Hecuba
In Greek mythology, Hecuba or Hecabe (Ἑκάβη, Hekábē), queen of Troy, is the second wife of Priam and one of the characters of the Iliad. She is the daughter of Dimante or Dimas, king of Phrygia according to this work, but Euripides and Virgil imagined her as the daughter of Ciseo, king of Thrace.
The name of Hecuba's mother was referred by a scholastic to Euripides' Hecuba; according to this, she was the daughter of Dimante or Sangario by the naiad Evágore, or by Glaucipe the daughter of Xanthus. A scholastic of Homer relates that Hecuba's parents were Dimante and the nymph Eunoe or Ciseo and Teleclia. This latest version of Hecuba would then be the sister of Theano, as the scoliast points out.Apolodoro innovates by saying that she is the daughter of the river god Sangario and the nymph Metope.
Offspring
Hecuba had abundant offspring from Priam that according to the sources goes from the 14 children that Apollodorus gives her to the 50 that Euripides proposes, going through the 19 of the most widespread tradition. Literature mentions the following sons of Hecabe: Antipous, Deiphobus, Hector, Helenus, Hipponoo, Pamon, Paris, Polidoro, Polites, and Troilus. They also had four daughters: Cassandra, Laódice, Políxena and Ilíona. The dream he had when Paris was about to be born was that he was to give birth to a flaming torch that would spread throughout the city and Aesacus interpreted this to mean that the child born would be the ruin of Troy. Some sources say that the Troilus' true father is Apollo. Other authors say that Hector was also the son of Apollo.
Revenge for Polidoro
Hecuba sent Polydorus, her youngest son, to Thrace to flee the coming war. During the war, Polidoro was cared for by Polymestor, the king of that place, who was married to Ilíona, the eldest daughter of Priam and Hecuba.
After the Trojan War, the Greeks made Hecuba their slave, corresponding in the division to Odysseus, although other traditions say that she marched with Hellenus to the Thracian Chersonese, or that she was taken to Lycia by Apollo.
Disowned and abandoned she laments:
mode maxima rerum, tot generis natisque potens nuribusque viroque nunc trahor exul, inops...recently (was) the most important of all, powerful for so many family and children and now I walk vagant, banished and dispossessed...Ovid, Metamorphosis XIII, 508-510.
Ship along with other slaves, she arrived in Thrace, where she discovered that Polymestor had killed Polidoro to seize the goods he had brought with him. Hecuba took revenge by gouging out his eyes and killing him along with two of his children.
Metamorphosis
About her final destiny, it was said that the gods turned her into a dog and that she was buried in a place that has since been known as the "Sepulcher of the Bitch".
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