The time has come for Hector to die at the hands of Achilles, and his final moments of life are singularly grim. Achilles shows him no mercy, expressing the most brutal thoughts even before he vengefully finishes off the killer of Patroklos. Hector is forced to know in advance, before he loses consciousness to the death blow from Achilles, that his executioner intends to mutilate his corpse instead of allowing for a proper funeral. And the form of this mutilation is particularly horrific and morally shocking: attaching the body of Hector to the back of his chariot, Achilles will drag it around the walls of Troy for all to see the humiliation of his hated enemy. Is there any hope, then, for transcending such degradation? Only divine intervention, in the story yet to be told, could prevent the disfigurement of a heroic body’s beauty in death. But the story of transcendence must wait. For now, the focus is on the horror and the sorrow of a heroic death as seen through the eyes of Hector’s lamenting widow Andromache.

Copperplate etching (1795) by Tommaso Piroli, after a drawing (1793) by John Flaxman. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Although Priam and Hecuba, the parents of Hector, have already seen with horror and sorrow what has happened to him at the hands of Achilles, Andromache does not yet know, I.22.437–439. She is in her private quarters, weaving, I.22.440–441, and she calls out to her handmaidens to prepare a bath for Hector’s expected arrival, I.22.442–444, not knowing what has already happened to him, I.22.445–446. Then and only then does she hear the sound of wailing, I.22.447, and now she starts to feel emotionally and physically undone, as her legs and arms start shaking and her weaving pin drops from her trembling hand, I.22.448. She calls out to her handmaidens, telling them to accompany her to the walls of Troy, so that she may see for herself what is happening, I.22.449–450, and then she starts to express her premonitions about the fate of Hector, which are already becoming a part of the lament that formally gets underway only at I.22.477, lasting all the way to I.22.515. While she expresses her premonitions, she is feeling more and more undone, I.22.450–459. Now her heart is in her throat, I.22.451–452. As she rushes up to the walls of Troy, where she will see what has happened, Andromache is compared to a mainás or ‘maenad’, that is, a frenzied woman possessed by Dionysus, I.22.460. Then, finally, she and her handmaidens get to see the grim scene, I.22.261–265: Hector is dead, and his corpse is being dragged behind the speeding chariot of Achilles. At the ghastly sight, Andromache faints, I.22.466–467, and her elaborate headdress comes undone, falling to the ground, I.22.468–472. The women of her immediate family surround her as she comes out of her swoon, I.22.473–475, and now she begins her lament in earnest, I.22.476–515.

At I.22.460, just as she is about to see with her own eyes the corpse of Hector, the distraught Andromache is already pictured as īsē ‘equal’ to a mainás ‘maenad’ (μαινάδι ἴση), that is, she is being compared to a woman possessed by Dionysus. Earlier, in an analogous context at I.06.389, Andromache is pictured as ‘looking like a woman possessed’ (μαινομένῃ ἐϊκυῖα) when she rushes toward the walls of Troy to see for herself the fate of the Trojans on the battlefield. In the case of the present context, I.22.460, the comparison of Andromache to a maenad is relevant to the undoing of her hair when her elaborate headdress falls from her head at the moment when she goes into a swoon, I.22.468–472. The undoing of a maenad’s hair is a traditional Dionysiac theme, as we see for example in a painting on a vase made in Athens sometime in the decade of 480–470 BCE (Munich, Antikensammlungen no. 2416): this painting shows a maenad transfixed by the gaze of Dionysus, who is looking directly into her eyes, and the maenad’s loose strands of flowing curls of hair are seen cascading down from behind her ears at either side of her head garlanded with the ivy of Dionysus. As we look at the maenad’s hair coming undone, we see a distinctive sign of her starting to lose control to Dionysus, of becoming possessed by Dionysus, of surrendering the self to Dionysus. See also Nagy 2007c:252–253, citing further examples from the visual arts. Andromache looks similarly maenadic when she falls into a swoon, I.22.466–467, while at the same time letting her elaborate headdress fall from her head to the ground, I.22.468–470. What follows is an epitome of further analysis in Nagy 2007c:249–251. In the dramatic context of Andromache’s swoon, I draw attention to the evocative word krēdemnon ‘headdress’, I.22.470. It refers to the overall ornamental hair-binding that holds together three separate kinds of ornamental hair-binding that serve to keep Andromache’s hair in place, under control, I.22.469: in this verse, the three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings are ampux ‘frontlet’, kekruphalos ‘snood’, and anadesmē ‘headband’. The overall hair-binding or ‘headdress’ that keeps it all in place is the krēdemnon, I.22.470. Similarly, Varro (On the Latin language 5.130) speaks of three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings traditionally used by Roman matrons: lanea ‘woolen ribbon’, reticulum ‘net-cap’ or ‘snood’, and capital ‘headband’. To these three words Varro (7.44) adds a fourth, tutulus (derived from the adjective tutus ‘providing safety’), which seems to be an overall term for the generic headdress worn by brides and Vestal Virgins as well as matrons. When Andromache lets drop from her head her elaborate krēdemnon ‘headdress’, I.22.470, thus causing her hair to come completely undone, she is ritually miming her complete loss of control over her own fate as linked with the fate of her husband: we see here a ritually eroticized gesture that expresses her extreme sexual vulnerability as linked with the violent death and degradation of her husband. For Andromache to do violence to her own krēdemnon is to express the anticipated violence of her future sexual humiliation at the hands of the enemy. Pointedly, the goddess Aphrodite herself had given this krēdemnon to Andromache on her wedding day, I.22.470–471 (further analysis by Dué 2006:4, 78). Another example of such ritual miming is the moment in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, verses 40–42, when Demeter tears off her krēdemnon in reacting to the violation of her daughter Persephone by Hādēs. The explicit association of the krēdemnon with Aphrodite reveals its erotic properties. The undoing of a woman’s hair, caused by the undoing of her krēdemnon, produces what I will call an Aphrodisiac effect. So long as a woman’s krēdemnon is in place, her sexuality is under control just as her hair is under control. When the krēdemnon is out of place, however, her sexuality threatens to get out of control. This ritual symbolism is part of a “cultural grammar of hair” (Levine 1995:95). Such a “grammar” helps explain why the virginal Nausikaa would not think of going out in public without first putting on her krēdemnon, O.06.100. She won’t leave home without wearing her headdress. Her gesture here is hardly a signal of being married. Clearly, she is unmarried. So, we see that unmarried women as well as married women like Andromache wear the krēdemnon in public. The gesture is simply a signal of propriety. Such a “grammar” is in fact typical of the Mediterranean world in general. A striking point of comparison is the figure of the sotah ‘errant woman’ in Hebrew Bible traditions, who is marked by the ritual dishevelment of her hair (Numbers 5:11–31). In this case, the ‘errant woman’ is a foil for the properly married woman.

In the first lament of Andromache for Hector, as we saw in the anchor comment at I.06.407–439, she was already lamenting the death of Hector before he was even dead. As for her second lament, here at I.22.476–515, she sings it when she sees the corpse of Hector for the first time. As for her third lament, to be featured at I.24.723–746, Andromache will sing it on the occasion of Hector’s funeral. The second lament here is in some ways a preview of the third, which as we will see is technically the most formal of Andromache’s three laments. The beginning of Andromache’s second lament is signaled here at I.22.476 by the technical poetic term amblēdēn, an adverb that means ‘making a start [in performance]’ just as the adverb hupoblēdēn at I.01.292 means ‘continuing [in response]’. As Andromache starts to sing her second lament, the word that refers here at I.22.476 to the form of her singing is the verb goân ‘make lament’, corresponding to the noun góos ‘lament’. We have already seen the noun góos at I.18.051, with reference to the lament sung by Thetis for the future death of Achilles. This form of lament, góos, is conventionally sung by female members of the bereaved family, and there will be more to say about this form in the comment on I.24.720–776. For the moment, however, I focus on what happens after Andromache has finished singing her lament at I.22.476–514. Now the Trojan women who are attending her respond to her lament by continuing it with their own lament, in antiphonal performance, at I.22.515: ‘So she [= Andromache] spoke, and the women wailed in response’ (ὣς ἔφατο κλαίουσ’, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες). The antiphonal refrain here at I.22.515 is signaled by the verb epi–stenakhesthai ‘wail in response’, matching the antiphonal refrain at I.19.301 in response to the lament of Briseis. See the anchor comment at I.19.282–302. So, the second lament of Andromache, as we see it come to a conclusion at I.22.515, is a classic example of a group performance as rounded out by way of an antiphonal refrain. For more on such group performance, see again the anchor comment on I.19.282–302, where it is emphasized that Briseis the Aeolian is featured as a distinctly choral personality, analogous to the personality of Sappho herself in the choral songs attributed to that Aeolian prima donna of a later era. See also anchor comment at I.06.407–439 on: three laments by Andromache, part 1; and anchor comment at I.24.723–746 on: three laments by Andromache, part 3.

In the lament of Andromache, she refers here at I.22.483 to the penthos ‘grief’ that the death of Hector has caused her. This word penthos ‘grief’ is a programmatic marker of lament, as we have already seen at I.09.562–564, where a songbird is pictured as singing a song of lament: that songbird is the halkúōn ‘halcyon’, described in that context as polupenthēs ‘having much grief’, I.09.563. See the relevant comment on I.09.561–564.