According to legend, Achilles's mother, Thetis, feared that her son would die in war, and so she spirited him away to the island of Skyros, where he lived disguised as a girl. The name he lived under, Pyrrha, or the red one, was supposed to be taken from his red hair (incidentally, I have read that when ancient Greek writers refer to red hair, they are often talking about blond hair - I don't know whether this is true or not, but it's interesting).  While on Skyros, the king's daughter Deidamia becomes pregnant by him, and she bears him a son, Neoptolemos (or Pyrrhus, in some versions).

This is an attempt, in something like Sapphic metre, to tell the story from Deidamia's side.

Back