text: In Dares Phrygius' Account of the Destruction of Troy, the Latin summary through which the story of Achilles was transmitted to medieval Europe, as well as in older accounts, Troilus was a young Trojan prince, the youngest of King Priam's and Hecuba's five legitimate sons (or according other sources, another son of Apollo).Despite his youth, he was one of the main Trojan war leaders, a "horse fighter" or "chariot fighter" according to Homer.Prophecies linked Troilus' fate to that of Troy and so he was ambushed in an attempt to capture him.Yet Achilles, struck by the beauty of both Troilus and his sister Polyxena, and overcome with lust, directed his sexual attentions on the youth – who, refusing to yield, instead found himself decapitated upon an altar-omphalos of Apollo Thymbraios.Later versions of the story suggested Troilus was accidentally killed by Achilles in an over-ardent lovers' embrace.In this version of the myth, Achilles' death therefore came in retribution for this sacrilege.Ancient writers treated Troilus as the epitome of a dead child mourned by his parents.Had Troilus lived to adulthood, the First Vatican Mythographer claimed, Troy would have been invincible; however, the motif is older and found already in Plautus' Bacchides.In the Iliad Homer's Iliad is the most famous narrative of Achilles' deeds in the Trojan War.Achilles' wrath (μῆνις Ἀχιλλέως, mênis Achilléōs) is the central theme of the poem.The first two lines of the Iliad read: The Homeric epic only covers a few weeks of the decade-long war, and does not narrate Achilles' death.It begins with Achilles' withdrawal from battle after being dishonoured by Agamemnon, the commander of the Achaean forces.Agamemnon has taken a woman named Chryseis as his slave.Her father Chryses, a priest of Apollo, begs Agamemnon to return her to him.Agamemnon refuses, and Apollo sends a plague amongst the Greeks.