Polyxĕna

, a daughter of Priam and Hecuba, celebrated for her beauty and accomplishments. Achilles became enamoured of her, and solicited her hand, and their marriage would have been consummated, had not Hector her brother opposed it. Polyxena, according to some authors, accompanied her father when he went to the tent of Achilles to redeem the body of his son Hector. Some time after, the Grecian hero came into the temple of Apollo to obtain a sight of the Trojan prince , but he was murdered there by Paris; and Polyxena, who had returned his affection, was so afflicted at his death, that she went and sacrificed herself on his tomb. Some, however, suppose that that sacrifice was not voluntary, but that the manes of Achilles appeared to the Greeks as they were going to embark, and demanded of them the sacrifice of Polyxena. The prince , who was in the number of the captives, was upon this dragged to her lover’s tomb, and there immolated by Neoptolemus the son of Achilles. Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 13 , fable 5, . — Dictys Cretensis , bks. 3 & 5.— Virgil , Æneid , bk. 3 , li. 321 .— Catullus , poem 65.— Hyginus , fable 90.