Son of Achilles by Deidamia, fetched from Scyros to join the host before Troy; foremost in counsel and in battle, he slew Eurypylus son of Telephus and after the city's fall sailed home unscathed.1
Achilles fathered him on Deidamia at Scyros — a son first named Pyrrhus and afterwards Neoptolemus, Apollodorus records. Hyginus reports that the boy was called Pyrrhus after his father, who had been hidden among Lycomedes' daughters disguised as the girl Pyrrha. When the captured seer Helenus declared that Ilium could not be taken unless the son of Achilles fought for the Greeks, Apollodorus says they sent Odysseus and Phoenix to Lycomedes at Scyros, and the two persuaded the king to let Neoptolemus go; coming to the camp he received his father's arms from Odysseus, who willingly resigned them, and slew many of the Trojans.2
In the underworld Odysseus tells the ghost of Achilles how his son bore himself, for the dead man had asked whether the boy had followed to the war as a leader. He himself, Odysseus says, brought Neoptolemus from Scyros in his hollow ship; in counsel round Troy the youth was ever first to speak and made no miss of words, godlike Nestor and Odysseus alone surpassing him, and in the fighting he never hung back in the press but ran far to the front, killing many — among them the comely Eurypylus, son of Telephus, and his Ceteian comrades, slain because of gifts a woman craved. When the best of the Argives went down into the horse of Epeus, the other leaders wiped away tears and their limbs shook, but Neoptolemus never paled nor wept, only kept handling his sword-hilt and his bronze-heavy spear, eager to work harm on the Trojans; and after the sack of Priam's city he went aboard his ship with his share of the spoil, all unscathed, neither smitten nor wounded.3
His name is bound above all to the death of the old king. When the Greeks marched into the city and slew the sleepers, Apollodorus records, Neoptolemus killed Priam, who had taken refuge at the altar of Zeus of the Courtyard; Hyginus likewise sets him in his roll of those who slew princes — Neoptolemus, Priam. Pausanias makes the killing the very type of just requital: it was the fate of Neoptolemus, after killing Priam on the altar of Zeus Herkeios, himself to be slain at the altar of Apollo in Delphi, so that to suffer what a man has done to another is called the Punishment of Neoptolemus.4
When the spoil was divided he took Andromache, Hector's widow, as his special prize, Apollodorus says, while Polyxena was slaughtered on the grave of Achilles. Ovid stages that rite on the Thracian shore: the ghost of Achilles rose demanding that his sepulchre not go unhonored, and the maiden, led before Neoptolemus and his cruel steel, bared her own throat rather than live a slave. Apollodorus then has him warned by Thetis to wait two days at Tenedos and so escape the storm that wrecked the homebound fleet, after which he set out overland for the country of the Molossians with Helenus, buried Phoenix on the way, vanquished the Molossians, reigned as king, and begat Molossus on Andromache — Hyginus instead names that son Amphialus. Pausanias adds that he was the first after Troy who scorned to go back to Thessaly and dwelt in Epirus because of the oracles of Helenus, and that by Hermione he had no child, but by Andromache three sons: Molossus, Pielus, and Pergamus.5
His end came over a bride. Hermione, daughter of Helen and Menelaus, had been betrothed to him at Troy. Apollodorus says that when Orestes went mad Neoptolemus carried off Hermione and for that reason was slain by Orestes at Delphi — though some, he adds, say he went to Delphi to demand satisfaction from Apollo for his father's death, rifled the offerings and fired the temple, and was killed by Machaereus the Phocian. Hyginus tells it the other way: hearing his betrothed had been given to Orestes, Neoptolemus demanded her back, and Menelaus, unwilling to break his word, took Hermione from Orestes and gave her over, so that the insulted Orestes slew Neoptolemus as he sacrificed at Delphi; his bones were scattered through Ambracia in Epirus. Pausanias knew his tomb at Delphi, once held in dishonor as an enemy's, later honored when his phantom was seen helping to drive off the Gauls, so that the Delphians came to sacrifice to Pyrrhus as to a hero.6
Apollodorus also knows him as judge over Odysseus in a variant ending to the homecoming: when the kinsfolk of the slain suitors accused the king of Ithaca, Odysseus submitted the case to Neoptolemus, who ruled the islands off Epirus. Neoptolemus, hoping to gain Cephallenia if Odysseus were removed, condemned him to exile — and Odysseus departed for Aetolia, where he married the daughter of Thoas and died in old age, leaving Leontophonus.7⚖
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
