Who is the wife of Hector and a famous symbol of grief in the Iliad?

Andromache is the wife of Hector and a famous symbol of grief in the Iliad.

She is the daughter of Eetion, ruler of Cilician Thebe, and the mother of Astyanax, Hector’s young son. In Iliad Book 6, Andromache meets Hector near Troy’s walls and begs him not to return to battle, fearing that his death will leave her and their child defenseless. Her appeal gives the epic’s warfare a deeply personal, domestic dimension.

After Achilles kills Hector, Andromache learns of his death and leads the Trojan women in ritual mourning. Her lament is especially powerful because Hector was Troy’s principal defender and her entire family has already been destroyed by the war. In Book 24, she mourns again when Hector’s body is returned for burial.

Andromache is sometimes confused with Hecuba, Hector’s mother, or Helen, whose arrival in Troy helped trigger the conflict. Unlike them, Andromache’s defining role is the grieving wife and bereaved mother. Later traditions say she became the wife of Neoptolemus and eventually married Hector’s brother Helenus.