Hector! Dearest to me of all my husband’s brothers –
my husband, Paris, magnificent as a god…
he was the one who brought me here to Troy –
Oh how I wish I’d died before that day!
But this, now, is the twentieth year for me
since I sailed here and forsook my own native land,
yet never once did I hear from you a taunt, an insult.
But if someone else in the royal halls would curse me,
one of your brothers or sisters or brothers’ wives
trailing their long robes, even your own mother –
not your father, always kind as my own father –
why, you’d restrain them with words, Hector,
you’d win them to my side…
you with your gentle temper, all your gentle words.
And so in the same breath I mourn for you and me,
my doom-struck, harrowed heart. Now there is no one left
in the wide realm of Troy, no friend to treat me kindly –
all the countrymen cringe from me in loathing!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 24, lines 895-912. Even Helen, the captive woman snatched from her husband by Hector’s brother Paris, has warm words to say about the dead Hector. She pays tribute to his kindness, gentleness and friendship during the twenty years she has been gone from her native land. Now she has no friend left in Troy to treat her kindly, she laments.