achilles chasing hector outside the city walls is one of my top iliad moments (it's my blog's header image for a reason) and rereading it inspired a lot of thoughts, so instead of making ten separate posts about it i'm collecting them here:
boy is there a PAINFULLY short interval between hector telling his parents somewhat cavalierly that they can't stop him because the time has come for him to either kill achilles or be killed by him, and hector stepping outside, seeing achilles, and bolting in fear straight away. i don't see any obvious reproach from the narrator in how hector's reaction is described, but also there is no indication of any god descending to put fear in his heart: this is hector, himself. in his most fateful moment he IS brave enough to step outside the walls all alone in order to face achilles! but not brave enough to actually face him. oh hector.
that footrace comparison, oh my god:
They ran beside [the streams], one escaping, the other after him.
It was a great man who fled, but far better he who pursued him
rapidly, since here was no festal beast, no ox-hide
they strove for, for these are prizes that are given men for their running.
No, they ran for the life of Hektor, breaker of horses.
that's the prize of their race, that's what they're both competing for!! aaaaa!
the way the distance between them is constant, with neither outrunning the other (thanks to apollo giving hector speed) has the narrator reaching across millennia to ask me if i've ever had that dream:
As in a dream a man is not able to follow one who runs
from him, nor can the runner escape, nor the other pursue him
so he could not run him down in his speed, nor the other get clear.
and YES. yes, storytellers of the ancient past, i have had that dream many times!! it's actually the earliest nightmare i can remember (only i wasn't running, i was on my tricycle which tells you how young i was when i first started having it). we live in an immensely distant future from the people who told this story and still we're dreaming the same dreams!
this is headcanon territory, but i can't help but imagine the differences in achilles' and hector's running technique. achilles IS a runner, a legendary one. imagine his impressive economy of movement, his light feet, the even strides, and the trained looseness of his upper body. hector has been granted supernatural power in his legs but he is NOT a runner, not to mention he is fleeing for his life. i imagine him desperately powering through that entire run, unaccustomed to this kind of divine power and with no knowledge of how to use it efficiently, desperate and inelegant with every muscle tensed to push himself onward out of achilles' reach.
whatever the size of troy, obviously running around it three times without breaks is an incredible physical feat, and i am weirdly... impressed? moved? surprised? by the poem acknowledging that yes, achilles is genuinely fatigued by it (hector it seems could go on indefinitely with apollo's help). when athena appears to achilles she orders him to rest and catch his breath, and he props himself up with his spear as he does so, while athena goes to trick hector. later on when achilles finally falls asleep (and is approached by patroclus' spirit) it's explicitly explained to be because his limbs were worn out from the running (and not from fighting all day). idk, it just feels like it'd be so easy for the narrator to tell us that that chase was no challenge for a demigod like achilles, but no. he is human enough for it to be a struggle, and hector and apollo where the ones who gave it to him.