This is John Bachelor, conversation with Emily Wilson for her new translation of the Iliad.

This scene is Hector chastising Paris. These are two Trojans.

Hector is the best warrior. Paris. Nalais. She's married to a man who wants her back. That's why the

children were. We're told. In this scene however, Emily Wilson introduces us to

a tension between Hector and Paris that is never resolved.

Paris is not a warrior.

He is, as Emily introduces us to him a pretty boy.

Therein lies the weakness of the Trojans,

in addition to the weakness in the wall.

Hector is married to Andromica.

They're a very good couple, very strong and very tragic.

Here's Emily Wilson. More of this later.

Absolutely. That's a wonderful couple and there were some wonderful scenes between them.

I mean you could have paired Hector and Paris as well because of course they also have these

exchanges where Hector bitterly says Paris, you should you step it up don't just be looking pretty all the time because

Hector is the most dutiful of the Trojan warriors. He's both extremely pious and very much wants to

fulfill the obligations of his society.

And yet his wife Andromache in book six, we have this heartbreaking sequence in which she comes out

to beg him not to go to fight Achilles out on the open plane because she knows

chances are Achilles is going to kill him and he's the only family member she has left apart from their

little baby who will as she well knows as we know because we

know the story he'll be hurled from the city walls and die once Hector is dead once

...