Achilles (left) ambushing Troilus (riding right). Etruscan fresco, Tomb of the Bulls, Tarquinia, c540-530BC.

Troilus (also Troilos, Troylus) (ancient Greek: Τρωίλος, Troïlos, Latin: Troilus) is a legendary character associated with the story of the Trojan War. The first surviving reference to him is in the Iliad which was written in the 7th or 8th century BC.

In classical Greek mythology, Troilus is a young Trojan prince, one of the sons of King Priam (or sometimes Apollo) 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 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 definitive form of the tale of the Trojan War and the surrounding events appeared in the Epic Cycle of eight narrative poems^[1] from the archaic period in Greece (750 BC – 480 BC). The story of Troilus is one of a number of incidents that helped provide structure to a narrative which extended over several decades from the beginning of the Cypria to the end of the Telegony. His death early in the war, and the prophecies surrounding him, demonstrated that all Trojan efforts to defend their home would be in vain. The symbolic significance of the character 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 Troië (Troy) and lyo (to destroy). These multiple possibilities emphasise the link between the fates of Troilus and of the city in which he lived.^[2] 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, both of whom, like Troilus, die at the altar in at least some versions of their stories.^[3]

Troilus and Polyxena fleeing. Kylix, by C-painter, c. 570-565 BC, Louvre (CA 6113), black-figure Attic. That there are two horses shown side by side can most clearly be seen by looking at their legs and tails.

Achilles about to pursue Troilus and Polyxena from his position behind the well-house (reverse side of above).

Given this, it is unfortunate that no single complete source is available that tells the story of Troilus as it existed during archaic times or the subsequent classical period (479-323 BC). Most of the literary sources from before the Hellenistic age (323-31 BC) that referred to the character and all of those that included a detailed narrative are lost or survive only in fragments or summary. The ancient and medieval sources, whether literary or scholarly, which succeeded those early narratives 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 have survived from the archaic and classical periods. The story of the circumstances around Troilus' death was a popular theme among pottery painters. (The Beazley Archive website lists 108 items of Attic pottery alone from the 6th to 4th centuries BC containing images of the character.^[4]) 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.^[5] The brutality of this standard myth is highlighted by commentators such as the expert on ancient Greek drama Professor Alan Sommerstein who describes it as "horrific" and "[p]erhaps the most vicious of all the actions traditionally attributed to Achilles.^[6]

The standard myth: the beautiful youth murdered

Troilus is an adolescent boy or ephebe, 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.

Achilles seizing Troilus by the hair as the youth attempts to flee the ambush at the fountain. Etruscan amphora of the Pontic group, ca. 540–530 BC. From Vulci.

A prophecy says that Troy will not fall if Troilus lives into adulthood. So the goddess Athena encourages the Greek warrior Achilles to seek him out early in the Trojan War. The youth 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^[7] 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 murderer then mutilates the boy's body. The mourning of the Trojans at Troilus' death 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.^[8] Late in the poem, Priam berates his surviving sons, and compares them unfavourably to their dead brothers including Trôïlon hippiocharmên.^[9] 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".^[10] 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 ("boy-slaying man")^[11] 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.^[12]

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.^[13] However, Sommerstein takes the verb used to describe the killing (phoneuei) as meaning that Achilles murders Troilus.^[14]

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.^[15]

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.^[16] Reconstructions of the texts are necessarily speculative and should be viewed with "wary but sympathetic scepticism".^[17] 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.^[18] Of Phrynicus, one fragment remains considered to refer to Troilus. This speaks of "the light of love glowing on his reddening cheeks".^[19]

Of all these fragmentary pre-Hellenic sources, it is the Sophocles Troilos of which most is known. Even so, only 54 words have been identified as coming from the play.^[20] 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.^[21] A scholion to the Iliad^[22] states that Sophocles has Troilus ambushed by Achilles while exercising his horses in the Thymbra. Fragment 623 indicates that Troilus did not just lose his head, but that his corpse was further mutilated 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.^[23] Sophocles is thought to have also referred to the maschalismos of Troilus in a fragment taken to be from an earlier play Polyxene.^[24] Sommerstein attempts a reconstruction of the plot of the whole play in which Troilus is incestuously in love with Polyxena and tries to discourage the interest in her of 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.^[25] Certainly there is a speaking role for a eunuch who reports being castrated by Hecuba^[26] and someone reports the loss of their adolescent master.^[27] 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 to be 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.^[28] Boitani, on the other hand, considers Troilus' rejection of Achilles sexual advances towards him as sufficient motive for the mutilation.^[29]

The Alexandra

The first surviving text which contains more than the briefest mention of Troilus is a Hellenistic poem dating from no earlier than the 3rd century BC: the Alexandra by the tragedian Lycophron or a namesake of his. The poem consists of the obscure prophetic ravings of Cassandra:^[30]

Ay! me, for thee fair-fostered flower, too, I groan, O lion whelp, sweet darling of thy kindred, who didst smite with fiery charm of shafts the fierce dragon and seize for a little loveless while in unescapable noose him that was smitten, thyself unwounded by thy victim: thou shalt forfeit thy head and stain thy father’s altar-tomb with thy blood.^[31]

This passage is explained in the Byzantine writer John Tzetzes' scholia as a reference to Troilus seeking to avoid the unwanted sexual advances of Achilles by taking refuge in his father Apollo's temple. When he refuses to come out, Achilles goes in and kills him on the altar.^[32] Lycophron's scholiast also says that Apollo started to plan Achilles' death after the murder.^[33] This begins to build up the elements of the version of Troilus' story given above: he is young, much loved and beautiful; he has divine ancestry, is beheaded by his rejected Greek lover and, we know from Homer, had something to do with horses. The reference to Troilus as a "lion whelp" hints at his having the potential to be a great hero, but there is no explicit reference to a prophecy linking the possibility of Troilus reaching adulthood and Troy then surviving.

Other written sources

No other extended passage about Troilus exists from before the Augustan Age by which time other versions of the character's story have emerged. The remaining sources compatible with the standard myth are considered below by theme.

Athena directing Achilles to attack Troilus. A feature of the tale not available from written sources. Detail of an Etruscan red-figure stamnos (from a pair known as “Fould stamnoi”), ca. 300 BC. From Vulci.

An example of Troilus with only one horse. Reverse side of above

Parentage 

The Apollodorus responsible for the Library lists Troilus last of Priam and Hecuba's sons - a detail adopted in the later tradition - but then adds that it is said that the boy was fathered by Apollo.^[34] On the other hand, Hyginus includes Troilus in the middle of a list of Priam's sons without further comment.^[35] In the early Christian writings the Clementine Homilies, it is suggested that Apollo was Troilus' lover rather than his father.^[36]

Youthfulness 

Horace emphasises Troilus' youth by calling him inpubes ("unhairy", i.e. pre-pubescent or, figuratively, not old enough to bear arms).^[37] Dio Chrysostom derides Achilles in his Trojan discourse, complaining that all that the supposed hero achieved before Homer was the capture of Troilus who was still a boy.^[38]

Prophecies 

The First Vatican Mythographer reports a prophesy that Troy will not fall if Troilus reaches the age of twenty and gives that as a reason for Achilles ambushing of him.^[39] In Plautus, Troilus' death is given as one of three conditions that must be met before Troy would fall.^[40]

Beauty 

Ibycus, in seeking to praise his patron, compares him to Troilus, the most beautiful of the Greeks and the Trojans.^[41] Dio Chrysostom refers to Troilus as one of many examples of different kinds of beauty.^[42] Statius compares a beautiful dead slave missed by his master to Troilus.^[43]

Object of pederastic love 

Servius, in his scholia to the passage from Virgil discussed below, says that Achilles lures Troilus to him with a gift of doves. Troilus then dies in the Greek's embrace. Robert Graves^[44] interprets this as evidence of the vigour of Achilles' love-making but Timothy Gantz^[45] considers that the "how or why" of Servius' version of Troilus' death is unclear.^[46] Sommerstein favours Graves's interpretation saying that murder was not a part of ancient pederastic relations and that nothing in Servius suggests an intentional killing.^[47]

Location of ambush and death 

A number of reports have come down of Troilus' death variously mentioning water, exercising horses and the Thymbra, though they do not necessarily build into a coherent whole: the First Vatican Mythographer reports that Troilus was exercising outside Troy when Achilles attacked him;^[39] a commentator on Ibycus says that Troilus was slain by Achilles in the Thymbrian precinct outside Troy;^[48] Eustathius of Thessalonica's commentary on the Iliad says that Troilus was exercising his horses there;^[49] Apollodorus says that Achilles ambushed Troilus inside the temple of Thymbrian Apollo;^[50] finally, Statius^[43] reports that Troilus was speared to death as he fled around Apollo's walls.^[51] Gantz struggles to make sense of what he sees as contradictory material, feeling that Achilles' running down of Troilus' horse makes no sense if Troilus was just fleeing to the nearby temple building. He speculates that the ambush at the well and the sacrifice in the temple could be two different versions of the story or, alternatively, that Achilles takes Troilus to the temple in order to sacrifice him as an insult to Apollo.^[52]

Mourning 

Trojan and, especially, Troilus' own family's mourning at his death seems to have epitomised grief at the loss of a child in classical civilization. Horace,^[37] Callimachus^[53] and Cicero^[54] all refer to Troilus in this way.

Ancient art and artifact sources

Troilus and Polyxena at the fountain, Laconian black-figured dinos, Rider Painter, 560–540 BC., Louvre E662, Campana Collection 1861

Achilles lying in wait, part of the same illustration

Ancient Greek art, as found in pottery and other remains, frequently depicts scenes associated with Troilus' death: the ambush, the pursuit, the murder itself and the fight over his body.^[55] Depictions of Troilus in other contexts are unusual. One such exception, a red-figure vase painting from Apulia c.340BC, shows Troilus as a child with Priam.^[56]

In the ambush, Troilus and Polyxena approach a fountain where Achilles lies in wait. This scene was familiar enough in the ancient world for a parody to exist from c.400BC showing a dumpy Troilus leading a mule to the fountain.^[57] In most serious depictions of the scene, Troilus rides a horse, normally with a second next to him.^[58] He is usually, but not always, portrayed as a beardless youth. He is often shown naked; otherwise he wears a cloak or tunic. Achilles is always armed and armoured. Occasionally, as on the vase picture at [40], or the fresco from the Tomb of the Bulls shown at the head of this article, either Troilus or Polyxena is absent, indicating how the ambush is linked to each of their stories. In the earliest definitely identified version of this scene, (a Corinthian vase c.580BC), Troilus is bearded and Priam is also present. Both these features are unusual.^[59] More common is a bird sitting on the fountain; normally a raven, symbol of Apollo and his prophetic powers and thus a final warning to Troilus of his doom;^[60] sometimes a cock, a common love gift suggesting that Achilles attempted to seduce Troilus.^[61] In some versions, for example an Attic amphora in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston dating from c.530BC which can be seen here [41], Troilus has a dog running with him. On one Etruscan vase from the sixth century BC, doves are flying from Achilles to Troilus, suggestive of the love gift in Servius.^[62] The fountain itself is conventionally decorated with a lion motif.

The earliest identified version of the pursuit or chase is from the third quarter of the 7th century BC.^[63] Next chronologically is the best known^[64] version on the François Vase by Kleitias.^[65] The number of characters shown on pottery scenes varies with the size and shape of the space available.^[66] The François Vase is decorated with several scenes in long narrow strips. This means that the Troilus frieze is heavily populated. In the centre, (which can be seen at the Perseus Project at [42],) is the fleeing Troilus, riding one horse with the reins of the other in his hand. Below them is the vase which Polyxena (partially missing), who is ahead of him, has dropped. Achilles is largely missing but it is clear that he is armoured. They are running towards Troy [43] where Antenor gestures towards Priam. Hector and Polites, brothers of Troilus, emerge from the city walls in the hope of saving Troilus. Behind Achilles [44] are a number of deities, Athena, Thetis, (Achilles' mother,) Hermes, and Apollo (just arriving). Two Trojans are also present, the woman gesturing to draw the attention of a youth filling his vase. As the deities appear only in pictorial versions of the scene, their role is subject to interpretation. The Italian professor of English and expert on Troilus, Piero Boitani, sees Athena as urging Achilles on and Thetis as worried by the arrival of Apollo who, as Troilus' protector, represents a future threat to Achilles.^[67] He does not indicate what he thinks Hermes may be talking to Thetis about. The classicist and art historian Professor Thomas H. Carpenter sees Hermes as a neutral observer, Athena and Thetis as urging Achilles on and the arrival of Apollo as the artist's indication of the god's future role in Achilles' death.^[68] As Athena is not a traditionally a patron of Achilles, Sommerstein sees her presence in this and other portrayals of Troilus' death as evidence of the early standing of the prophetic link between Troilus' death and the fall of Troy, Athena being driven, above all, by her desire for the city's destruction.^[69]

Achilles pursues Troilus, black-figure Attic hydria, ca. 510 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 1722)

The standard elements in the pursuit scene are Troilus, Achilles, Polyxena, the two horses and the fallen vase. On two tripods, an amphora and a cup, Achilles already has Troilus by the hair.^[70] A famous vase in the British Museum, which gave the Troilos Painter the name by which he is now known, shows the two Trojans looking back in fear, as the beautiful youth whips his horse on. This vase can be seen at the Perseus Project site [45]. The water spilling from the shattered vase below Troilus' horse, symbolises his blood that is about to be shed.^[71]

The iconography of the eight legs and hooves of the horses can be used to identify Troilus on pottery where his name does not appear; for example, on a Corinthian vase where Troilus is shooting at his pursuers and on a peaceful scene on a Chalcidian krater where the couples Paris and Helen, Hector and Andromache are labelled, but the youth riding one of a pair of horses is not.^[72]

A later Southern Italian interpretation of the story is on vases held respectively at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. On the krater from c.380-70BC at [46] Troilus can be seen with just one horse trying to defend himself with a throwing spear; on the hydria from c.325-320BC at [47], Achilles is pulling down the youth's horse.

Achilles about to behead Troilus at the altar. Red-figured kylix c. 510BC, signed by Euphronios. Now in the Museo Archeologico, Perugia. Note how the size of the figures is used to emphasise the brutality of the murder.^[73]

The earliest known depictions of the death or murder of Troilus are on shield bands from the turn of the 7th into the 6th century BC found at Olympia. On these, a warrior with a sword is about to stab a naked youth at an altar. On one, Troilus clings to a tree (which Boitani takes for the laurel sacred to Apollo).^[74] On the latest of the shield bands, a cock stands below the struggling Troilus indicating the story of his rejecting Achilles' advances was already known. A crater contemporary with this shows Achilles at the altar holding the naked Troilus upside down while Hector, Aeneas and an otherwise unknown Trojan Deithynos arrive in the hope of saving the youth. In some depictions Troilus is begging for mercy. On an amphora, Achilles has the struggling Troilus slung over his shoulder as he goes to the altar.^[75] Boitani, in his survey of the story of Troilus through the ages, considers it of significance that two artifacts (a vase and a sarcophagus) from different periods link Troilus' and Priam's death by showing them on the two sides of the same item, as if they were the beginning and end of the story of the fall of Troy.^[76] Achilles is the father of Neoptolemus, who slays Priam at the alter during the sack of Troy. Thus the war opens with a father killing a son and closes with a son killing a father.

Some pottery shows Achilles, already having killed Troilus, using his victim's severed head as a weapon as Hector and his companions arrive too late to save him; some includes h the watching Athena, occasionally with Hermes. At [48] is one such picture showing Achilles fighting Hector over the altar. Troilus' body is slumped and the boy's head is either flying through the air, or stuck to the end of Achilles' spear. Athena and Hermes look on. Aeneas and Deithynos are behind Hector.

Sometimes details of the closely similar deaths of Troilus and Astyanax are exchanged.^[77] [49] shows one such image where it is unclear which murder is being portrayed. The age of the victim is often an indicator of which story is being told and the relative small size here might point towards this being the death of Astyanax, but it is common even for Troilus to be shown as much smaller than his murderer, (as is the case with the kylix pictured to the above right). Other factors in this case are the presence of Priam (suggesting Astyanax), that of Athena (suggesting Troilus) and the fact that the scene is set outside the walls of Troy (again suggesting Troilus).^[78]

A variant myth: the boy-soldier overwhelmed

A different version of Troilus' death appears on a red-figure cup by Oltos. Troilus is on his knees, still in the process of drawing his sword when Achilles' spear has already stabbed him and Aeneas comes too late to save him. Troilus wears a helmet, but it is pushed up to reveal a beautiful young face. This is the only such depiction of Troilus' death in early figurative art.^[79] However, this version of Troilus as a youth defeated in battle appears also in written sources.

Virgil and other Latin sources

This version of the story appears in Virgil's Aeneid,^[80] in a passage describing a series of paintings decorating the walls of a temple of Juno. The painting immediately next to the one depicting Troilus shows the death of Rhesus, another character killed because of prophecies linked to the fall of Troy. Other pictures are similarly calamitous.

A Roman illustration still showing Achilles having run down a mounted Troilus. Detail of bronze breastplate of a statue of Germanicus. 2nd century. From Perugia.

In a description whose pathos is heightened by the fact that it is seen through a compatriot's eyes,^[81] Troilus is infelix puer ("unhappy boy") who has met Achilles in "unequal" combat. Troilus' horses flee while he, still holding their reins, hangs from the chariot, his head and hair trailing behind while the backward-pointing spear scribbles in the dust. (The First Vatican Mythographer^[39] elaborates on this story, explaining that Troilus's body is dragged right to the walls of Troy.^[82])

In his commentary on the Aeneid, Servius^[46] considers this story as a deliberate departure from the "true" story, bowdlerized to make it more suitable for an epic poem. He interprets it as showing Troilus overpowered in a straight fight. Gantz^[83], however, argues that this might be a variation of the ambush story. For him, Troilus is unarmed because he went out not expecting combat and the backward pointing spear was what Troilus was using as a goad in a manner similar to characters elsewhere in the Aeneid. Sommerstein, on the other hand believes that the spear is Achilles' that has struck Troilus in the back. The youth is alive but mortally wounded as he is being dragged towards Troy.^[84]

An issue here is the ambiguity of the word congressus ("met"). It often refers to meeting in a conventional combat but can have refer to other types of meetings too. A similar ambiguity appears in Seneca^[85] and in Ausonius' 19th epitaph^[86], narrated by Troilus himself. The dead prince tells how he has been dragged by his horses after falling in unequal battle with Achilles. A reference in the epitaph comparing Troilus' death to Hector's suggests that Troilus dies later than in the traditional narrative, something which, according to Boitani,^[87] also happens in Virgil.

Greek writers in the boy-soldier tradition

Quintus of Smyrna, in a passage whose atmosphere Boitani describes as sad and elegiac, retains what for Boitani are the two important issues of the ancient story, that Troilus is doomed by Fate and that his failure to continue his line symbolises Troy's fall.^[88] In this case, there is no doubt that Troilus entered battle knowingly, for in the Posthomerica Troilus's armour is one of the funerary gifts after Achilles' own death. Quintus repeatedly emphasises Troilus's youth: he is beardless, virgin of a bride, childlike, beautiful, the most godlike of all Hecuba's children. Yet he was lured by Fate to war when he knew no fear and was struck down by Achilles' spear just as a flower or corn that has borne no seed is killed by the gardener.^[89]

In the Ephemeridos belli Trojani (Journal of the Trojan War),^[90] supposedly written by Dictys the Cretan during the Trojan War itself, Troilus is again a defeated warrior, but this time captured with his brother Lycaon. Achilles vindictively orders that their throats be slit in public, because he is angry that Priam has failed to advance talks over a possible marriage to Polyxena. Dictys' narrative is free from gods and prophecy but he preserves Troilus' loss as something to be greatly mourned:

The Trojans raised a cry of grief and, mourning loudly, bewailed the fact that Troilus had met so grievous a death, for they remembered how young he was, who being in the early years of his manhood, was the people's favourite, their darling, not only because of his modesty and honesty, but more especially because of his handsome appearance.^[91]

The story in the medieval and Renaissance eras

William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida: 1609 quarto, title page

In the sources considered so far, Troilus' only narrative function is his death.^[92] The treatment of the character changes in two ways during in the literature of the medieval and renaissance periods. First, he becomes an important and active protagonist in the pursuit of the Trojan War itself. Second, he becomes an active heterosexual lover, rather than the passive victim of Achilles' pederasty. By the time of John Dryden's neo-classical adaptation of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida it is the ultimate failure of his love affair that defines the character.

For medieval writers, the two most influential ancient sources on the Trojan War were the purported eye-witness accounts of Dares the Phrygian and Dictys the Cretan which have both survived in Latin versions. In Western Europe the Trojan side of the war was favoured and therefore Dares was preferred over Dictys.^[93] Although Dictys' account positions Troilus' death later in the war than was traditional, it conforms to antiquity's view of him as a minor warrior if one at all. Dares' De excidio Trojae historia (History of the Fall of Troy)^[94] introduces the character as a hero who takes part in events beyond the story of his death.

Twelfth and thirteenth century authors such as Joseph of Exeter and Albert of Stade continued to tell the legend of the Trojan War in Latin in a form that follows Dares' tale with Troilus remaining one of the most important warriors on the Trojan side. However, it was two of their contemporaries, Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his French verse romance and Guido delle Colonne in his Latin prose history, both also admirers of Dares, who were to define the tale of Troy for the remainder of the medieval period. The details of their narrative of the war were copied, for example, in the Troy Books of Laud and Lydgate and also Raoul Lefevre's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. Lefevre, through Caxton's 1474 printed translation, was in turn to become the best known retelling of the Troy story in Renaissance England and influenced Shakespeare among others. The story of Troilus as a lover, invented by Benoît and retold by Guido, generated a second line of influence. It was taken up as a tale that could be told in its own right by Boccaccio and then by Chaucer who established a tradition of retelling and elaborating the story in English-language literature which was to be followed by Henryson and Shakespeare.

The second Hector, wall of Troy

As indicated above, it was through the writings of Dares the Phrygian that the portrayal of Troilus as an important warrior was transmitted to medieval times. However some authors have argued that the tradition of Troilus as a warrior may be older. The passage from the Iliad described above is read by Boitani^[95] as implying that Priam put Troilus on a par with the very best of his warrior sons. The description of him in that passage as hippiocharmên is rendered by some authorities as meaning a warrior charioteer rather than merely someone who delights in horses.^[10] The many missing and partial literary sources might include such a hero. Yet only the one ancient vase shows Troilus as a warrior falling in a conventional battle.^[96]

Dares

In Dares, Troilus is the youngest of Priam's royal sons, bellicose when peace or truces are suggested and the equal of Hector in bravery, "large and most beautiful... brave and strong for his age, and eager for glory."^[98] He slaughters many Greeks, wounds Achilles and Menelaus, routs the Myrmidons more than once before his horse falls and traps him and Achilles takes the opportunity to put an end to his life. Memnon rescues the body, something which was not to happen in many later versions of the tale. Troilus' death comes near the end of the war not at its beginning. He now outlives Hector and succeeds him as the Trojans' great leader in battle. Now it is in reaction to Troilus's death that Hecuba plots Achilles' murder.

As the tradition of Troilus the warrior advances through time, the weaponry and the form of combat change. Already in Dares he is a mounted warrior, not a charioteer or foot warrior, something anachronistic to epic narrative.^[99] In later versions he will be a knight with armour appropriate to the time of writing who fights against other knights and dukes. His expected conduct, including his romance, will conform to courtly or other values contemporary to the writing.

Description in medieval texts

The medieval texts follow Dares' structuring of the narrative in describing Troilus after his parents and four royal brothers Hector, Paris, Deiphobus and Helenus.

Joseph of Exeter, in his Daretis Phrygii Ilias De bello Troiano (The Iliad of Dares the Phrygian on the Trojan War), describes the character as follows:

The limbs of Troilus expand and fill his space.
In mind a giant, though a boy in years, he yields
to none in daring deeds with strength in all his parts
his greater glory shines throughout his countenance. ^[100]

Benoît de Sainte-Maure's description in Le Roman de Troie (The Romance of Troy) is too long to quote in full, but influenced the descriptions which follow. Benoît goes into details of character and facial appearance avoided by other writers. He tells that Troilus was "the fairest of the youths of Troy" with:

fair hair, very charming and naturally shining, eyes bright and full of gaiety... He was not insolent or haughty, but light of heart and gay and amorous. Well was he loved, and well did he love...^[101]

Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae (History of the Destruction of Troy) says:

The fifth and last was named Troilus, a young man as courageous as possible in war, about whose valour there are many tales which the present history does not omit later on.^[102]

The Laud Troy Book:

The youngest doughti Troylus
A doughtier man than he was on
Of hem alle was neuere non,-
Save Ector, that was his brother
There never was goten suche another.^[103]

The boy who in the ancient texts was never Achilles' match has now become a young knight, a worthy opponent to the Greeks.

Knight and war leader

In the medieval and renaissance tradition, Troilus is one of those who argue most for war against the Greeks in Priam's council. In several texts, for example the Laud Troy Book, he says that those who disagree with him are better suited to be priests.^[104] Guido, and writers who follow him, have Hector, knowing how headstrong his brother can be, counsel Troilus not to be reckless before the first battle.^[105]

In the medieval texts, Troilus is a doughty knight throughout the war, taking over, as in Dares, after Hector's death as the main warrior on the Trojan side. Indeed he is named as a second Hector by Chaucer and Lydgate.^[106] These two poets follow Boccaccio in reporting that Troilus kills thousands of Greeks.^[107]

In Joseph, Troilus is greater than Alexander, Hector, Tydeus, Bellona and even Mars, and kills seven Greeks with one blow of his club. He does not strike at opponents' legs because that would demean his victory. He only fights knights and nobles, and disdains facing the common warriors.

Albert of Stade saw Troilus as so important that he is the title character of his version of the Trojan War. He is "the wall of his homeland, Troy's protection, the rose of the military...."^[108]

The list of Greek leaders Troilus wounds expands in the various re-tellings of the war from the two in Dares to also include Agamemnon, Diomedes and Menelaus. Guido, in keeping his promise to tell of all Troilus' valorous deeds, describes many incidents. Troilus is usually victorious but is captured in an early battle by Menestheus before his friends rescue him. This incident reappears in the imitators of Guido, such as Lefevre and the Laud and Lydgate Troy Books.^[109]

Death

Within the medieval Trojan tradition, Achilles withdraws from fighting in the war because he is to marry Polyxena. Eventually, so many of his followers are killed that he decides to rejoin the battle leading to Troilus' death and, in turn, to Hecuba, Polyxena and Paris plotting Achilles' murder.

15th century Dutch tapestry of the deaths of Troilus, Achilles and Paris. Near the top of the left panel, the raised sword is held by Achilles who is about to behead the helpless Troilus. At the bottom, he is dragging the headless body behind his horse.^[110]

Albert and Joseph follow Dares in having Achilles behead Troilus as he tries to rise after his horse falls. In Guido and authors he influenced, Achilles specifically seeks out Troilus to avenge a previous encounter where Troilus has wounded him. He therefore instructs the Myrmidons to find Troilus, surround him and cut him off from rescue.

In the Laud Troy Book, this is because Achilles almost killed Troilus in the previous fight but the Trojan was rescued. Achilles wants to make sure that this does not happen again. This second combat is fought as a straight duel between the two with Achilles, the greater warrior, winning.

In Guido, Lefevre and Lydgate Troilus' killer's behaviour is very different, shorn of any honour. Achilles waits until his men have killed Troilus' horse and cut loose his armour. Only then

And when he sawe how Troilus nakid stod,
Of longe fightyng awaped and amaat
And from his folke alone disolat
- Lydgate, Troy Book, iv, 2756-8.

does Achilles attack and behead him.

In an echo of the Iliad, Achilles drags the corpse behind his horse. Thus, the comparison with the Homeric Hector is heightened and, at the same time, aspects of the classical Troilus's fate are echoed.

The lover

A Pre-Raphaelite interpretation by Edward Burne-Jones in the Kelmscott Chaucer, designed by William Morris.

The last aspect of the character of Troilus to develop in the tradition has become the one for which he is best known. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida both focus on Troilus in his role as a lover. This theme is first introduced by Benoît de Sainte-Maure in the Roman de Troie and developed by Guido delle Colonne. Boccaccio's Il Filostrato is the first book to take the love-story as its main theme. Robert Henryson and John Dryden are other authors who dedicate works to it.

The story of Troilus' romance developed within the context of the male-centred conventions of courtly love and thus the focus of sympathy was to be Troilus and not his beloved.^[111] As different authors recreated the romance, they would interpret it in ways affected both by the perspectives of their own times and their individual preoccupations. The story as it would later develop through the works of Boccaccio, Chaucer and Shakespeare is summarised below.

The story of Troilus and Cressida

Troilus used to mock the foolishness of other young men's love affairs. But one day he sees Cressida in the temple of Athena and falls in love with her. She is a young widow and daughter of the priest Calchas who has defected to the Greek camp.

Embarrassed at having become exactly the sort of person he used to ridicule, Troilus tries to keep his love secret. However, he pines for Cressida and becomes so withdrawn that his friend Pandarus asks why he is unhappy and eventually persuades Troilus to reveal his love.

Pandarus offers to act as a go-between, even though he is Cressida's relative and should be guarding her honour. Pandarus convinces Cressida to admit that she returns Troilus' love and, with Pandarus's help, the two are able to consummate their feelings for each other.

Their happiness together is brought to an end when Calchas persuades Agamemnon to arrange Cressida's return to him as part of a hostage exchange in which the captive Trojan Antenor is freed. The two lovers are distraught and even think of eloping together but they finally cooperate with the exchange. Despite Cressida's initial intention to remain faithful to Troilus, the Greek warrior Diomedes wins her heart. When Troilus learns of this, he seeks revenge on Diomedes and the Greeks and death in battle. Just as Cressida betrayed Troilus, Antenor was later to betray Troy.

Benoît and Guido

In the Roman de Troie, the daughter of Calchas whom Troilus loves is called Briseis. Their relationship is first mentioned once the hostage exchange has been agreed:

Whoever had joy or gladness, Troilus suffered affliction and grief. That was for the daughter of Calchas, for he loved her deeply. He had set his whole heart on her; so mightily was he possessed by his love that he thought only of her. She had given herself to him, both her body and her love. Most men knew of that.^[112]

In Guido, Troilus' and Diomedes' love is now called Briseida. His version (a history) is more moralistic and less touching, removing the psychological complexity of Benoît's (a romance) and the focus in his retelling of the love triangle is firmly shifted to the betrayal of Troilus by Briseida. Although Briseida and Diomedes are most negatively caricatured by Guido's moralising, even Troilus is subject to criticism as a "fatuous youth" prone, as in the following, to youthful faults.^[113]

Troilus, however, after he had learned of his father's intention to go ahead and release Briseida and restore her to the Greeks, was overwhelmed and completely wracked by great grief, and almost entirely consumed by tears, anguished sighs, and laments, because he cherished her with the great fervour of youthful love and had been led by the excessive ardour of love into the intense longing of blazing passion. There was no one of his dear ones who could console him.^[114]

Briseis, at least for now, is equally affected by the possibility of separation from her lover. Troilus goes to her room and they spend the night together, trying to comfort each other. Troilus is part of the escort to hand her over the next day. Once she is with the Greeks, Diomedes is immediately struck by her beauty. Although she is not hostile, she cannot accept him as her lover. Meanwhile Calchas tells her to accept for herself that the gods have decreed Troy's fall and that she is safer now she is with the Greeks.

A battle soon takes place and Diomedes unseats Troilus from his horse. The Greek sends it as a gift to Briseis/Briseida with an explanation that it had belonged to her old lover. In Benoît, Briseis complains at Diomedes' seeking to woo her by humbling Troilus, but in Guido all that remains of her long speech in Benoît is that she "cannot hold him in hatred who loves me with such purity of heart." ^[115]

Diomedes soon does win her heart. In Benoît, it is through his display of love and she gives him her glove as a token. Troilus seeks him out in battle and utterly defeats him. He saves Diomedes' life, only so that he can bring her a message of Troilus' contempt. In Guido, Briseida's change of heart comes after Troilus wounds Diomedes seriously. Briseida tends Diomedes and then decides to take him as her lover, because she does not know if she will ever meet Troilus again.

In later medieval tellings of the war, the episode of Troilus and Briseida/Cressida is acknowledged and often given as a reason for Diomedes and Troilus to seek each other out in battle. The love story also becomes one that is told separately.

Boccaccio

The opening of Canto 2 from a 14th century manuscript of Il Filostrato. The illustration shows Pandarus visiting Troilus whose unrequited love has made him take to his bed. Codex Christianei, Ex Bibliotheca Gymnasii Altonani (Hamburg).

Main article: Il Filostrato

The first major work to take the story of Troilus' failed love as its central theme is Giovanni Boccaccio's Il Filostrato.^[116] The title means "the one struck down by love".^[117] There is an overt purpose to the text. In the proem, Boccaccio himself is Filostrato and addresses his own love who has rejected him.^[118]

Boccaccio introduces a number of features of the story that were to be taken up by Chaucer. Most obvious is that Troilus' love is now called Criseida or Cressida.^[119] An innovation in the narrative is the introduction of the go-between Pandarus. Troilus is characterised as a young man who expresses whatever moods he has strongly, weeping when his love is unsuccessful, generous when it is.

Boccaccio fills in the history before the hostage exchange as follows. Troilus mocks the lovelorn glances of other men who put their trust in women before falling victim to love himself when he sees Cressida, here a young widow, in the Palladium, the temple of Athena. Troilus keeps his love secret and is made miserable by it. Pandarus, Troilus' best friend and Cressida's cousin in this version of the story, acts as go-between after persuading Troilus to explain his distress. In accordance with the conventions of courtly love, Troilus' love remains secret from all except Pandarus,^[120] until Cassandra eventually divines the reason for Troilus' subsequent distress.

After the hostage exchange is agreed, Troilus suggests elopement, but Cressida argues that he should not abandon Troy and that she should protect her honour. Instead, she promises to meet him within ten days. Troilus spends much of the intervening time on the city walls, sighing in the direction where Cressida has gone. No horses or sleeves, as used by Guido or Benoît, are involved in Troilus' learning of Cressida's change of heart. Instead a dream hints at what has happened, and then the truth is confirmed when a brooch - previously a gift from Troilus to Cressida - is found on Diomedes' looted clothing. In the mean time, Cressida has kept up the pretence in their correspondence that she still loves Troilus. After Cressida's betrayal is confirmed, Troilus becomes ever fiercer in battle.

Chaucer and his successors

Main article: Troilus and Criseyde

Chaucer reciting his Troilus. Frontispiece from early 15th century manuscript of Troilus and Criseyde, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde^[121] reflects a more humorous world-view than Boccaccio's poem. Chaucer does not have his own wounded love to display and therefore allows himself an ironic detachment from events and Criseyde is more sympathetically portrayed.^[122] In contrast to Boccaccio's final canto which returns to the poet's own situation, Chaucer's palinode has Troilus looking down laughing from heaven, finally aware of the meaninglessness of earthly emotions. About a third of the lines of the Troilus are adapted from the much shorter Il Filostrato, leaving room for a more detailed and characterised narrative.^[123]

Chaucer's Cressida is swayed by Diomedes playing on her fear. Pandarus is now her uncle, more worldly-wise and more active in what happens and so Troilus is more passive.^[124] Another difference in Troilus' characterisation from the Filostrato is that he is no longer misogynistic in the beginning. Instead of mocking lovers because of their putting trust in women, he mocks them because of how love affects them.^[125] Troilus' vision of love is stark: total commitment offers total fulfilment; any form of failure means total rejection. He is unable to comprehend the subtleties and complexities that underlie Criseyde's vacillations and Pandarus' manoeuvrings.^[126]

In his storytelling Chaucer links the fates of Troy and Troilus, the mutual downturn in fortune following the exchange of Criseyde for the treacherous Antenor being the most significant parallel.^[127] Little has changed in the general sweep of the plot from Boccaccio. Things are just more detailed, with Pandarus, for example, involving Priam's middle son Deiphobus during his attempts to unite Troilus and Cressida. Another scene that Chaucer adds was to be reworked by Shakespeare. In it, Pandarus seeks to persuade Cressida of Troilus' virtues over those of Hector, before uncle and niece witness Troilus returning from battle to public acclaim with much damage to his helmet. Chaucer also includes details from the earlier narratives. So, reference is made not just to Boccaccio's brooch, but to the glove, the captured horse and the battles of the two lovers in Benoît and Guido.

Because of the great success of the Troilus, the love story was popular as a free standing tale to be retold by English-language writers throughout the 15th and 16th centuries and into the 17th century. The theme was treated either seriously or in burlesque. For many authors, true Troilus, false Cresseid and pandering Pandarus became ideal types eventually to be referred to together as such in Shakespeare.^[128]

During the same period, English retellings of the broader theme of the Trojan War tended to avoid Boccaccio's and Chaucer's additions to the story, though their authors, including Caxton, commonly acknowledged Chaucer as a respected predecessor. John Lydgate's Troy Book is an exception.^[129] Pandarus is one of the elements from Chaucer's poem that Lydgate incorporates, but Guido provides his overall narrative framework. As with other authors, Lydgate's treatment contrasts Troilus' steadfastness in all things with Cressida's fickleness. The events of the war and the love story are interwoven. Troilus' prowess in battle markedly increases once he becomes aware that Diomedes is beginning to win Cressida's heart, but it is not long after Diomedes final victory in love when Achilles and his Myrmidon's treacherously attack and kill Troilus and maltreat his corpse, concluding Lydgate's treatment of the character as an epic hero.^[130]

Of all the treatments of the story of Troilus and, especially, Cressida in the period between Chaucer and Shakespeare, it is Robert Henryson's that receives the most attention from modern critics. His poem The Testament of Cresseid is described by the Middle English expert C. David Benson as the "only fifteenth century poem written in Great Britain that begins to rival the moral and artistic complexity of Chaucer's Troilus".^[131] In the Testament the title-character is abandoned by Diomedes and then afflicted with leprosy so that she becomes unrecognizable to Troilus. He pities the lepers she is with and is generous to her because she reminds him of the idol of her in his mind, but he remains the virtuous pagan knight and does not achieve the redemption that she does. Even so, following Henryson Troilus was seen as a representation of generosity.^[132]

Shakespeare and Dryden

Main article: Troilus and Cressida

Troilus and Cressida in Pandarus' orchard. Valentine Walter Bromley after Shakespeare.

Another approach to Troilus' love story in the centuries following Chaucer is to treat Troilus as a fool, something Shakespeare does in allusions to him in plays leading up to Troilus and Cressida.^[133] In Shakespeare's "problem play"^[134] there are elements of Troilus the fool. However this can be excused by his age. He is an almost beardless youth, unable to fully understand the workings of his own emotions, in the middle of an adolescent infatuation, more in love with love and his image of Cressida than the real woman herself.^[135] He displays a mixture of idealism about eternally faithful lovers and of realism, condemning Hector's "vice of mercy".^[136] His concept of love involves both a desire for immediate sexual gratification and a belief in eternal faithfulness.^[137] He also displays a mixture of constancy, (in love and supporting the continuation of war) and inconsistency (changing his mind twice in the first scene on whether to go to battle or not). More a Hamlet than a Romeo,^[138] by the end of the play his illusions of love shattered and Hector dead, Troilus might show signs of maturing, recognising the nature of the world, rejecting Pandarus and focusing on revenge for his brother's death rather than for a broken heart or a stolen horse.^[139] The novelist and academic Joyce Carol Oates, on the other hand, sees Troilus as beginning and ending the play in frenzies - of love and then hatred. For her, Troilus is unable to achieve the equilibrium of a tragic hero despite his learning experiences, because he remains a human-being who belongs to a banal world where love is compared to food and cooking and sublimity cannot be achieved.^[140]

Troilus and Cressida's sources include Chaucer, Lydgate, Caxton and Homer,^[141] but there are creations of Shakespeare's own too and his tone is very different. Shakespeare wrote at a time when the traditions of courtly love were dead and when England was undergoing political and social change.^[142] Shakespeare's treatment of the theme of Troilus' love is much more cynical than Chaucer's, and the character of Pandarus is now grotesque. Indeed, all the heroes of the Trojan War are degraded and mocked.^[143] Troilus' actions are subject to the gaze and commentary of both the venal Pandarus and of the cynical Thersites who tells us:

...That dissembling abominable varlet Diomed has got that same scurvy, doting, foolish knave's sleeve of Troy there in his helm. I would fain see them meet, that that same young Trojan ass, that loves the whore there, might send that Greekish whoremasterly villain with the sleeve back to the dissembling luxurious drab of a sleeveless errand... ^[144]

Thersites (far left with torch) watches Ulysses restraining Troilus as Diomedes seduces Cressida, Angelica Kauffmann, Scene from illustrated Troilus and Cressida edition, 1789.

The action is compressed and truncated, beginning in medias res with Pandarus already working for Troilus and praising his virtues to Cressida over those of the other knights they see returning from battle, but comically mistaking him for Deiphobus. The Trojan lovers are together only one night before the hostage exchange takes place. They exchange a glove and a sleeve as love tokens, but the next night Ulysses takes Troilus to Calchas' tent, significantly near Menelaus' tent.^[145] There they witness Diomedes successfully seducing Cressida after taking Troilus' sleeve from her. The young Trojan struggles with what his eyes and ears tell him, wishing not to believe it. Having previously considered abandoning the senselessness of war in favour of his role of lover and having then sought to reconcile love and knightly conduct, he is now left with war as his only role.^[146]

Both the fights between Troilus and Diomedes from the traditional narrative of Benoît and Guido take place the next day in Shakespeare's retelling. Diomedes captures Troilus' horse in the first fight and sends it to Cressida. Then the Trojan triumphs in the second, though Diomedes escapes. But in a deviation from this narrative it is Hector, not Troilus, whom the Myrmidons surround in the climatic battle of the play and whose body is dragged behind Achilles' horse. Troilus himself is left alive vowing revenge for Hector's death and rejecting Pandarus. Troilus' story ends, as it began, in medias res with him and the remaining characters in his love-triangle remaining alive.

Some seventy years after Shakespeare's Troilus was first presented, John Dryden re-worked it as a tragedy, in his view strengthening Troilus' character and indeed the whole play, by removing many of the unresolved t