Trojan princess in Greek mythology
Polyxena
Polyxena is a princess of Greek mythology, the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her sacrifice on the tomb of Achilles made her one of the most tragic figures of the Trojan War.
The myth
According to tradition, an oracle declared that Troy would not fall if her brother Troilus reached the age of twenty. When Polyxena and Troilus were ambushed, the young prince was killed by Achilles, but she escaped. Achilles then became drawn to the princess, though accounts differ on how that love began: during the ambush, at a rite for Apollo, at Hector's tomb, or after Hector's death, when she offered her jewels or herself to help recover his body.
In return for her hand, Achilles was said to have promised to persuade the Greeks to abandon the siege. Polyxena learned the secret of his vulnerable heel, and when he went to meet her at the temple of Apollo Thymbraeus, Paris, and in some versions Deiphobus, shot him there. After the sack of Troy, Achilles' ghost demanded her sacrifice before the Greek fleet could sail home. Euripides and Ibycus say Neoptolemus slit her throat over the tomb; in Euripides she dies with dignity, refusing to be a slave, and covers her body as she falls. The Cypria, however, says Odysseus and Diomedes wounded her during the sack and that Neoptolemus buried her. A minority version has her taking her own life on Achilles' tomb out of love.
The sacrifice was also understood as a plea for winds to carry the fleet home, paralleling the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis.
Legacy
Her death was a popular subject in painting. She appears in medieval illustrations of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, in Primaticcio's cycle at the Château of Fontainebleau (1541-1547), and gained popularity in the Baroque with works by Pietro da Cortona (1625) and Charles Le Brun (1647). In the eighteenth century, Giovanni Battista Pittoni painted at least nine versions of the scene.
Ancient sources: Euripides includes her in The Trojan Women and Hecuba, Ibycus and the author of the Cypria also mention her, while Homer does not include her in the Iliad.
In art
Literature and theatre
- Troades · Seneca
- Posthomerica · Quintus Smyrnaeus