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Antilochus
Greek mythology
- Role In:
- Trojan War
Antilochus, in Greek legend, son of Nestor, king of Pylos. One of the suitors of Helen, whose abduction caused the Trojan War, he accompanied his father to the war and distinguished himself as acting commander of the Pylians. As the story was told in the lost epic Aethiopis, Nestor was attacked by Memnon (king of the Ethiopians), and Antilochus saved his father’s life at the sacrifice of his own, thus fulfilling the oracle that had bidden him “beware of an Ethiopian.” Antilochus’s death drove Achilles to slay Memnon. The story survives in the sixth Pythian ode of the 5th-century-bc lyric poet Pindar.