Troilus
Troilus is a legendary character associated with the story of the Trojan War. The first surviving reference to him is in Homer's Iliad, composed in the late 8th century BC.
In Greek mythology, Troilus is a young Trojan prince, one of the sons of King Priam and Hecuba. Prophecies link Troilus' fate to that of Troy and so he is ambushed and murdered by Achilles. Sophocles was one of the writers to tell this tale. It was also a popular theme among artists of the time. Ancient writers treated Troilus as the epitome of a dead child mourned by his parents. He was also regarded as a paragon of youthful male beauty.
In Western European medieval and Renaissance versions of the legend, Troilus is the youngest of Priam's five legitimate sons by Hecuba. Despite his youth he is one of the main Trojan war leaders. He dies in battle at Achilles' hands. In a popular addition to the story, originating in the 12th century, Troilus falls in love with Cressida, whose father Calchas has defected to the Greeks. Cressida pledges her love to Troilus but she soon switches her affections to the Greek hero Diomedes when sent to her father in a hostage exchange. Chaucer and Shakespeare are among the authors who wrote works telling the story of Troilus and Cressida. Within the medieval tradition, Troilus was regarded as a paragon of the faithful courtly lover and also of the virtuous pagan knight. Once the custom of courtly love had faded, his fate was regarded less sympathetically.
Little attention was paid to the character during the 18th and 19th centuries. However, Troilus has reappeared in 20th and 21st century retellings of the Trojan War by authors who have chosen elements from both the classical and medieval versions of his story.
The story in the ancient world
For the ancient Greeks, the tale of the Trojan War and the surrounding events appeared in its most definitive form in the Epic Cycle of eight narrative poems from the archaic period in Greece. The story of Troilus is one of a number of incidents that helped provide structure to a narrative that extended over several decades and 77 books from the beginning of the Cypria to the end of the Telegony. The character's death early in the war and the prophecies surrounding him demonstrated that all Trojan efforts to defend their home would be in vain. His symbolic significance is evidenced by linguistic analysis of his Greek name "Troilos". It can be interpreted as an elision of the names of Tros and Ilos, the legendary founders of Troy, as a diminutive or pet name "little Tros" or as an elision of Troíē and lúein. These multiple possibilities emphasise the link between the fates of Troilus and of the city where he lived. On another level, Troilus' fate can also be seen as foreshadowing the subsequent deaths of his murderer Achilles, and of his nephew Astyanax and sister Polyxena, who, like Troilus, die at the altar in at least some versions of their stories.However, the Cypria—the part of the Epic Cycle that covers the period of the Trojan War of Troilus' death—does not survive. Indeed, no complete narrative of his story remains from archaic times or the subsequent classical period. Most of the literary sources from before the Hellenistic age that refer to the character are lost or survive only in fragments or summary. The surviving ancient and medieval sources, whether literary or scholarly, contradict each other, and many do not tally with the form of the myth that scholars now believe to have existed in the archaic and classical periods.
Partially compensating for the missing texts are the physical artifacts that remain from the archaic and classical periods. The story of the circumstances around Troilus' death was a popular theme among pottery painters. Troilus also features on other works of art and decorated objects from those times. It is a common practice for those writing about the story of Troilus as it existed in ancient times to use both literary sources and artifacts to build up an understanding of what seems to have been the most standard form of the myth and its variants. The brutality of this standard form of the myth is highlighted by commentators such as Alan Sommerstein, an expert on ancient Greek drama, who describes it as "horrific" and "erhaps the most vicious of all the actions traditionally attributed to Achilles."
The standard myth: the beautiful Troilus murdered
Troilus is an adolescent boy or young man, the son of Hecuba, queen of Troy. As he is so beautiful, Troilus is taken to be the son of the god Apollo. However, Hecuba's husband, King Priam, treats him as his own much-loved child.A prophecy says that Troy will not fall if Troilus lives to the age of twenty. So the goddess Athena encourages the Greek warrior Achilles to seek him out early in the Trojan War. Troilus is known to take great delight in his horses. Achilles ambushes him and his sister Polyxena when he has ridden with her for water from a well in the Thymbra – an area outside Troy where there is a temple of Apollo.
The Greek is struck by the beauty of both Trojans and is filled with lust. It is the fleeing Troilus whom swift-footed Achilles catches, dragging him by the hair from his horse. The young prince refuses to yield to Achilles' sexual attentions and somehow escapes, taking refuge in the nearby temple. But the warrior follows him in, and beheads him at the altar before help can arrive. The mourning of the Trojans at Troilus' death afterward is great.
This sacrilege leads to Achilles’ own death, when Apollo avenges himself by helping Paris strike Achilles with the arrow that pierces his heel.
Ancient literary sources supporting the standard myth
Homer and the missing texts of the archaic and classical periods
The earliest surviving literary reference to Troilus is in Homer's Iliad, which formed one part of the Epic Cycle. It is believed that Troilus' name was not invented by Homer and that a version of his story was already in existence. Late in the poem, Priam berates his surviving sons, and compares them unfavourably to their dead brothers including Trôïlon hippiocharmên. The interpretation of hippiocharmên is controversial but the root hipp- implies a connection with horses. For the purpose of the version of the myth given above, the word has been taken as meaning "delighting in horses". Sommerstein believes that Homer wishes to imply in this reference that Troilus was killed in battle, but argues that Priam's later description of Achilles as andros paidophonoio indicates that Homer was aware of the story of Troilus as a murdered child; Sommerstein believes that Homer is playing here on the ambiguity of the root paido- meaning boy in both the sense of a young male and of a son.Troilus' death was also described in the Cypria, one of the parts of the Epic Cycle that is no longer extant. The poem covered the events preceding the Trojan War and the first part of the war itself up to the events of the Iliad. Although the Cypria does not survive, most of an ancient summary of the contents, thought to be by Eutychius Proclus, remains. Fragment 1 mentions that Achilles killed Troilus, but provides no more detail. However, Sommerstein takes the verb used to describe the killing as meaning that Achilles murders Troilus.
In Athens, the early tragedians Phrynicus and Sophocles both wrote plays called Troilos and the comic playwright Strattis wrote a parody of the same name. Of the esteemed Nine lyric poets of the archaic and classical periods, Stesichorus may have referred to Troilus' story in his Iliupersis and Ibycus may have written in detail about the character. With the exception of these authors, no other pre-Hellenistic written source is known to have considered Troilus at any length.
Unfortunately, all that remains of these texts are the smallest fragments or summaries and references to them by other authors. What does survive can be in the form of papyrus fragments, plot summaries by later authors or quotations by other authors. In many cases these are just odd words in lexicons or grammar books with an attribution to the original author. Reconstructions of the texts are necessarily speculative and should be viewed with "wary but sympathetic scepticism". In Ibycus' case all that remains is a parchment fragment containing a mere six or seven words of verse accompanied with a few lines of scholia. Troilus is described in the poem as godlike and is killed outside Troy. From the scholia, he is clearly a boy. The scholia also refer to a sister, someone "watching out" and a murder in the sanctuary of Thymbrian Apollo. While acknowledging that these details may have been reports of other later sources, Sommerstein thinks it probable that Ibycus told the full ambush story and is thus the earliest identifiable source for it. Of Phrynicus, one fragment remains considered to refer to Troilus. This speaks of "the light of love glowing on his reddening cheeks".
Of all these fragmentary pre-Hellenistic sources, the most is known of Sophocles Troilos. Even so, only 54 words have been identified as coming from the play. Fragment 619 refers to Troilus as an andropais, a man-boy. Fragment 621 indicates that Troilus was going to a spring with a companion to fetch water or to water his horses. A scholion to the Iliad states that Sophocles has Troilus ambushed by Achilles while exercising his horses in the Thymbra. Fragment 623 indicates that Achilles mutilated Troilus' corpse by a method known as maschalismos. This involved preventing the ghost of a murder victim from returning to haunt their killer by cutting off the corpse's extremities and stringing them under its armpits. Sophocles is thought to have also referred to the maschalismos of Troilus in a fragment taken to be from an earlier play Polyxene.
Sommerstein attempts a reconstruction of the plot of the Troilos, in which the title character is incestuously in love with Polyxena and tries to discourage the interest in marrying her shown by both Achilles and Sarpedon, a Trojan ally and son of Zeus. Sommerstein argues that Troilus is accompanied on his fateful journey to his death, not by Polyxena, but by his tutor, a eunuch Greek slave. Certainly there is a speaking role for a eunuch who reports being castrated by Hecuba and someone reports the loss of their adolescent master. The incestuous love is deduced by Sommerstein from a fragment of Strattis' parody, assumed to partially quote Sophocles, and from his understanding that the Sophocles play intends to contrast barbarian customs, including incest, with Greek ones. Sommerstein also sees this as solving what he considers the need for an explanation of Achilles' treatment of Troilus' corpse, the latter being assumed to have insulted Achilles in the process of warning him off Polyxena. Italian professor of English and expert on Troilus, Piero Boitani, on the other hand, considers Troilus' rejection of Achilles' sexual advances towards him as sufficient motive for the mutilation.