Priam

Priam, king of Troy at the time of the Trojan war, was the son of Laomedon and Strymo or Placia. The name means 'the ransomed,' and was given him on account of his having been ransomed by his sister Hesione from Hercules, into whose hands he had fallen. His first wife was Arisba, daughter of Merops, whom he gave away to a friend in order to marry Hecuba, by whom, according to Homer, he had nineteen sons. He had altogether fifty sons; later writers add as many daughters. The best known of these are Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Troilus, and Cassandra. Priam is represented as too old to take any active part in the Trojan war, and in Homer only once appears on the field of battle. After Hector's death he went to the tent of Achilles to beg the body for burial. The oldest Greek legends are silent respecting his fate; but later poets like Euripides and Virgil say that he was slain by Pyrrhus when the Greeks stormed the city.