Achilles

DEATH OF HECTOR
Life Stories for Young People
Translated, and abridged from the German of Carl Friedrich Becker
BY GEORGE P. UPTON Translator of “Memories,” “Immensee,” etc.
WITH THREE ILLUSTRATIONS
CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1912
Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. 1912 Published September, 1912
In tracing the career of Achilles in connection with the Trojan war, that inimitable classic story-teller, Carl Friedrich Becker, follows the lines of Homer’s Iliad. He gives the reader a graphic picture of the stirring events in the ten years’ siege maintained by the Greeks, under the leadership of Agamemnon, king of Mycenæ, in their finally successful effort to redress the injury done to Menelaus, king of Sparta, whose wife, Helen, was carried off by Paris. The striking points in this thrilling narrative are the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles; the exploits of Hector, noblest character of them all; the human impersonations of the gods, who take part in the strife—some on one side, some on the other; the death of Patroclus; the final reconciliation of Achilles and Agamemnon and the former’s tremendous exploits; the death of Hector, and the touching interview with the aged Priam, who seeks to recover his body.
The ultimate fate of Achilles and the fall of the city are not told, nor the wretched end of Agamemnon, who, according to Æschylus, was killed by Clytemnestra, the queen, upon his return. Hector is one of the most conspicuous figures in this great drama and appears only second to Achilles among all the warriors. The exciting Trojan war story has never been told more graphically or interestingly in modern prose than in Becker’s version. In adapting it to the series of “Life Stories” the translator has been obliged to abridge the original work somewhat, but the parts omitted do not interfere with the flow of the story.
G. P. U.
Chicago, May , 1912.
Troy was a small portion of that section of Asia Minor which was later called Phrygia. Its northern coast touched the entrance to the Hellespont. It was very densely populated and had, besides many little plantations, villages, and settlements of farmers or herdsmen, a large city with a strong wall, towers, and gates. Homer never called the city Troy, but always Ilios or Ilium. The surroundings he calls Troy and the inhabitants Trojans, after an ancestor named Tros, who was said to have founded the city. He describes them as a bold, enterprising people, who lived in a high degree of comfort and practised many arts of which the Europeans of that time were ignorant.