The hero of an epic poem repeatedly endures many trials that can prove his ability to be worthy of the title hero. In the passage 6.440-481 in The Iliad of Homer, Hektor’s heroism is tested, especially when he faces the choice of returning to battle or staying with his family. When analyzing what drives Hektor to return to the battlefield and what makes him a hero, it is obvious that the “Greek educational ideal” known as aret greatly influences him (Western Civilization: A Brief History, Perry, 43). While Homer reveals the mindset of Hektor in this passage, he also criticizes the role of the hero, and possibly the notion of Greek excellence, in Hektor’s motivation to fight.Though Hektor is a courageous and steadfast soldier because of his duty, he is occasionally exposed to a human side, which turns away from the brutal aspects of war to focus on the lives affected by warfare. When he spends time with his wife Andromache, who begs him not to go to war, both for his sake and for his family’s, Hektor relates to this side, but does not give in to it. He replies to his wife:“All these things are in my mind also, lady; yet I would feel deep shame before the Trojans, and the Trojan women with trailing garments, if like a coward I were to shrink aside from fighting; and the spirit will not let me, since I have learned to be valiant and to fight always among the foremost ranks of the Trojans, winning for my own self great glory, and for my father” (The Iliad of Homer 6.440-449 trans. Lattimore). Hektor does not wish to die and have his wife become a widow, leaving her "work[ing] at the loom of another,” but he cannot take the road of a coward either (6: 456). Though Hektor knows his wife will experience immense grief and that his son may be without a father, there remains a superior need to have glory for himself and to have it so “poets would immortalize [the glory] in their songs”...
