No Pacts Between Lions and Men: The Truth of Achilles vs Hector

The concept of a showdown between heroes is far from foreign. Batman vs Superman, Cap vs Iron Man, it seems that we love our idols to clash heads from time to time, and that's nothing new. In the Iliad, we get probably one of the greatest, if not first examples of this in literature, Achilles vs Hector. Both men heroes, figures that embody the best traits of their cultures. But Here'ns the thing, the fight between Achilles and Hector has been done multiple times on the big screen, however, every single time they've gotten it wrong. They treat the battle like a fight between equals, but that was never the point of the story. The fact of the matter is that Iliad is a story about rage, an all-consuming rage that killed many heroes on both sides, the Rage of Achilles:

Sing, Oh goddess, of the wrath of Peleus' son, Achilles... Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures... (Homer, Iliad Book I)

 This rage was a nuclear weapon and for most of the Iliad, the Greeks had set it off in their own camp and so their men died for it. But when Hector kills Patroclus, that nuclear weapon is redirected at Troy again, but this time with purpose. A lot of people and gods try to prevent Achilles from meeting Hector in this fight, but Achilles goes through all of them to reach his target and when they fight, it's not a battle between equals, Hector stands about as much chance as someone at ground zero of that nuclear strike. It's instantaneous almost. So what's the point then? Why all the set up for such an end? Well in order to answer that properly, we need to first establish how both characters are set up in terms of the narrative. So let's begin with Hector.

Now generally when you have a conflict in a story, there are good guys and bad guys. However, what's truly unique about the Iliad, and the entirety of the Trojan War is that the good is on all sides and that there are really only a small handful of people that are truly what I would call "villains" of the story. Hector gets a lot of time to shine in the Iliad which is quite peculiar given the fact that he is on the side of the Trojans, and not the Greeks (after all it is a Greek myth). I would even wager to say that Hector gets more time to shine than the protagonist of the story (which is undoubtedly Achilles), and it's not just as a combatant. Hector is a good person. You want Hector to pull through because honestly, he's a really likable guy. He's got a wife and a baby boy, he thinks the war is stupid and is just trying to defend his home. Every time he clashes with one of the main heroes, it's hard not to at least want him to pull through, and he does almost every time which is certainly impressive given who he goes up against. However, the point of Hector at the end of the day is not to impress you, it's the same with the other heroes of the story, to set an insanely high bar at what men are able to accomplish. We must remember though that Achilles is more than a man and at the end of the day nothing Hector, nor Diomedes, nor Ajax, nor Odysseus, nothing any of these people do bare's any consequence because they are nothing in the wake of Achilles' rage.

Something that a lot of people don't realize when doing any adaptation on the Trojan war is that if you go by mythological timeline, Achilles was only 13 when he sailed off from Aulis. Imagine that, 13 and barely battle-tested and you're named best of the Greeks. Achilles left for Troy little more than a child, and matured on the battlefield, between that and the fact he was trained by the legendary centaur Chiron (trainer of heroes), Achilles was practically a machine bred for war the way horses are bred to race. He knew to go into this that he was going to die young, but that in place of living a long life, he would have eternal glory. Having accepted that, his participation throughout the first course of the war, those first 9 years, had been less than enthusiastic. He frequently butted heads with the leader of the Greeks, Agamemnon, and had to constantly be catered to, because despite his reluctance, he lived up to the title "Best of the Greeks." Dubbed the swift-footed, Achilles skill and speed on the battlefield earned himself a reputation as the most feared of Greek Princes by the Trojans. However, there came a point where he felt he had been slighted enough when Agamemnon demanded Achilles' war prize be taken from him since he (Agamemnon) had to give up his to stop a plague from Apollo. This is where the Iliad begins, and for the majority of the story, Achilles refuses to fight, and through his passive rage, he causes the Greeks almost everything. 

There is a lot of angst in Achilles that I don't feel is really talked about, ultimately his rage is due to the fact that he was a child soldier, with the mindset of "all I have is the glory." But the rage that drives the latter half of the book is self-loathing. It really annoys me because its a detail that is often passed over in adaptations of the Trojan War. When Hector kills Patroclus, Achilles' childhood friend (and lover depending on interpretation), Patroclus was wearing Achilles' old suit of armor to pose as Achilles. Hector strips this armor from Patroclus' body and takes it as his own, and would, in fact, wear it during his final encounter with Achilles. Achilles is then gifted, by his immortal mother, a set of armor crafted for him by the smith god Hephaestus. It's a very important detail as it foreshadows the carnage we are about to see from the character. For most of the book, we saw what Achilles' passive rage could do, but now with an active and focused rage, Achilles transcends the ability of mortals and is like a god himself (if you're going to play the part, look it). When Achilles sees Hector wearing his own armor, he is triggered. He's not just facing Hector anymore, he's facing the personification of the death of Patroclus: Hector who wielded the blade, the armor that failed to protect his friend, and most importantly Achilles' own pride which led to his friend's death. He chases Hector around the walls of Troy 3 times during which he: kills enough people in the local river to piss off the river god, stalemates that said river god, gets into a duel with another demigod hero Aeneas and is lured away from Hector by Apollo in disguise, but still Achilles pursued Hector. This fight was never meant to be a duel between equals. It's a display of the raw power of Achilles when he's enraged. Hector, a man that we had seen in this story go toe to toe with people like the giant Telamon Ajax,  Diomedes (who fought 3 Olympians in a day and won), and Odysseus, is little more than a speed bump as Achilles runs him over

There are no pacts between lions and men

Achilles tells this to Hector when Hector begs Achilles to promise that the loser would be given burial rights. There was nothing equal about this fight, Hector charged Achilles, and Achilles stuck him in the throat with his spear (knowing his old armor's weakest point). Changing it to be any different is a direct result of lacking faith in one of the greatest stories ever told.

Homer's The Iliad actively has stood the test of time. There is not a corner of the globe where you couldn't ask a person if they've at least heard of Achilles, and they say no. The feud of Hector and Achilles is a great one, but at the end of the day, this wasn't a gladiator match to the death between equals. This was a demonstration of the terrible might of Achilles. Hector was a man, a strong man who wanted nothing more than to protect his city, but a man nonetheless. Achilles was a lion enraged and finally given purpose to kill where he had none before. In the face of Achilles' rage, there is little chance for much to survive.