Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Astyanax.
The gallery
Hector Taking Leave of Andromache: the Fright of Astyanax
Benjamin West, c. 1766–1769
West's engraving freezes Iliad 6: the infant Astyanax shrinks from Hector's crested helmet as Andromache holds him — the child already named 'lord of the city' in the moment his father rides out to die.
Hector Holding Astyanax
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 19th century
Carpeaux's sculpture groups father and son: Hector cradles Astyanax — the Trojan heir as a small body against the warrior who alone, Homer says, guarded Ilios.
Neoptolemus and Astyanax
Unknown (Giambologna school), 1590s
A late Mannerist bronze stages the sack's cruel close: Neoptolemus seizes the child Astyanax — the death from the walls that ends Hector's line in the Little Iliad tradition.
Child Murder (Mykonos Vase, detail)
Unknown (Orientalizing potter), c. 670 BC
On the Mykonos pithos that first shows the Trojan Horse, Greek warriors tear children from the city — among the earliest images of the sack's infant killings that later name Astyanax.
In play
Andromaque
Jean Racine
Racine's tragedy turns on Astyanax as the living stake: Andromache must choose between Pyrrhus and her son's life — Hector's child as the hinge of French classical pathos.
The Trojan Women
Euripides
Euripides makes Astyanax's death the play's quiet atrocity: Talthybius takes the child from Andromache to be thrown from the walls — the infant heir as the last Trojan loss.
Astyanax
Hector and Andromache's son — Scamandrius at home, Astyanax to the people — whose fall from the walls closes the city's future.