Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

An oracle had said that the first Achaean to leap ashore at Troy would also be the first to die. When the fleet beached, the heroes hung back—until Protesilaus of Phylace sprang down. He killed several Trojans but fell to Hector (so Apollodorus and the common vulgate; the *Cypria* summary names his death at the landing without always specifying the killer in Proclus’s brief notice). His wife Laodamia’s mourning became a famous sequel; Homer already marks his house as incomplete and his people as led by a brother. In the fighting that followed the landing, Achilles faced Cycnus, son of Poseidon—a warrior whose skin no spear could pierce. Achilles choked or crushed him (stoned him, or strangled him with his helmet-strap) and stripped him; in some poetic lines Poseidon turned the body into a swan. The Trojans were driven back toward the city; the Achaeans secured their beachhead and later raised a camp wall. With Protesilaus dead and Cycnus slain, the first day of Trojan combat is done: the prophecy of the first footer is fulfilled, and Achilles’ invincible early aristeia has begun outside the *Iliad*’s later quarrel.