64 Facts About Troilus

1.

In Western European medieval and Renaissance versions of the legend, Troilus is the youngest of Priam's five legitimate sons by Hecuba.

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2.

The story of Troilus is one of a number of incidents that helped provide structure to a narrative that extended over several decades and 77 books from the beginning of the Cypria to the end of the Telegony.

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3.

The story of the circumstances around Troilus' death was a popular theme among pottery painters.

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4.

Troilus is an adolescent boy or ephebe, the son of Hecuba, queen of Troy.

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5.

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 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.

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6.

Troilus' death was described in the Cypria, one of the parts of the Epic Cycle that is no longer extant.

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7.

Troilus is described in the poem as godlike and is killed outside Troy.

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8.

Fragment 619 refers to Troilus as an andropais, a man-boy.

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9.

Fragment 621 indicates that Troilus was going to a spring with a companion to fetch water or to water his horses.

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10.

Sommerstein argues that Troilus is accompanied on his fateful journey to his death, not by Polyxena, but by his tutor, a eunuch Greek slave.

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11.

Troilus is usually, but not always, portrayed as a beardless youth.

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12.

Troilus is often shown naked; otherwise he wears a cloak or tunic.

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13.

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 the watching Athena, occasionally with Hermes.

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14.

Troilus' body is slumped and the boy's head is either flying through the air, or stuck to the end of Achilles' spear.

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15.

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.

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16.

Troilus wears a helmet, but it is pushed up to reveal a beautiful young face.

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17.

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.

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18.

Troilus interprets it as showing Troilus overpowered in a straight fight.

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19.

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.

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20.

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.

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21.

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.

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22.

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.

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23.

Troilus' death comes near the end of the war not at its beginning.

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24.

Troilus's expected conduct, including his romance, conforms to courtly or other values contemporary to the writing.

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25.

Troilus tells that Troilus was "the fairest of the youths of Troy" with:.

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26.

Troilus was not insolent or haughty, but light of heart and gay and amorous.

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27.

In Joseph, Troilus is greater than Alexander, Hector, Tydeus, Bellona and even Mars, and kills seven Greeks with one blow of his club.

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28.

Troilus is "the wall of his homeland, Troy's protection, the rose of the military.

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29.

Troilus is usually victorious but is captured in an early battle by Menestheus before his friends rescue him.

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30.

Troilus therefore instructs the Myrmidons to find Troilus, surround him and cut him off from rescue.

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31.

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.

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32.

Troilus used to mock the foolishness of other young men's love affairs.

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33.

Troilus's is a young widow and daughter of the priest Calchas who has defected to the Greek camp.

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34.

When Troilus learns of this, he seeks revenge on Diomedes and the Greeks and dies in battle.

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35.

Troilus had set his whole heart on her; so mightily was he possessed by his love that he thought only of her.

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36.

Troilus's had given herself to him, both her body and her love.

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37.

Troilus's version is more moralistic and less touching, removing the psychological complexity of Benoit's (a romance) and the focus in his retelling of the love triangle is firmly shifted to the betrayal of Troilus by Briseida.

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38.

Troilus goes to her room and they spend the night together, trying to comfort each other.

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39.

Troilus is part of the escort to hand her over the next day.

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40.

Troilus saves Diomedes' life, only so that he can bring her a message of Troilus' contempt.

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41.

Troilus is characterised as a young man who expresses whatever moods he has strongly, weeping when his love is unsuccessful, generous when it is.

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42.

Troilus spends much of the intervening time on the city walls, sighing in the direction where Cressida has gone.

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43.

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.

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44.

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.

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45.

Troilus is unable to comprehend the subtleties and complexities that underlie Criseyde's vacillations and Pandarus' manoeuvrings.

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46.

Troilus 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.

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47.

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.

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48.

Shakespeare's treatment of the theme of Troilus' love is much more cynical than Chaucer's, and the character of Pandarus is grotesque.

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49.

Troilus' actions are subject to the gaze and commentary of both the venal Pandarus and of the cynical Thersites who tells us:.

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50.

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.

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51.

Troilus himself is left alive vowing revenge for Hector's death and rejecting Pandarus.

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52.

Troilus' story ends, as it began, in medias res with him and the remaining characters in his love-triangle remaining alive.

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53.

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 threads in the plot and ambiguities in Shakespeare's portrayal of the protagonist as a believable youth rather than a clear-cut and thoroughly sympathetic hero.

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54.

Troilus sees the character as incapable of transformation on a heroic scale in the manner of Ulysses and blocked from the possibility of development as an archetypal figure of troubled youth by Hamlet.

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55.

Troilus is a fifteen-year-old boy whom Helen has noticed following her around.

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56.

Troilus has just gained his first love, once more called Briseis.

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57.

Troilus tries to fight in the way he has been taught princes should do, but Achilles strikes the boy down and leaps on top of him, before attempting to throttle him.

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58.

Troilus arrives at the Greek camp just before the planned wedding.

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59.

Troilus is then killed by Calchas with a knife in the back.

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60.

Troilus falls for Cressida after seeing her, as ever, in the Temple of Athena where she wears black, as if mourning the defection of her father, the economist Dr Calchas.

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61.

In Eric Shanower's graphic novel Age of Bronze, currently still being serialised, Troilus is youthful but not the youngest son of Priam and Hecuba.

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62.

Troilus follows the latter into the temple of Athena to gawp at her.

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63.

Troilus is rewarded a rare happy ending in the early Doctor Who story The Myth Makers.

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64.

Troilus is again an andropais "seventeen next birthday" described as "looking too young for the military garb".

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