In book 6 of the Iliad, Trojan Hektor leaves the fighting for a time, to visit his wife and son:

There is something elemental in this scene. The child is an infant, living still with his mother and nurse, unacquainted with dangerous things. He lies upon the nurse's breast— and recoils from the tools of war. I think Homer wants us to see that the child's fearful response to Hektor's martial aspect is essentially natural, as both Hektor and Andromache understand:

Then Hektor prays for his son, prays that he will leave his mother's embrace, leave safe and comfortable things, and take up the bloody, testosterone- driven business of the warrior:

Hektor already has a premonition that he will die in the defense of Troy; he has a premonition that his beloved wife will be taken captive, made a slave; her memories then of his glory “will be yet a fresh grief” to her (Iliad: 6.462). And yet, even as he sees the fall of Troy before the mirror of his imagination, he prays that his infant son might be a warrior, not just to defend hearth and home, but to raid, to bring home blood- spattered booty to delight his mother.