her back to Ithaca with him as a slave, but Hecuba dies on the voyage
not long after they sail from Troy.
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