Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Troilus.
The gallery
Achilles and Troilus
Unknown (Roman), 2nd century AD
Roman marble group in the Naples National Archaeological Museum (inv. 5999), often read as Achilles seizing the boy Troilus. The warrior lifts the struggling youth — the ambush at the fountain that vase-painters made Troilus' defining death, here carved as a single fatal grasp.
Achilles Ambushing Troilus
Unknown (Etruscan), c. 530–520 BC
Etruscan wall painting in the Tomb of the Bulls at Tarquinia. Achilles crouches in ambush as Troilus rides past on horseback — one of the earliest monumental images of the Trojan prince's death, painted more than a century before the Classical vase tradition fixed the fountain scene.
Achilles Lying in Wait for Troilus
Attributed to the Painter of London B 76, c. 560–550 BC
Attic black-figure hydria in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (45.11.2). Achilles lurks behind the fountain as Troilus and Polyxena approach to water their horses — the ambush that ends the youth before Troy falls, already a favourite subject of sixth-century Athenian painters.
A Scene from Troilus and Cressida
Angelica Kauffmann, 1789
Engraving by Luigi Schiavonetti after Angelica Kauffmann's 1789 painting of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Act V, Scene ii. Troilus watches as Cressida yields to Diomedes — the medieval romance of the Trojan prince restaged as bitter theatrical betrayal.
Troilus and Cressida in the Garden of Pandarus
Edward Henry Corbould, 1873
Oil painting by the Victorian illustrator Edward Henry Corbould. Troilus and Cressida meet in Pandarus' garden — Chaucer's and Shakespeare's lovers before the war and the betrayal unmake them, the Trojan prince cast as courtly suitor rather than Achilles' victim.
On screen
In music & on stage
In play
Troilus and Cressida
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's bitter Trojan comedy made Troilus the betrayed lover — medieval romance grafted onto the Iliad's doomed prince.
Troilus and Criseyde
Geoffrey Chaucer
Chaucer's long Middle English poem is Troilus' great medieval afterlife — courtly love, Criseyde's exchange, and the prince who dies still loving.
Il Filostrato
Giovanni Boccaccio
Boccaccio's ottava rima romance gave Chaucer his Troilus plot — the Trojan prince as love's prostrate victim before Shakespeare made him bitter.
Troilus
Achilles' ambush of the young Trojan at the fountain remains vase-painting's favourite Troilus scene — youth cut down before the war's end.