Editing Troilus (section)

===The standard myth: the beautiful Troilus murdered===
[[Image:Akhilleus Troilos Louvre E703.jpg|thumb|left|350px|alt=A painted strip running between the handles on the shoulders of a flask. A man wearing a greek-style helmet pulls a naked youth from one of a pair of horses. In the man's other hand is a raised sword. Behind the man, water pours form a lion's head fountain.|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.]]
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]].<ref>Apollo's parentage first appears in a 2nd century AD text. [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Apollod.+3.12.5 Apollod.+3.12.5]</ref> 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<ref>This Homeric epithet is picked out as applying to Achilles in this context both in March (1998: p.389) and Sommerstein (2007: p.197).</ref> 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 (mythology)|Paris]] strike Achilles with the arrow that pierces his [[Achilles' heel|heel]].