Troilus- Greek FigureMortal"Delighter in Horses"

The Prophecy

Troilus was the youngest of Priam's sons, though Apollodorus names Apollo as his true father. An oracle declared that Troy could never fall if Troilus reached the age of twenty. The city's fate hung on a boy's birthday.

Homer mentions him only once. In the Iliad, Priam mourns his dead sons and names "Troilus, delighting in horses." The lost Cypria, known through Proclus' summary, told his death among the early events of the war.

The Fountain

Achilles ambushed Troilus near the sanctuary of Apollo Thymbraios outside Troy's walls. The boy was exercising his horses at a fountain by the sacred precinct, his sister Polyxena beside him. Achilles sprang from hiding, ran him down on foot, and dragged him to Apollo's altar. He cut him down there, inside the god's own sanctuary.

Apollo did not forget. The sacrilege at his altar became one of the reasons the god turned against Achilles. When Paris loosed the arrow that found Achilles' heel, it was Apollo who guided it home.

Virgil preserves the image in the Aeneid: Aeneas, newly arrived at Carthage, finds Troilus carved on the walls of Juno's temple. The boy is dragged behind his own horses, his spear trailing in the dust.