In Greek mythology, Hecuba (also Hecabe) was queen of Troy, wife of King Priam, and mother of Hector, Paris, Cassandra, Helenus, Troilus and many other children. She appears repeatedly in Homer's Iliad as a grieving mother and ritual leader among the Trojan women. After the city's fall, tragedy — especially Euripides' Hecuba and Trojan Women — shows her enslaved, avenging her son Polydorus, and in some traditions transformed into a dog associated with the landmark Kynosema.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Hecuba" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Parentage and children
Ancient sources disagree on Hecuba's parents. Homer makes her daughter of the Phrygian king Dymas; Euripides and Virgil make her daughter of the Thracian king Cisseus; Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus also allow the river-god Sangarius and the nymph Metope. Suetonius notes that the emperor Tiberius liked to stump scholars with the question "Who was Hecuba's mother?"
By Priam she bore many of Troy's leading figures: Hector, Paris, Cassandra, Helenus, Deiphobus, Laodice, Polyxena, Creusa, Polydorus, Polites and others. Some traditions make Troilus — and occasionally Hector — a son of Apollo. An oracle held that Troy would not fall if Troilus lived to twenty; Achilles killed him.
II.In the Iliad
Hecuba appears six times in the Iliad. She offers Hector a libation cup on his return to the city and leads the Trojan women to Athena's temple with a rich robe as offering. She pleads with Hector not to face Achilles, fearing she will never mourn him properly on a bier. When Priam plans to ransom Hector's body she is stricken with anxiety, then gives him a libation cup and bids him pray to Zeus for a favourable omen. At the poem's close she delivers a famous lament over Hector's returned corpse.
III.After Troy and transformation
Stesichorus has Apollo carry her to safety in Lycia after the sack. In Euripides' Trojan Women she is allotted as a slave to Odysseus; in Hecuba she learns that King Polymestor has murdered her son Polydorus for gold, then blinds Polymestor and kills his sons. Other legends say grief at the deaths of Polydorus and Polyxena drove her mad; she barked like a dog (so Dante, following earlier tradition), or threw herself into the sea and became a fiery-eyed she-dog buried at Kynosema, a sailors' landmark. Lycophron has Hecate take her as a canine familiar.
Shakespeare's Hamlet famously asks, of an actor weeping for her, "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" She remains a byword for maternal grief and the suffering of conquered women in classical and modern drama, opera and ballet.