Backstory

The city-state of Troy is not the largest, but it is by far the wealthiest kingdom in the entire ancient world.

Troy is the second-largest center of the Hittite Empire, to which it is loosely allied. It breeds and trains fine horses, grows excellent barley, manufactures pottery and royal furnishings, and trades wine, slaves, fish and hundreds of commodities of all nations across the known world, from the Pillars of Hercules to China. Together the city and the country are also known as Wilusa, Ilos, and Ilium.

Ilium has been attacked and conquered several times in its thousand year existence, including by the ancestors of the present kingdom. It now is at its height, seventy-five acres in size and entirely surrounded with ranges of enormous walls, said to have been built by Hercules and the gods.

Decades ago, in a series of predictions, the oracle at Delphos made it clear to King Priam of Troy and to his immediate family that their holy city would come to a crisis -- "in the ninth year after the Akhaeans come, to fetch home Helen, she of the Myceneans queen" -- where Troy's survival or total destruction would depend on the heroic efforts of . . . one person.

But the oracle was obscure. Who was this critical person? Would they succeed?

But in one detail the oracle was absolutely clear. If the hero shirked his final battle, Troy would be utterly lost.

This much, Troy's ruling family knew.

Word gradually leaked out to others in Ilium.

When young Prince Hektor of Troy first heard the oracle, he was struck with fear that he might be the one in question. He kept this to himself.

# # #

Some years later Priam's oldest son Paris, Hektor's brother, seduced Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, the wife of King Menelaos of Sparte, and brought her to Troy. Menelaos roused his fellow Akhaean kings, and under the leadership of Menelaos' brother King Agamemnon the wanax of Argos, the Akhaeans declared war on Troy. With a fleet of thousand ships, and an army that included many slaves, they set out for vengeance and pillage.

First the Akhaean kings attacked Troy's allies for ten years. They reduced and destroyed, levelled and pillaged many of the cities of Mysia, Lykia, and Asia.

Then the vast majority of the dozens of Akhaean kings and warriors came -- but not Akilleus -- and laid siege to Troy itself.

The Akhaeans built a wall between Troy and its harbour, occasionally attacking the city's high wall, or trying to lure the Trojans out on the plain. But they were unable to totally encircle Troy, and some supplies and missions got through their siege.

It is the ninth year of the siege. The situation of Wilusa is desperate. It is now cut off from most of its remaining allies. Everyone in Troy knows it is clearly the time referred to in the Delphic prophecy.

# # #

Prince Hektor is mature. Hektor has become the most formidable, erratic and powerful leader of Troy. He is not the only capable leader; his cousin Antenor, an older man, is the dependable leader of a faction that rivals Hektor's. But for some who fight with him, Hektor is an inspiration -- the city's only hope -- against the enormous forces of the enemy.

For the Akhaean enemy has ten times the number of soldiers in the field as the Trojans.

# # #

It is the end of winter. The Trojans are out of barley, the staple of their food supply. They have traded away their gold and silver. They have little but their walls and buildings -- and their leadership. But Hektor has become a powerful, if dangerously frustrating and erratic, leader. In repeated crises he has fended off Troy's defeat by dangerous heroism.

But Hektor is superstitious and repressed. He is angry, quarrelsome, egotistical, difficult. He is impatient, to crush the Akhaeans and end the siege. He is inconstant, and terrible at being subordinate. Some say he is arrogant and over-rated. He loves his family and country fiercely; he is trying to acquire the characteristics of character that the city requires -- the supplies, the allies, the strategy. Secretly, he fears he will not measure up to the war's constant, always changing, almost overwhelming demands.

At the beginning of the siege Hektor was a coward. Several times he fled the enemy. He left the fighting to older, more capable people of lower rank. Only in shame did he eventually learn to rejoin them, hold his ground in attacks, fight shoulder to shoulder with the other men. Eventually Hektor came to bear the brunt of the fighting. He began to lead the charge and rally his men. But still sometimes the fear, the urge to run away is impossible to resist and turns his knees to water.

No one realizes it but he, but Hektor is terrified of the reputation of the Akhaean's champion and greatest fighter, the horrible Akilleus. He is a warrior whom once Hektor trained with. Stories of Akilleus' prowess haunt Hektor's dreams. But Akilleus is far away, devastating one after the other of Troy's allies along the coast. Hektor recently returned from a secret trip overland to an ally, the city of his wife Andromake. There he found it in smoking ruins, and Akilleus sailing away. All Andromake's family, even the women and the tiny children, had been cruelly slaughtered. Hektor found their bodies in the ruins of the city's temple where they had made their final stand. He has not told Andromake.

Hektor has nightmares. In them he fails the ultimate test. In them he dares to face and fight Akilleus, the only man he fears. In the nightmares he is horribly killed by Akilleus, leaving his wife, his only child, his parents, his aged family, his city . . . helpless and doomed to slavery or death.

In such a case -- becuase of the oracle -- he and he alone would have brought about the ruin of all who -- whether they knew it or not -- depended on his strength, his skill, his wisdom's being adequate.

Hektor has hardly slept for months.

The Play Begins

ACT I

Hektor's sister Kassandra has nightmares, and, occasionally, terrible visions of the future. One night, when Troy's latest hope, a shipment of grain from an ally to break the blockade, has been destroyed, she suddenly proclaims a detailed vision that, within three days, Hektor will plunge Troy into ruin. She paints a vivid picture of Troy's impending horrible destruction. She says Hektor, Hektor! is the man, the hero on whom Troy's salvation must rely. She says Troy's fall can only be prevented if Hektor can break through the web of all predictions, the web of Fate.

Hektor is shocked. It is as if Kassandra knew his secret dread: his terrible fears about himself and Akilleus . . .

But aloud he ridicules her prophecies. He gives orders to go ahead with a plan which has lately been broached to him by his cousin Aeneas: that Hektor become dictator of Troy to save it.

But this is the first thing Kassandra warned him not to do.

ACT II

Hektor's plans are opposed in the Trojan House of Fathers. Hektor launches a coup d'état. At first it seems to succeed. Hektor overrides the opposition of the popular leader Demos and the aristocratic leader Antenor and arrests them. But Hektor's success immediately causes fighting. He is forced to kill his own dear brother. He takes steps against huge, immediate, explosive opposition from the aristocrats and people. Several of the improbable things Kassandra predicted have come true. Hektor realizes he must stop doing things Kassandra has foreseen.

ACT III

Hektor goes with his baby son Skamandrus into a cave below the city's temple and consults the Fates. They confirm Kassandra's visions, and prophesy them in greater but still obscure detail. Hektor tries to get a grip on his huge and superstitious fears. He solemnly vows to check his disastrous course. He swears to avoid all actions that Kassandra and the Fates warned he would undertake.

ACT IV

At first, his efforts seem to succeed. The Trojans begin to win in the field. Hektor grows encouraged . . . then boastful and arrogant. He tells his men this day they will sweep the Akhaeans into the sea.

At a thunderstroke several of his careful plans collapse. Simultaneously, exactly as predicted, things turn about and the ruin of the city begins.

Hektor realizes that despite himself he did several more of the things Kassandra warned him against doing.

The final great battle begins. Hektor's force breaks through the Akaean lines, fights Ajax, sets a ship on fire. Then a masked enemy appears in Akilleus's armor. Hektor believes this to be Akilleus. Hektor somewhat tremulously fights him, and exultantly kills him. But when he strips off Akilleus's helmet . . . he discovers what we already knew: the man Hektor has slain is not Akilleus at all. He is Akilleus' dearest friend Patroklus.

Hektor realizes that in killing Patroklus he has fulfilled still another of Kassandra's predictions. He reels back in shock.

The outraged Akilleus appears suddenly, armed, huge, terrible in new armor on the battlefield, and begins to slaughter the greatest fighters in the Trojan army. Hektor knows he is responsible for the disaster. The Trojans flee. The Akhaeans fight with renewed courage. Things are in such a chaos that Hektor has no choice but to allow the army to flee into Troy. Lashing his chariot he enters the city ahead of his men to rally some to return to fight with him against the enraged Akilleus. He himself will lure Akilleus away from Troy's gate, to allow the Trojan army to escape into the city.

At this crucial moment, a coup d'état breaks out in the city, led by Hektor's brother Helenus. In putting down the rebellion Hektor is struck in the face with the flat of a sword and blinded.

We know without being told that this fulfills another of Kassandra's visions.

Now there is only Hektor's fight with Akilleus -- and Hektor's death -- to complete the cycle of Kassandra's visions and the city's eventual destruction.

Hektor is certain that he is about to die a failure; and that Troy will fall.

# # #

Hektor orders his wife to arm him in the armor of Akilleus that Patroklus had worn.

She does. Blind, Hektor takes his leave of her. He exits the city's gate to distract Akilleus from the gate where the fleeing Trojan army is entering.

ACT V

While Akilleus and the blinded Hektor in the armor of Akilleus that Patroklus wore, fight, Hektor's brother Helenus appears and attacks Akilleus. Akilleus kills Helenus. Hektor then wounds Akilleus.

Hektor's sight begins to return. He puts on the new armor of Akilleus, and its masked helmet, as if Akilleus had won. The remaining champions of the city fight him, and he defeats them. Then he unmasks. Andromake faints.

We understand that the manner in which things worked out fulfilled the oracle, but broke through the web of their apparent meaning.

# # #

Hektor is reunited with his wife and family.

For seizing control of the city by force, and bringing about the death of many Trojans, the popular leader Demos orders Hektor exiled for life from Troy. Hektor sheds all armour. Hektor says farewell to the family, friends, and city he has saved.

At the gate Hektor turns. He says, "You need me, I'll come back."

Then he goes out.

T H E   E N D

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Last slightly modified: 11:53 AM 17/10/2004