Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Neoptolemus.
The gallery
Neoptolemus Killing Priam (Attic black-figure amphora)
Attributed to the Class of Cambridge 49, c. 520-510 BC
On this Attic black-figure amphora from Vulci, Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, delivers the most infamous act of Troy's fall: the slaying of the aged King Priam. The vase compresses the horror of the sack into a single brutal image, with the young warrior striking down the suppliant king who had taken refuge at an altar. Standing roughly 24.5 cm across and now held in the Louvre's Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, the scene became a touchstone of archaic Greek painting for its unflinching treatment of impiety and the wages of war.
Neoptolemus Sacrificing Polyxena (Tyrrhenian amphora)
Attributed to the Timiades Painter, Tyrrhenian Group, c. 570-550 BC
This Attic black-figure Tyrrhenian amphora, made in Athens and recovered in Italy, shows Neoptolemus performing the grim sacrifice demanded by his dead father's ghost. The rigid, shrouded body of Polyxena, daughter of Priam, is held horizontally over the tomb of Achilles by three armed warriors as Neoptolemus draws the knife across her throat. One of the earliest narrative depictions of the episode, the vase is among the prized archaic holdings of the British Museum, where it captures the cruelty that haunts the Greek victory.
Andromache and Pyrrhus
Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, 1810 (Salon of 1814)
Guerin's vast Neoclassical canvas, more than three metres tall and exhibited at the Salon of 1814, dramatizes a scene drawn from Racine's tragedy Andromache rather than Homer: Pyrrhus, the alternate name of Neoptolemus, presses his suit upon the captive Trojan widow Andromache, while her young son Astyanax clings between them. The painter sets the conqueror's imperious longing against the grieving mother's resistance, charging the marble interior with restrained passion and political menace. The painting hangs in the Louvre (INV 5183).
The Death of Neoptolemus at Delphi (Pompeian fresco)
Unknown Roman painter, 1st century AD
This Roman wall painting from the winter triclinium of the Casa di Marco Lucrezio Frontone in Pompeii illustrates the end of Neoptolemus, drawn from Euripides' tragedy Andromache. Orestes strikes down Neoptolemus at the altar of Apollo at Delphi, while the despairing Hermione, wife of Neoptolemus but once promised to Orestes, kneels at the foot of the altar. The fresco completes the hero's arc with the same sacrilegious violence he had once inflicted on others, now turned against him in the god's own sanctuary.
On screen
The Trojan Women
Michalis Cacoyannis
Cacoyannis' Euripides keeps Neoptolemus offstage as fate: Andromache learns she is his prize, and Astyanax will die before she is led away.
L'Amour fou
Jacques Rivette
Rivette's four-hour marriage collapse is built around rehearsals of Racine's Andromaque — Jean-Pierre Kalfon as Pyrrhus, Neoptolemus under his other name.
In music & on stage
Ermione
Gioachino Rossini
Rossini's Pyrrhus is Neoptolemus under his other name: Achilles' son as Epirote king, torn between Hermione and the captive Andromache.
Andromaque
André Grétry
Grétry's only tragédie lyrique sets Racine's Epirus court to music — Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) torn between Hermione and Hector's widow.
In play
Andromaque
Jean Racine
Racine's tragedy makes Pyrrhus — Achilles' son as Epirote king — the hinge of passion and politics after Troy; Neoptolemus under his Roman name.
The Cure at Troy
Seamus Heaney
Heaney's Philoctetes version gives Neoptolemus the conscience of the embassy — Achilles' son learning the cost of Odysseus' deceit on Lemnos.
Paradise
Kae Tempest
Tempest's National Theatre Philoctetes keeps Neoptolemus in the modern embassy — the son sent to fetch the wounded archer whose bow Troy still needs.