TROILUS

the son of Priam, king of Troy, in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Young and innocent, Troilus falls in love with the flirtatious Cressida. When she finally betrays his love, he is enraged and becomes fixed on revenge and disgusted with love. Though he is charming and likable, Troilus' defining characteristics are his navet and his impetuous adherence to a conventional sense of honour and duty. Trojan prince in Greek mythology, son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. In Homer's epic poem the Iliad, Troilus was killed before the action of Greece's war with Troy began; non-Homeric legend records that he had been killed by the Greek hero Achilles. In medieval handlings of the Trojan story he was portrayed as the embodiment of an innocent young lover betrayed by a fickle girl who abandoned him for the Greek hero Diomedes. This story of Troilus' unhappy passion appears to have been invented early in the 12th century by Benot de Sainte-Maure in a poem, Roman de Troie. Benot called the girl Briseida, a name later modified by other writers to Cressida. The 14th century saw two important treatments of the Troilus and Cressida theme: Giovanni Boccaccio's poem Il filostrato (derived from Benot and from the Historia destructionis Troiae of Guido delle Colonne) and Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (based mainly on Boccaccio). Their story was also the subject of Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida.