Astyanax- Greek FigureMortal"Lord of the City"

The Farewell at the Scaean Gates

Astyanax was the only son of Hector and Andromache. His father named him Scamandrius after the river Scamander, but the Trojans called him Astyanax — "lord of the city" — because Hector alone held their walls.

His one full scene comes in Book 6 of the Iliad. Hector returns briefly from battle and meets Andromache and their infant son at the Scaean Gates. Andromache begs him to stay. Achilles has already killed her father and seven brothers, and Hector is all she has left. Hector tells her he knows Troy will fall. What torments him is not his own death but the thought of her led away into slavery. When he reaches for the boy, Astyanax shrinks back with a cry, frightened by the bronze helmet and the horsehair crest nodding from above. Both parents laugh through their tears. Hector removes his helmet, kisses his son, and prays to Zeus that the boy might one day rule Troy and surpass his father, that men might say "he is far better than his father" when he returns from war. He hands the child back to Andromache, and she carries him home, already grieving.

The Fall of Troy

When the city fell, Odysseus argued — or the seer Calchas prophesied — that Hector's son must die before he could grow into an avenger. Neoptolemus, son of Achilles who had killed Hector, tore the child from Andromache's arms and hurled him from the walls. In the Little Iliad, Odysseus performs the killing himself.

Andromache buried her son on Hector's shield. The bronze that had guarded his father in battle became the boy's coffin. In Euripides's Trojan Women, this murder is the wound around which the play turns. Hecuba prepares the small body for burial and addresses the shield directly, calling it the guardian of Hector's arm. Seneca's Roman adaptation adds a scene of the child hiding in his father's tomb before being discovered and dragged out to die.