Hector

Play

Troilus and Cressida

Summary

The greatest of the Trojan champions, embodying the ideal of chivalric honor. He argues persuasively in the Trojan council that Helen should be returned — only to abandon this position for honor's sake — and challenges the Greeks to single combat with elaborate courtesy. His death at Achilles's hands, ambushed and cut down unarmed by the Myrmidons while pursuing spoils, is the play's most savage indictment of the gap between the chivalric ideal and the reality of war.

Notable Quotations

"There is a law in each well-ordered nation / To curb those raging appetites that are / Most disobedient and refractory." *(II.ii)*

"'Tis done like Hector, but not like Hector." *(II.ii)*

Cross-references

• Troilus and Cressida — the play
• Tragedies
• character_troilus — his younger brother
• character_achilles_tc — the Greek who kills him treacherously
• character_ulysses — whose strategic scheming he is caught up in