Antilochus
A son of Nestor, king of Pylos, by Anaxibia,1 or according to the Odyssey,2 by Eurydice. Hyginus3 states, that as an infant he was exposed on Mount Ida, and suckled by a dog. He is mentioned among the suitors of Helen.4 According to the Homeric account, he accompanied his father to Troy, but Nestor being advised by an oracle to guard his son against an Ethiopian, gave him Chalion as his constant attendant.5
Antilochus appears in the Homeric poems as one of the youngest, handsomest, and bravest among the Greeks, and is beloved by Achilles.6 He fell at Troy by the hands of Memnon, the Ethiopian.7 Hyginus, in one passage8 states that he was slain by Memnon, and in another9 he makes Hector his conqueror. The remains of Antilochus were buried by the side of those of his friends Achilles and Patroclus,10 and in Hades or the island of Leuce he likewise accompanied his friends.11
Philostratus12 gives a different account of him. When Nestor went to Troy, his son was yet too young to accompany him; but in the course of the war he came to Troy and applied to Achilles to soothe the anger of his father at his unexpected arrival. Achilles was delighted with the beauty and the warlike spirit of the youth, and Nestor too was proud of his son, and took him to Agamemnon. According to Philostratus, Antilochus was not slain by the Ethiopian Memnon, but by a Trojan of that name. Achilles not only avenged his death on Memnon, but celebrated splendid funeral games, and burnt the head and armor of Memnon on the funeral pyre.13
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Iconography
Antilochus was painted by Polygnotus in the Lesche of Delphi.14
References
Notes
- Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library i, 9.9.
- iii, 451.
- Fabulae, 252.
- Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library iii, 10.8.
- Eustathius on Homer, p. 1697.
- Odyssey iii, 112; Iliad xxiii, 556, 607; xviii, 16.
- Odyssey iv, 186 ff.; xii, 522; Pindar. Pythian Odes vi, 32 ff.
- Fabulae, 112.
- ibid., 113.
- Odyssey xxiv, 78.
- Odyssey xxiv, 16; Pausanias. Description of Greece iii, 19.11.
- Heroicus iii, 2.
- Comp. Böckh, on Pindar, 299.
- Pausanias. Description of Greece x, 30.1; Philostratus. Imagines ii, 7.
Source
- Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.
This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.