Iliad 0
hippodamos
What does it mean to be a “breaker of horses?” Why those last words for Hector? Why the epithet "ἱππόδαμος" (hippodamos)?
Horses are broken for riding and warfare. Only aristocrats break horses. This is the excellence of the Trojans and a mark of Hector as their leader. But the epithet is also a formula to mete out the line of hexameter, the poet’s excellence.
The ending points beyond the ending. The conclusion may be ascribed to Zeus. But even the will of Zeus, who executes Fate, is not entirely his own. It takes nine days to complete the funeral rites. According to Quintus of Smyrna, perhaps two or three months more before the fall of Troy.
And once they’d heaped the mound
they turned back home to Troy, and gathering once again
they shared a splendid funeral feast in Hector’s honor,
held in the house of Priam, king by will of Zeus.
And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses.
