[5] In Cypria, Achilles sails to Skyros after a failed expedition to Troy, marries princess Deidamia and fathers Neoptolemus with her before being called to arms yet again.

She tried to prevent him from being called to fight in the Trojan War by hiding him, disguised as a woman, in the court of Lycomedes, the king of Skyros.

He killed at least six on the field of battle[8] and several more during the subsequent fall of Troy (Priam, Eurypylus, Polyxena, Polites and Astyanax (Hector and Andromache's infant son) among others).

The ghost of Achilles appeared to the survivors of the war, demanding the Trojan princess Polyxena to be sacrificed before anybody could leave for home; Neoptolemus was the one to carry out the sacrifice.

(In scene (ll 566–575) of Euripides's play Hekabe (also known as Hecuba) Neoptolemus is shown as a torn young man who kills Polyxena in the least painful way possible, contrasting with his usual brutal and uncompassionate image.)

By the enslaved Andromache, daughter of Cilician king Eëtion, Neoptolemus was the father of Molossos (and, according to the myth, therefore an ancestor of Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great), Pielus, Pergamus[9] and Amphialus.

[12] Mentioned briefly in Euripides's plays Trojan Women and Hecuba, simply stating that Andromache, wife of Hector, was his promised spear bride.