Introduction
Ilus was a son of King Tros of the Troad. Winning a wrestling contest in Phrygia, he was awarded fifty youths, fifty maidens, and a spotted cow, and told by an oracle to found a city wherever the cow lay down.
Family
Founding Ilium
The cow lay down on the hill of the Phrygian Ate, and there Ilus founded the city he named Ilium after himself — the city better known to later ages as Troy, after his father's name. He is also associated with the arrival of the Palladium, a sacred image of Athena said to protect the city so long as it remained within its walls.
As with all figures of Greek heroic legend, sources diverge on many particulars; the account above follows the most widely transmitted classical tradition.