Andromache and Astyanax
Hector's wife Andromache and their young son Astyanax embody the cost of Troy's destruction for families who could not escape the war.
The Story
Andromache was the wife of Hector.
Their young son was called Scamandrius by Hector, but the people of Troy knew him as Astyanax.
Before Hector returned to battle in the Iliad, husband and wife shared one of the poem's most famous family scenes.
Andromache feared that Hector would be killed.
Hector knew that Troy itself might eventually fall.
Their child stood between them as a symbol of a future that might never arrive.
Hector was later killed by Achilles.
When Troy finally fell, Andromache survived, but Astyanax did not.
Later Greek traditions describe the Greeks deciding that Hector's son could not be allowed to grow up and avenge Troy.
The child was thrown from the walls or towers of the captured city.
Sources disagree about which Greek carried out the killing.
Andromache was taken captive.
In later traditions she became connected with Neoptolemus, the son of the very warrior who had killed Hector.
The fate of Andromache and Astyanax therefore turns the fall of Troy away from heroic combat and toward the consequences suffered by the families left behind.
Key Figures
Why It Matters
Andromache and Astyanax represent the civilian and dynastic consequences of Troy's destruction and provide one of the strongest emotional links between the Iliad and later Trojan tragedy.
Traditions & Variations
The killer of Astyanax differs between surviving traditions, and later accounts give different details of Andromache's captivity and subsequent life.