In Greek mythology, Protesilaus (Ancient Greek: Πρωτεσίλαος) was a Thessalian hero of the Iliad, son of Iphiclus and leader of the Phylaceans. An oracle said the first Greek to leap ashore at Troy would die; he did so, killed several Trojans, and was himself slain — usually by Hector — becoming the war's first Achaean casualty. Cults and tomb legends in Thessaly and the Thracian Chersonese kept his memory alive.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Protesilaus" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.First ashore at Troy
A suitor of Helen, Protesilaus brought forty ships from Phylace, Pyrasus, Antron, and Pteleus. Pausanias, citing the Cypria, recalls him as the first who dared leap onto Trojan soil; after killing four men he fell — by Hector in the common account, though Aeneas, Euphorbus, Achates, or Cycnus appear in variants. One legend has Odysseus trick him by casting a shield first. His brother Podarces then took command of the contingent.
Hyginus etymologizes the name from prōtos ("first") and the leap ashore, saying he was originally called Iolaus.
II.Laodamia and the elms
The gods briefly restored him from Hades to his widow Laodamia, daughter of Acastus; when he returned below she could not bear the loss, devoted herself to his bronze image, and died with it when her father destroyed the statue. Another tradition names his wife Polydora, daughter of Meleager.
Nymphs were said to have planted tall elms on his tomb across from Troy in the Thracian Chersonese; whenever their topmost branches saw Ilion's ruins they withered — a bitterness still remembered in Antiphilus of Byzantium's epigram.
III.Cult and later reception
Pindar knows games at his Phylace shrine; Herodotus and Arrian place a plundered, then restored, tomb-sanctuary at Elaeus, where Alexander sacrificed before crossing to Asia. Philostratus' Heroicus frames Protesilaus as an oracular hero speaking from that sanctuary. Roman copies of a Classical bronze show him poised on a ship's prow; Euripides' tragedy Protesilaus is lost, but Ovid's Heroides and later poets keep the Laodamia romance alive.