Hector and Achilles

“Hector,” I said. “If the dog is a male, I want to call him Hector.”

We’d just moved to California, and my wife said our two sons (eight and five years old) deserved a dog and a pool to assuage their trauma after our move from Virginia.

I’d gotten a dog, Duchess, as a seven-year-old. The German shepherd-golden retriever mix was really supposed to be the family dog, but as each member of my four older siblings got social lives and moved away, she became more and more my own. She lived twelve wonderful years and became a family legend; my siblings had very little luck with dogs thereafter.

In the years since, I’d come across more than one dog who’d been named Achilles. “Achilles wasn’t such a great hero, especially compared to Hector—no matter what the Greeks say,” is what I thought then and what I believe now.

I first became acquainted with the mythical Hector vs. Achilles battle of the Trojan War when I was eight. We had two sets of encyclopedias in my childhood home: a complete set of Collier’s bought from a door-to-door salesman the year I was born, and World Book—but only volumes A through H, bought singly at the grocery store. I loved to read encyclopedias.

I stumbled through the ages and sciences of World Book’s volume “H” one day, and came upon a magnificent color illustration of two Greek-looking warriors, locked in mortal combat. The entry stipulated that it was a titanic conflict and the penultimate event of something new to me: the Trojan War.

The next year I was in the infamous Miss Westbrook’s fourth grade class. On one trip to the school library, I discovered an oversized edition of The Illiad and the Odyssey. Miss Westbrook was impressed with my knowledge of the family man Hector, prince of Troy, and the great warrior Achilles, a demigod impervious to injury save his infamous heel.

That was my problem with Achilles. Hector was a royal, sure, but he fought only with his wits and human skill. Achilles had his Olympian protection. Hector was strong, wise and loyal; he was a loving husband, a doting father, a model son and a great leader of Troy. Meanwhile, Achilles was a pouty primadonna who selfishly squandered his god-given gifts. Just read The Iliad if you don’t believe me. He was no Brad Pitt.

This past Tuesday I fulfilled my dream and finally stood upon the hill of Hisarlik in Turkey, the site of the archaeological dig that reveals historical Troy. The wealth of evidence unearthed there coincides with Homer’s ancient account of war between Greece and Troy which lends credence to many details of The Iliad. 

While no archaeology yet confirms the existence of either the prince Hector or the warrior Achilles, their classic fight-to-the-death below the walls of Troy still resonates.  Looking toward the distant ships cruising through the Dardanelles strait from the remnants of great walls, it was as if I stood atop the fabled battlements beside Hector’s beleaguered father, King Priam, and his wife Andromache.

 I blinked and could see the titans clash, their swords clanking on shields, helmets glistening in the bright Aegean sun, the fate of the ten-year war hanging in the balance.

The outcome was inevitable: when a demigod and mortal hero clash, the wise bet is on the demigod. Though Hector was defeated, the flawed hero Achilles then desecrated Hector’s body by dragging it behind his chariot in front of the walls upon which I now stood, some 3200 years later. Some hero.

I blinked again, and imagined Hector’s brother Paris on these very walls. He prays to his patron goddess Aphrodite to let his arrow find Achilles’ weakness should he have one; Paris draws his bow and fires, mortally wounding Achilles in his famously vulnerable heel…

Within weeks of our move to California in 1997, we bought a German shepherd puppy. Yes, we named him Hector—he was a heroic dog, befitting the honorable name. He gave us twelve years of love, loyalty, and joy. We miss him very much.

In loving memory of our Hector (1997-2009)