1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Troïlus

TROÏLUS, in Greek legend, son of Priam (or Apollo) and Hecuba. His father, when upbraiding his surviving sons for their cowardice, speaks in the Iliad (xxiv. 257) of Troïlus as already slain before the action of the poem commences. According to a tradition drawn from other sources and adopted by Virgil (Aen. i. 474), when a mere boy he fell by the hand of Achilles. In another account, he was dragged to death by his own horses. His death formed the subject of a lost tragedy by Sophocles. There is no trace in classical writers of the story of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, the materials for which were derived from Chaucer's poem of the same name, Lydgate's History, Sege, and Destruccion of Troy, Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy (trans. from Norman French of Raoul le Fevre), Chapman's translation of Homer, and perhaps a play on the subject by Dekker and Chattle.