1.1 The Death of Troilus in Pictorial Art

Troilus’ fatal encounter with Achilles is, as Georg Danek observes, ‘one of the best attested myths of archaic pictorial art’.Footnote ¹⁰ Indeed, Achilles’ ambush, pursuit and murder of Troilus in fact ‘constitute some of the most popular and also the earliest known depictions of the Epic Cycle’.Footnote ¹¹ Artists focussed on four scenes: the ambush, the pursuit, the murder and the ensuing confrontation with Troilus’ defenders.Footnote ¹² Collectively, pictorial representations of Troilus’ death tell a clear and consistent story, which can be summarized briefly. Achilles crouches in ambush behind a fountain and/or tree in the Trojan countryside. Troilus and his sister Polyxena approach, with or without attendants, to fill water jugs and to water Troilus’ horse(s).Footnote ¹³ When Achilles emerges from his hiding place, Polyxena drops her water jug and runs away. Troilus rides away on horseback, as Achilles pursues on foot.Footnote ¹⁴ Achilles eventually catches up with him at a sanctuary of Apollo, where he cuts off his head. When several Trojan warriors arrive to confront Achilles, he throws Troilus’ severed head at them.Footnote ¹⁵ Given both the popularity of the myth in archaic and classical visual art and the consistency with which the myth was depicted across time and space, there can be ‘no doubt’, as Danek writes, ‘that the painters of the images were referring to a narrative that was largely fixed in its course […]. In other words, what the painters referred to and assumed to be known to viewers of the paintings was a single, almost canonical, version of the myth.’Footnote ¹⁶

Troilus’ encounter with Achilles was depicted in pictorial art at least as early as the beginning of the seventh century b.c.e. Among the earliest depictions are three Protocorinthian aryballoi, two of which show Achilles pursuing Troilus as the latter tries to escape on horseback;Footnote ¹⁷ the other shows Achilles crouching in ambush before Troilus, who reins in his horse at the sight of him.Footnote ¹⁸ Other seventh-century representations of the myth include two bronze reliefs from Olympia, each showing an armed Achilles preparing to kill a naked Troilus at the altar of Apollo,Footnote ¹⁹ and a fragment of a relief pithos from Tinos which appears to show an armed Achilles waiting in ambush as Polyxena flees from him.Footnote ²⁰ All known representations of the myth from the seventh century depict Troilus’ death as a murder resulting from an ambush. The fact that these early depictions of the myth were spread over a broad geographical area and represent the same series of scenes in similar ways—and that seventh-century artists could expect viewers to recognize the myth on the basis of sparse visual clues—Footnote ²¹ suggests that the story of Troilus’ ambush was already well established by the Early Archaic period.Footnote ²²

We are particularly well informed about how visual artists in the next century conceived of Troilus’ death.Footnote ²³ From the first three quarters of the sixth century, we have eighty-eight depictions of the myth, all of which present Troilus’ death as an ambush: thirty-nine develop a moment from the ambush itself, another thirty-nine highlight the pursuit and ten others show the killing and/or subsequent confrontation in Apollo's sanctuary. The final quarter of the sixth century yields fourteen depictions of Troilus’ fatal encounter with Achilles, including thirteen images that clearly represent the encounter as an ambush and one apparent outlier, an Attic red-figure kylix, attributed to Oltos, showing an unnamed warrior spearing a beardless, partially armed Troilus (named), who has fallen to a knee as he attempts to unsheathe his sword. Behind him, a fully armed Aeneas (also named) threatens Troilus’ attacker with a spear.Footnote ²⁴ Given the presence of a four-horse chariot on the other side of the vessel and the depiction of Troilus with military equipment (a shield, a sheathed sword and a helmet pushed up over his eyes), several scholars have reasonably interpreted the painting as a depiction of a battlefield encounter.Footnote ²⁵

While the popularity of the myth declined steadily after the Archaic period, all seventy-two pictorial depictions of the myth from the fifth and fourth centuries present Troilus’ death as an ambush occurring outside the context of battle. Thereafter, the myth all but disappears from the material record until the second century b.c.e., when Achilles’ ambush of Troilus became a popular subject for Etruscan visual artists.Footnote ²⁶ Though Etruscan artists put their own unique stamp on the myth, its structural core remained unchanged.Footnote ²⁷

1.2 The Death of Troilus in Post-Homeric Literature

The earliest known literary depiction of Troilus’ death is in the Cypria, which, though only fragmentarily preserved, clearly presented it as an event occurring outside the context of pitched battle. Proclus’ summary makes clear that Achilles killed Troilus during the long period when the inhabitants of Ilios refused to engage the Achaeans in pitched battle, prompting Achilles to conduct raids and ambushes throughout the Troad (Cypria arg. lines 55–64 Bernabé):

That the Cypria presented Troilus’ murder as part of ‘a sequence of narrative incidents which take place off the battlefield and in a context of siege’ clearly suggests, as Lambrou points out, ‘that Achilles ambushes the Trojan prince while the latter is carrying out some non-military business, just as he ambushes both Aeneas and Lycaon’.Footnote ²⁹

Another early depiction of Troilus’ death is Ibycus fr. S224.7–8 PMGF, preserved in a second-century c.e. papyrus commentary (P.Oxy. 2637) in which Ibycus’ description of Troilus’ death at Apollo's altar is quoted and elucidated. While the quotation from Ibycus’ poem itself indicates only that an unnamed ‘boy like the gods’ (παίδα] θ̣εοῖς̣ ἴ̣κ̣[ελον) was ‘killed outside the citadel of Ilios’ (τὸ]ν περγάμω̣ν ἔκτοσ̣θεν Ἰλίο̣[υ κτάνε), the commentator's paraphrase—‘He killed Troilus outside the city in the sanctuary of Apollo Thymbraeus’ (ἀ̣νεῖ̣λεν τὸν Τρωίλον ἐκτ[ὸς τῆς πό]λεως ἐν τῷ τοῦ Θυμβραίου ἱ[ερῷ)—suggests that Ibycus’ poem depicted Achilles’ ambush and murder of Troilus somewhere outside Ilios, perhaps specifically in the sanctuary of Apollo Thymbraeus, if the commentator's paraphrase reflects details expressed elsewhere in the poem.Footnote ³⁰

Sophocles also depicted Troilus’ death as the result of an ambush by Achilles, as is clear from the exegetical T-scholium to Il. 24.257, which notes that ‘Sophocles in Troilus says that he [sc. Troilus] was ambushed by Achilles while exercising his horses by the Thymbraeum and died.’ Based on the available evidence, Sommerstein reconstructs Sophocles’ version of Troilus’ death as follows: After taking their horses out for a ride, Troilus and his tutor stop at a fountain near the sanctuary of Apollo Thymbraeus, where they are ambushed by Achilles. Troilus flees on horseback in the direction of the Thymbraeum. Achilles catches up with Troilus at the sanctuary, kills him and mutilates his corpse.Footnote ³¹ This reconstruction is corroborated by Aristonicus’ remark that ‘the post-Homeric poets’—including, presumably, Sophocles—‘depicted Troilus as being chased while mounted on horseback’ (Σ A [Ariston.] Il. 24.257b).

The next extant reference to the death of Troilus occurs in Lycophron's Alexandra, where Cassandra foresees ‘a savage serpent’ (i.e. Achilles) beheading ‘your well-nourished scion … sweet delight of your family’ (i.e. Troilus) on the altar of his ‘father’ (i.e. Apollo) (Alex. 307–13). A scholiast elucidates Cassandra's cryptic speech as follows (Σ Lycoph. 307a Leone):

As this explanation makes clear, Cassandra's prophecy implies that Troilus’ death will occur at the sanctuary of Apollo, not on the battlefield.

Following their predecessors, Apollodorus and Dio Chrysostom also present Troilus’ death as the result of an ambush. Apollodorus’ Epitome states that ‘Achilles ambushed Troilus and murdered him in the sanctuary of Thymbraean Apollo’ (3.32). Similarly, in the Trojan Oration, Dio Chrysostom makes clear that Achilles killed Troilus outside the context of battle (Or. 11.77):

The earliest work of literature that could plausibly be said to depict Troilus’ demise as a battlefield encounter is Virgil's Aeneid. Among the scenes that Aeneas sees depicted on the temple of Juno in Carthage is the death of Troilus, which the narrator describes as follows (1.474–8):

Virgil takes elements familiar from the popular ambush story, wherein Troilus uses the speed of a horse to flee Achilles’ attack, but adds details that seem to reflect a martial context, namely the presence of a chariot and a spear and the indication that Troilus had been equipped with additional military equipment before his encounter with Achilles.

While these details have reasonably been taken to suggest that Troilus initially tried to stand his ground, or even that he and Achilles met in the course of pitched battle,Footnote ³² the circumstances under which Troilus and Achilles encountered one another are difficult to piece together.Footnote ³³ If Virgil intended to imply a battle context, in what scenario are we to imagine that a mere boy (puer) has entered battle? Under what circumstances has Troilus lost his arma, and what exactly does arma refer to? If Troilus had been equipped for pitched battle, he should have had a helmet, a breastplate, a shield, a sword, a spear and greaves.Footnote ³⁴ Are we to imagine that Troilus has voluntarily discarded some or all of his defensive gear, including his helmet (1.477–8)?Footnote ³⁵ Or has Achilles violently disarmed him of everything but a spear? Does the spear in question even belong to Troilus, or does it in fact belong to Achilles, as Servius thought?Footnote ³⁶ Finally, what has made Troilus fall backwards? Did he receive a frontal blow that launched him backwards off his car, after which point his horses turned and fled? Or has Achilles chased him down and dragged him to the ground as he attempts to flee, as in the ambush story? In fact, while Virgil's version of Troilus’ death is most commonly taken as a depiction of a battlefield encounter, several prominent critics have emphasized its compatibility with the ambush story.Footnote ³⁷ Williams argues this point at length,Footnote ³⁸ and Austin reconstructs the scene as an ambush in which Troilus happens to have been armed ‘when Achilles surprised him’.Footnote ³⁹

However we interpret Virgil's idiosyncratic presentation of Troilus’ death, there is little reason to assume that the elements that make his version unique owe their origin to a pre-existing tradition, stretching back to Homer, in which the young Trojan prince died in battle.Footnote ⁴⁰ To the contrary, it seems more plausible to regard Virgil as an innovator than as a follower of a mythological tradition for which we have no compelling evidence.Footnote ⁴¹ Servius, for one, clearly viewed Virgil's treatment of the myth as an innovation, remarking (on Aen. 1.474) that Virgil changed (mutauit) the popular story from one in which Achilles lures Troilus into a trap and kills him to one in which (on Servius’ reading) Achilles skewers Troilus with a spear through the chest, knocking him off his chariot as he tries to flee. Indeed, Virgil's idiosyncratic treatment of the Troilus myth would accord with his innovative and un-Homeric depiction of Achilles’ abuse of Hector's body later in the same passage (Aen. 1.483–4); whereas Homer shows Achilles dragging Hector's corpse around the tomb of Patroclus (Il. 24.14–16, 50–2, 416–17, 755–6), Virgil has him do so around the walls of Troy.Footnote ⁴²

While it seems unwarranted to deduce from the Aeneid that two distinct versions of the Troilus myth had coexisted since the Archaic period, it is clear that by the second century c.e., Troilus’ death could be depicted either as the result of an ambush or as a casualty of battle. Thus, while Apollodorus (Epit. 3.32), Dio Chrysostom (Or. 11.77), Libanius (Decl. 5.12), Servius (on Aen. 1.474), the First Vatican Mythographer (1.207) and Eustathius (Il. 24.251 [van der Valk 4.897.28–898.1]) all present Troilus’ fatal encounter with Achilles as an ambush, Dictys of Crete (P.Teb. 628.1–18 ≃ Septimius 4.9), Ausonius (12.18), Quintus of Smyrna (4.418–35) and Dares Phrygius (33) all represent Troilus as dying in battle.Footnote ⁴³ If we leave aside accounts that are strongly anti-Homeric (i.e. Dictys and Dares),Footnote ⁴⁴ as well as those that are obvious reworkings of Virgil (i.e. Ausonius),Footnote ⁴⁵ we are left only with Quintus of Smyrna, whose familiarity with the Aeneid, whether in the original or in translation,Footnote ⁴⁶ has gained increasingly wide acceptance in recent decades.Footnote ⁴⁷ The possibility that Quintus was influenced by Virgil's treatment of Troilus’ death in particular gains plausibility from the fact that the simile that Quintus uses to describe Achilles’ slaying of Troilus (Quint. Smyrn. 4.423–9) appears to be an adaptation of Virgil's reworking of a Homeric simile (Aen. 9.434–7; Il. 8.306–7).Footnote ⁴⁸ Ultimately, then, most, if not all, literary depictions of Troilus’ death as a battlefield encounter can plausibly be traced back either to Virgil's Aeneid or to one of two pseudographical works of Homeric revisionism, which sought to provide alternatives to Homer's account of the Trojan War.

In any case, between the composition of the Iliad in the late eighth or early seventh century b.c.e. and the composition of the Aeneid in the latter half of the first century b.c.e., all but one of more than two hundred pictorial and literary depictions of Troilus’ fatal encounter with Achilles portray that event as an ambush located off the battlefield. Given that the story of Troilus’ ambush seems to have been well established by the time of the Iliad's composition, strong internal evidence would be required to show that the poet of the Iliad conceived of Troilus’ death as a battlefield casualty rather than as an ambush.

2.1 The Case for the Death-in-Battle Interpretation

The case for the death-in-battle interpretation of Il. 24.255–62 rests on three arguments. The first is that Priam's statement that ‘Ares has destroyed’ (ἀπώλεσ᾽ ἄρης) all his best sons, including Mestor, Troilus and Hector, implies that Troilus died fighting in pitched battle.Footnote ⁴⁹ Whether Troilus was ambushed and decapitated by a hostile invader in the Trojan countryside or cut down in the course of battle, Priam's inclusion of Troilus among those of his sons whom ‘Ares has destroyed’ is sensible and appropriate. In either case, Troilus can reasonably be described as a victim of war—and, by metonymy, of Ares.

Another argument offered by proponents of the death-in-battle interpretation is that Priam's inclusion of Troilus among his ‘best sons’ (υἷας ἀρίστους) implies that he was an accomplished warrior on par with Hector and, consequently, that he must have died in battle. Zindel, for example, notes that ‘The superlative ἄριστος can hardly refer to anything other than the courage and bravery of the three sons.’Footnote ⁵⁰ Similarly, Gioseffi ascribes to Priam the belief that Troilus, Mestor and Hector were ‘most effective in the defence of the city’.Footnote ⁵¹ While it is true that the adjective ἄριστος is often applied in the Iliad to men who excel in war, especially when it is used substantively, its meaning is by no means restricted to martial valour. That Priam includes Troilus among his best sons does not necessarily imply that Troilus was a talented and experienced warrior, much less that he died in battle; rather, it suggests that Troilus surpassed his brothers in some of the qualities for which sons are valued. Indeed, when Priam criticizes his surviving sons, he focusses not on their cowardice or lack of martial prowess, but rather on their penchant for lying, dancing and thieving (24.261–2). The collective nature of Priam's speech is also worth emphasizing. Priam's inclusion of Troilus among his best sons who have been destroyed by Ares is, as Thompson writes, ‘used in the context of Priam mourning the collective group of his sons killed during the Trojan war. It is reasonable to suggest that Troilus is being grouped together with his brothers for the sake of narrative economy, and that the more important point here is to convey that a number of young men have died during the course of the war.’Footnote ⁵²

Given that Mestor, Troilus and Hector are all killed by Achilles, it also seems likely that Priam is grouping together those of his sons whom Achilles has killed. As a final consideration, it seems that Priam's speech—the emotional speech of a grief-stricken father—should be read in the context of the deeply rooted cultural convention according to which the living were judged against the exaggerated standards of the dead. As Thucydides’ Pericles warns the sons and brothers of the recently deceased (2.45.1):

While Priam may have counted Troilus among his best sons even while he was alive, Priam's assessment of his sons’ merits is surely coloured by emotion and convention.

The third and final argument made in support of the death-in-battle interpretation is that Priam's use of the epithet ἱππιοχάρμης suggests that Troilus was a mature warrior and hence that he died in the course of battle.Footnote ⁵³ This (tenuous) reasoning stems, in turn, from the belief that ἱππιοχάρμης refers to a ‘warrior charioteer’,Footnote ⁵⁴ a common but loose rendering of a word whose etymology and meaning are disputed. Common though this interpretation is, it is not as secure as its widespread acceptance might suggest. The precise meaning of the ἱππιοχάρμης eluded ancient critics and lexicographers, who consistently cited both definitions.Footnote ⁵⁵ Apollonios Sophista, for example, glosses ἱππιοχάρμης as ‘either “delighting in horses” or “fighting on horses”’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Despite the work of modern linguists, the word remains equivocal still.Footnote ⁵⁷ While the etymology of the compound is clear (from ἵππος [‘horse’]Footnote ⁵⁸ and χαίρω [‘take pleasure in’]), it is uncertain whether -χάρμης reflects χάρμη (‘ardour [for battle]’)Footnote ⁵⁹ or χάρμα (‘object of joy’, ‘joy’).Footnote ⁶⁰ If it derives from χάρμη, then ἱππιοχάρμης would be a noun referring to one's ‘ardour for battle involving horses’.Footnote ⁶¹ If, on the other hand, it derives from χάρμα, it would be an adjective describing one who ‘delights in horses’. The latter interpretation gains support from Pindar's use of ἱπποχάρμας (Ol. 1.23), apparently in reference to Hiero's well-known interest in horses and horse-racing.Footnote ⁶²

Moreover, even if Priam wished to refer to his son as a ‘warrior charioteer’, why should this designation be taken to reveal the manner of Troilus’ death? Neither Mestor's epithet, ‘godlike’ (Il. 24.257), nor Hector's characterization as a ‘god among men’ (Il. 24.258) contains any indication about the circumstances of their deaths. A reference to Troilus as a warrior might imply that Homer conceived of Troilus as an adult with military experience,Footnote ⁶³ but neither Troilus’ age nor his martial prowess has any bearing on the likelihood that Achilles ambushed him. Indeed, the Iliad refers to Achilles’ ambushes of Isus, Antiphus, Lycaon and Aeneas, all men of fighting age. Even Hector is said to have died from an ambush by Achilles in post-Homeric depictions of his death.Footnote ⁶⁴

In short, it is hard to believe that any ancient audience member, for whom Troilus’ death by ambush was likely traditional,Footnote ⁶⁵ would have concluded on the basis of Il. 24.255–62 that its author meant to imply a different version of Troilus’ death than the one depicted so frequently in archaic and classical art and literature.

2.2 What About Mestor?

If proponents of the death-in-battle interpretation are right to claim that Priam's inclusion of Troilus among his ‘best sons’ whom ‘Ares has destroyed’ suggests that Troilus died in the course of battle, then the same reasoning should necessarily apply to the other sons whom Priam names alongside Troilus, namely Mestor and Hector. As a brave son who died in battle, Hector clearly meets both criteria. But what about Mestor? Named only here in the Iliad, Mestor does not make another appearance in the surviving record until Apollodorus’ Epitome, where he is said to have died in the spurs of Mount Ida when Achilles came to raid the cattle of Aeneas (3.32):

Dio Chrysostom describes Mestor's fate similarly in his Trojan Oration. Describing the first nine years of the Trojan War following the initial battle for the beachhead, he writes (11.77–8):

According to the only two sources that describe Mestor's death, then, Mestor and Troilus died in the same way: both were ambushed by Achilles outside the context of battle. Adherents of the death-in-battle interpretation are thus faced with a serious obstacle: two of the three sons named by Priam were traditionally depicted as having died outside of a martial context. It is, in other words, hard to reconcile the death-in-battle interpretation with the later tradition. Why, if the Iliad implies that Troilus died in battle, would that version of the story not appear elsewhere before the first century b.c.e.? And why, if the Iliad suggests that Mestor was a battlefield casualty, would later sources consistently depict his death as the result of an ambush on the spurs of Mount Ida?