ABSTRACT
The little son of Hector and Andromache. In the Iliad he is pictured as being frightened by the horse-hair plume of Hector’s helmet; Hector prays for his success in battle. His real name was Scamandrius but everybody called him Astyanax (‘lord of the city’) because his father was Troy’s one defence. When the city fell, either Menelaus or Neoptolemus flung him from the walls, because Odysseus had warned that no male descendant of Priam should be spared. His father’s shield was used as his coffin. His death is described in Euripides’ tragedy The Trojan Women. Another, weaker, tradition states that captivity and later returned to rule a Astyanax was taken by the Greeks into rebuilt city of Troy.
