Hector, dearest to me by far of all my sons…
and dear to the gods while we still shared this life –
and they cared about you still, I see, even after death.
Many the sons I had whom the swift runner Achilles
caught and shipped on the barren salt sea as slaves
to Sarnos, to Imbros, to Lemnos shrouded deep in mist!
But you, once he slashed away your life with his brazen spear
he dragged you time and again around his comrade’s tomb,
Patroclus whom you killed – not that he brought Patroclus
back to life by that. But I have you with me now…
fresh as the morning dew you lie in the royal halls
like one whom Apollo, lord of the silver bow,
has approached and shot to death with gentle shafts.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 24, lines 880-892. Hecuba speaks to the body of her son Hector, eulogizing him and the other sons Achilles took from her, many of them shipped across the sea as slaves. Achilles dragged her son’s body around his comrade’s tomb, after Hector killed Patroclus. But the gods cared for Hector even in death, by allowing his body to return home, where he now lay "fresh as the morning dew" (simile). She says that Hector appears to have been shot by an arrow from Apollo – this foreshadows that Achilles will die from an arrow guided by Apollo.