Hermione (mythology) Hermione (mythology) In Greek mythology, Hermione (; ) was the only child of Menelaus, king of Sparta, and his wife, Helen of Troy. Prior to the Trojan War, Hermione had been betrothed by Tyndareus, her grandfather, to Orestes, son of her father's brother, Agamemnon; she was just nine years old when Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam, arrived to abduct her mother, Helen. During the war, Menelaus promised her to Achilles' son, Neoptolemus. and after the war ended, he sent Hermione away to the city of Phthia (the home of Peleus and Achilles), where Neoptolemus was staying. The two
Achilles also wrote "The Lovers of Achilles", a play with Achilles as the main character. Only a few fragments survive. Towards the end of the 5th century BC, a more negative view of Achilles emerges in Greek drama; Euripides refers to Achilles in a bitter or ironic tone in "Hecuba", "Electra", and "Iphigenia in Aulis". The philosopher Zeno of Elea centered one of his paradoxes on an imaginary footrace between "swift-footed" Achilles and a tortoise, by which he attempted to show that Achilles could not catch up to a tortoise with a head start, and therefore that motion and change were