the son of Achilles and Deidameia, daughter of Lycomedes, King of the Dolopians, was born shortly before the Trojan war. When it was prophesied, towards the close of the siege of Troy, that the city could not be taken without the son of Achilles, Ulysses and Diomedes were despatched to bring the young man, and found him in the house of his maternal grandfather, in the island of Scyros. He was then called Pyrrhus, on account of his fair hair; but after his arrival at the scene of war, he was generally known by the name of Neoptolemus, i.e., "the young warrior." The son of Achilles soon proved himself worthy of his brave, savage, and vindictive father. On the night of the sacking of Troy his deeds were bold and atrocious beyond those of all the other Greeks; and it was his sword that was most fatal to the royal house of Priam. He was among the foremost to leap from the wooden horse upon the devoted and unsuspecting city; he dashed down the little Astyanax, the child of Hector, from the top of a tower; he sacrificed the Princess Polyxena upon the tomb of Achilles; and he slew Priam and Polites, father and son, together, at the altar of Jupiter, before the eyes of Queen Hecuba and her daughters. On the distribution of the captives, Andromache, the widow of Hector, fell to his lot, and became his wife. After this date the various accounts of the life of Neoptolemus are very contradictory. According to some authors, he returned to his hereditary kingdom of Phthia; while, according to others, he fixed his abode permanently at Epirus. It is generally agreed, however, that Menelaus and Helen bestowed upon him the hand of their daughter Hermione. Shortly after this he was slain, during a visit to Delphi, by some vindictive foe, about whom ancient writers are not agreed. His remains were interred within the temple; and long afterwards, when the Gauls attacked the city, his spirit rose, it is said, to defend the sacred place.