Achilles

Achilles, in Greek mythology, son of the mortal Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, and the Nereid, or sea nymph, Thetis. Achilles was the bravest, handsomest, and greatest warrior of the army of Agamemnon in the Trojan War. Homer’s Iliad centers on Achilles’ quarrel with Agamemnon toward the end of the war and subsequent events, ending with the death of the Trojan hero Hector. Achilles’ spirit appears in the Odyssey, in which he discusses his death. Other legends about him are dealt with in non-Homeric accounts, such as the unfinished Achilleid by the Roman poet Statius (flourished late 1st century ce) and the lost Aethiopis, written between the 8th and 6th centuries bce by the Greek poet Arctinus, which was part of an epic cycle describing the Trojan War.

Almost immortal and destined for glory

Two versions of how Achilles came to be born to a mortal father exist. In one account, Thetis was desired by Zeus and Poseidon but was rejected by both gods because of a prophecy that she would bear a son who would surpass his father. In the second version, it was Thetis who rejected the advances of her divine suitors and was punished with marriage to a mortal. Either way, Achilles was fathered by Peleus. According to Homer, Achilles was brought up by his mother at Phthia with his inseparable companion Patroclus. Later non-Homeric tales suggest that Patroclus was Achilles’ kinsman or lover. In other versions Achilles spent his childhood on Mount Pelion (in Thessaly) or Mount Parnassus (in central Greece) and was trained by the Centaur Chiron in various disciplines, excelling in all of them.

Another non-Homeric episode relates that when Achilles was a child, Thetis dipped him in the waters of the River Styx, by which means he became invulnerable, except for the part of his heel by which she held him—the proverbial “Achilles’ heel.” In a less common version of the story, Thetis burned away his mortal flesh and bathed him in ambrosia before submerging him in the Styx. In this account, too, she held him by the heel, which remained vulnerable. The later mythographers related that Peleus (or Thetis, in some versions), having received an oracle that his son would die fighting at Troy, sent Achilles to the court of Lycomedes on Scyros, where he was dressed as a girl named Pyrrha and kept hidden among the king’s daughters (one of whom, Deïdamia, bore him Neoptolemus).

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From Athena to Zeus: Basics of Greek Mythology

Achilles joins up

Despite their best efforts, Peleus and Thetis could not relegate Achilles to a life of obscurity. Hearing from the soothsayer Calchas that Troy could not be taken without Achilles, the Greeks searched for and found him with the efforts of Odysseus, the wily king of Ithaca. Known for his strategic skills and creative thinking, Odysseus visited Scyros posing as a peddler of women’s garments and laid out his wares along with a spear. Pyrrha selected the spear from the pile of garments and was thus revealed as Achilles.

Achilles and his army of Myrmidons joined the Greek fleet sailing to Troy to recover the Spartan queen Helen, who had departed with the Trojan prince Paris in the absence of her husband, Menelaus (Agamemnon’s brother). On the way the Greeks stopped at Mysia, having lost their way. When Telephus, son of Heracles and ruler of Mysia, defended his land against the Greeks, he was wounded by Achilles and agreed to act as a guide to Troy.

The Greeks were then stranded at Aulis by the lack of a favorable wind after Agamemnon offended Artemis. The Greek seer Calchas advised Agamemnon that Artemis could only be appeased if Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia. Consequently, Agamemnon summoned Iphigeneia to Aulis on the pretext of marrying her to Achilles, who was enraged by the deception, setting the scene for a subsequent conflict with Agamemnon that became one of the defining moments of the Trojan War.

As the Greek fleet approached Troy, they stopped at the island of Tenedos. Against the advice of Thetis, Achilles killed Tenes, ruler of the island. Tenes’s father, Apollo, later avenged his son by playing a part in Achilles’ death.

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The dark knight

During the first nine years of the war, Achilles ravaged the country around Troy and took 12 cities. In the 10th year a quarrel with Agamemnon occurred when Achilles insisted that Agamemnon restore Chryseis, his prize of war, to her father, a priest of Apollo, so as to appease the wrath of Apollo, who had decimated the camp with a pestilence. An irate Agamemnon recouped his loss by depriving Achilles of his favorite enslaved woman, Briseis.

Achilles refused further service, and consequently the Greeks floundered so badly that at last Achilles allowed Patroclus to impersonate him, lending him his chariot and armor. Hector (the eldest son of King Priam of Troy) slew Patroclus, and Achilles, having finally reconciled with Agamemnon, obtained new armor from the god Hephaestus and slew Hector. After dragging Hector’s body behind his chariot, Achilles gave it to Priam at his earnest entreaty.

The Iliad concludes with the funeral rites of Hector. Achilles appears in the Odyssey as one of the spirits Odysseus encounters in the underworld. He offered Odysseus a tragic realization, saying that he would rather live in servitude than rule over the dead. Though the manner of his death was not mentioned, it was revealed that after Achilles died, Odysseus and Ajax the Greater competed for his armor, with the former winning. The poet Arctinus in his Aethiopis took up the story of the Iliad and related that Achilles, having slain the Ethiopian king Memnon and the Amazon Penthesilea, was himself slain in battle by Priam’s son Paris, whose arrow was guided by Apollo to pierce Achilles in the heel.

Achilles in modern life

Situated at the back of the heel, the Achilles tendon connects the heel to the calf muscles and is so named because it refers to the vulnerable part of Achilles’ body. The expression “Achilles heel” has come to symbolize a vulnerable physical or emotional point. In logic the Achilles paradox concerns a race between the fleet-footed Achilles and a slow-moving tortoise. The two start moving at the same moment, but, if the tortoise is initially given a head start and continues to move ahead, Achilles can run at any speed and never catch up with it. The paradox reasons that as Achilles must first reach every point the tortoise has crossed and because there are infinitely many such points, he can never overtake it.

In popular culture Achilles was notably played by Brad Pitt in the Hollywood film Troy (2004), which portrayed the events of the Iliad.