Hecuba- Greek FigureMortal"Queen of Troy"

The Dream of the Torch

Wife of King Priam and queen of Troy, Hecuba bore him nineteen sons and many daughters — Hector, Paris, Cassandra, and Polyxena among them. Before Paris was born, she dreamed she gave birth to a burning torch that set the city ablaze. The seers were unanimous: the child would destroy Troy. Priam ordered the infant exposed on Mount Ida to die, but shepherds found him and raised him as their own. Years later the boy returned to Troy and was welcomed back into the royal house. When he sailed to Sparta and stole Helen, bringing the full force of Greece against the city, the torch dream proved prophetic.

The Fall

For ten years Hecuba watched the war from behind Troy's walls. She saw her sons ride out to battle and not return — Hector killed by Achilles, who dragged his body through the dust before the gates; Paris felled by the poisoned arrows of Philoctetes. When the city finally broke, the killing came inside the walls. Neoptolemus butchered Priam at the altar of Zeus. The Greeks sacrificed Polyxena at Achilles's tomb to appease his ghost and threw Hector's infant son Astyanax from the battlements so that no male heir of Troy would survive.

Vengeance and Transformation

The Greeks divided Troy's women as slaves, and Hecuba fell to Odysseus. On the voyage home, when the fleet touched the Thracian coast, she found the body of her youngest son Polydorus washed ashore. She and Priam had sent the boy to King Polymestor of Thrace for safekeeping, along with a store of gold. Polymestor had murdered the child for the treasure. What Hecuba did next shocked even the Greeks: she lured Polymestor to her tent with the promise of hidden gold, then blinded him and killed his two sons. For this act — or simply from the unbearable accumulation of grief — Hecuba was transformed into a black dog, howling at the shore. The promontory where it happened was called Cynossema, "dog's tomb," a landmark known to sailors navigating the Hellespont.