Helenus

In Greek mythology, Helenus was the son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy.

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During the Trojan War, the Greeks captured Helenus, a prophet, and tortured him until he told them under what circumstances they could take Troy. Helenus said they would win if they retrieved Heracles' arrows (which were in Philoctetes's possession); steal the Trojan Palladium (they accomplished this with the Trojan Horse) and persuade Achilles' son Neoptolemus to join the war. Neoptolemus was hiding from the war at Scyros but the Greeks retrieved him. Alternatively, he told them that they could win if Troilius, Helenus' half-brother, son of Apollo and Hecuba, was killed before he turned twenty. Achilles ambushed Troilius and his sister, Polyxena.

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After his parents were killed by the Greeks in Trojan War, Helenus was enslaved by Neoptolemus and taken to Epirus. After Neoptolemus was killed by Orestes, Helenus inherited part of his kingdom and married Andromache, widow of his brother Hector who had also been a slave of Neoptolemus.

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Virgil III, 295, 334, 374.

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Greek mythology: Greek mythology comprises the collected narratives of Greek gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. Our surviving sources of mythology are literary reworkings of this oral tradition, supplemented by interpretations of iconic imagery, some...

Priam: In Greek mythology, Priam (Greek Πρίαμος) was the king of Troy during the Trojan War, and son of Laomedon. Priam had a number of wives (his first was Arisbe); his chief wife, Hecuba, bore him twenty children. Another wife, Laothoe, was the mother of Lycaon. He als...

Hecuba: :108 Hecuba is an asteroid....