Some claimed Polyxena committed
suicide after Achilles' death out of guilt. According to
Euripides, however, in his plays
The Trojan Women and
Hecuba, Polyxena's famous death was caused at the end of the Trojan War. Achilles' ghost had come back to the Greeks to demand the
human sacrifice of Polyxena so as to appease the wind needed to set sail back to Hellas. She was to be killed at the foot of Achilles' grave.
Hecuba, Polyxena's mother, expressed despair at the death of another of her daughters. (Polyxena was killed after almost all of her brothers and sisters.) However, Polyxena was eager to die as a sacrifice to Achilles rather than live as a slave. She reassured her mother, and refused to beg before
Odysseus or be treated in any way other than a princess. She asked that Odysseus reassure her mother as she is led away. Polyxena's virginity was critical to the honor of her character, and she was described as dying bravely as the son of Achilles,
Neoptolemus, slit her throat: she arranged her clothing around her carefully so that she was fully covered when she died.
In classical art , c.500 BC. A few examples in Greek imagery can be securely identified as depicting the sacrifice of Polyxena. Most show Polyxena sacrificed over the tomb of Achilles. However, some details in the pictorial evidence of the sacrifice hint at varying and perhaps earlier versions of the story. For instance, some images appear to show Polyxena sacrificed over an altar, rather than a tomb, and one sarcophagus relief, from Gümüşçay, the
Polyxena sarcophagus, dated to c. 500 BC shows a tripod placed next to the tomb. These details have been interpreted as indicating an association between the burial mound of Achilles and sacred ground dedicated to Apollo.
Post-classical art There was a trickle of images in medieval and Renaissance art, often as illustrations to
Boccaccio's
De mulieribus claris.
Primaticcio painted it in the
Chateau of Fontainebleau (1541–47). But the subject became more popular in the Baroque, often paired with the
Continence of Scipio.
Pietro da Cortona "established his reputation" with a large painting in 1625 (now
Pinacoteca Capitolina, 2.17 × 4.19 m). Examples include paintings
by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli and by Charles Le Brun (1647), both in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Sebastiano Ricci planned a large painting in the 1720s, but never got beyond studies. The 18th-century
Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Pittoni was especially keen on the subject, Thus, the statue shows Polyxena's taking to be killed by Neoptolemus, despite the protests of her mother Hecuba, seated. The body on the ground, somewhat anachronistically, is either
her brother Polites, or possibly Hector. In most versions, both were killed much earlier, and buried by that point in the various stories. ==On the stage==