Neoptolemus Kills Priam at the Altar of Zeus Herkeios

Catalogue ID: 03-heroes/190-neoptolemus-kills-priam-altar-iliou-persis

Cycle: Heroes — Neoptolemus / Sack of Troy

Version line: Cyclic *Iliou Persis* / Apollodorean — Priam slain at the household altar

Sources: Proclus, *Iliou Persis*; Apollodorus, *Epitome* 5.21; Euripides, *Trojan Women* 16–17, 481–483; Pausanias 10.27.2 (Lesche paintings); Vergil, *Aeneid* 2.506–558 (**Roman** overlay labeled)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/03-heroes/190-neoptolemus-kills-priam-altar-iliou-persis.md

Characters

Hecuba — wife; witness or immediate mourner in tragic tradition
Pallas — aged king; slain as suppliant at the altar
Pyrrhus — son of Achilles; killer of Priam
Thyestes — father of Neoptolemus (background motive of inherited wrath)
Zeus Herkeios — household Zeus whose altar is polluted

Places

Courtyard of Priam’s palace — altar of Zeus Herkeios
Troy — night of the sack

Themes

Narrative

In the sack, aged Priam took refuge at the altar of Zeus Herkeios in his own courtyard—the god of the household enclosure. Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus), son of Achilles, burst in. Cyclic and handbook summary have him cut Priam down at the altar despite the sanctity of suppliancy; tragic and artistic tradition linger on the pollution of killing the king in the act of seeking divine protection. Some images show Priam’s corpse dragged or his head seized; Euripides’ chorus and Hecuba treat the altar-murder as the emblem of Troy’s desecration. Vergil’s *Aeneid* 2 (**Roman**) elaborates Pyrrhus’s cruelty before Anchises’ eyes; Greek sources already fix the core: Neoptolemus is Priam’s killer, and the place is Zeus Herkeios’s altar. The act stains the victor and feeds later tales of Neoptolemus’s own violent end at Delphi. Catalogue it apart from the wider sack’s other victims.