Astyanax for if he were allowed to live, it was feared he would avenge his father and rebuild Troy. In the version given by the "Little Iliad" and repeated by Pausanias (x 25.4), he was killed by Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus), who threw the infant from the walls. Another version is given in "Iliou persis", in which Odysseus kills Astyanax. It has also been depicted in some Greek vases that Neoptolemus kills Priam, who has taken refuge near a sacred altar, using Astyanax's dead body to club the old king to death, in front of horrified onlookers. In Ovid's "Metamorphoses", the
Neoptolemus Neoptolemus Neoptolemus (; Ancient Greek: Νεοπτόλεμος, "Neoptolemos", "new warrior"), also called Pyrrhus (; Πύρρος, "Pyrrhos", "red", for his red hair), was the son of the warrior Achilles and the princess Deidamia in Greek mythology, and also the mythical progenitor of the ruling dynasty of the Molossians of ancient Epirus. In "Cypria", Achilles sails to Scyros after a failed expedition to Troy, marries princess Deidamia and has Neoptolemus, until Achilles is called to arms again. In a non-Homeric version of the story, Achilles' mother Thetis foretold many years before Achilles' birth that there would be a great war. She saw that