Topics in Greek mythology Gods Primordial gods and Titans Zeus and the Olympians Pan and the nymphs Apollo and Dionysus Sea-gods and Earth-gods Heroes Heracles and his Labors Achilles and the Trojan War Odysseus and the Odyssey Jason and the Argonauts Perseus and the Gorgon Oedipus and Thebes Theseus and the Minotaur Triptolemus and the Eleusinian Mysteries Related Satyrs, centaurs and dragons Ancient Greek religion For other uses, see Achilles (disambiguation). In Greek mythology, Ἀχιλλεύς, transliterated to Akhilleus or Achilleus in Roman letters, Latinized from this ancient Greek to Achilles, appearing in Etruscan as Achle, was a hero (ancient Greek heros, "defender") of the Trojan War, the greatest and the most central character of Homer's Iliad. Contents 1 Name 2 Birth 3 Achilles in the Trojan War 3.1 Telephus 3.2 During the Trojan War 3.2.1 Troilus 3.2.2 Agamemnon and the death of Patroclus 3.2.3 Zanthus 3.2.4 Memnon, Cycnus, Penthesilea, and the death of Achilles 3.2.5 The Fate of Achilles' armor 4 Other Stories About Achilles 5 The Lost Play of Aeschylus 6 Spoken-word myths (audio) 7 Achilles in Music 8 Achilles in film 9 References 10 Bibliography 11 External links Name The very first two lines of the Iliad read (in transliteration): Statue of Achilles "Menin aeide thea, Peleiadeo Akhileos oulomenen, he muri' Akhaiois alge' etheken," Sing, Muse, the wrath of Achilles the son of Peleus, the destructive wrath, that brought a thousand griefs upon the Achaeans," In these lines, we see the name Akhilleus Peleides, which is a praenomen and a patronymic, the latter being formed from Peleus with the suffix -ides producing Achilles the son of Peleus. The system is similar to the names used by Scandinavians before modern times, such as Leif Erikson. The formation of the name casts no doubt of having a much older origin than either culture. Similarly, Peleus' name would be Peleus Aiakides, Peleus the son of Aiakos. There is no nomen gentile, as among the Romans, indicating that clan names might not be Indo-European after all. There is a very strong derivation of Achilles devised by Leonard Palmer and expostulated in the first work cited below, by Gregory Nagy. The name is Indo-European: "whose laos has akhos", where laos is a corps of soldiers and akhos is grief. As it is used in the poem, which is stuffed full of irony, there is a double entendre: when the hero is functioning rightly, his men bring grief to the enemy, but when wrongly, his men get the grief. The poem is in part about the misdirection of anger on the part of leadership. Birth Achilles was the son of the mortal Peleus, king of the Myrmidons in Phthia (southeast Thessaly), and the sea nymph Thetis. Zeus and Poseidon were rivals for the hand of Thetis. That is until Prometheus the fire bringer revealed that if one of these gods wed Thetis, she would bear a son greater than his father. For this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit. When Achilles was born, Thetis had tried to make Achilles immortal by dipping him in the river Styx, but forgot to wet the heel she held him by, leaving him vulnerable. (See Achilles' tendon.) Homer deliberately makes no mention of this; Achilles cannot be a hero if he is not at risk. Homer does, however, mention Achilles' being wounded, although not seriously, in the Iliad. In an earlier and less popular version of the story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire to burn away the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage. Peleus gave him (together with his young friend Patroclus) to Chiron the Centaur, on Mt. Pelion, to raise. Achilles in the Trojan War Telephus When the Greeks left for the Trojan War, they accidentally stopped in Mysia, ruled by King Telephus. In the battle, Achilles wounded Telephus. The wound would not heal and Telephus asked an oracle who stated that "he who is wounded shall heal". According to other reports about Euripides, the lost play about Telephus, went to Aulis pretending to be a beggar and asked Achilles to heal his wound. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Alternatively, Telephus held Orestes for ransom, the ransom being Achilles' aid in healing the wound. Odysseus reasoned that the spear had inflicted the wound; therefore, the spear must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound and Telephus was healed. This is an example of sympathetic magic. During the Trojan War “The Rage of Achilles” by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Achilles is one of the only two people described as "god-like" in the Iliad. In Homer's Iliad, Achilles is the only mortal to experience rage ("menon"). He shows a complete and total devotion to the excellence of his craft and, like a god, has almost no regard for life. Not his own — clearly he does not mind a swift death, so long as it is glorious (kleos) — and not really of others. His anger is absolute. The humanization of Achilles by the events of the war is the main theme of the Iliad. Achilles' charioteer's name was Automedon. Troilus According to Dares Phrygius' Account of the Destruction of Troy [1], while this youngest son of Priam and Hecuba (some say that it was Apollo who fathered Troilus on Hecuba) was watering his horses at the Lion Fountain outside the walls of Troy, Achilles saw him and fell in love with his beauty (whose "loveliness of form" was described by Ibycus as being like "gold thrice refined"). The youth rejected his advances and took refuge inside the temple of Apollo. Achilles pursued him into the sanctuary and decapitated him on the god's own altar. (Tzetzes, scholiast on Lycophron). At the time Troilus was said to be a year short of his twentieth birthday, and the legend goes that if Troilus had reached down his pants, Troy would have been invincible. (First Vatican Mythographer) Agamemnon and the death of Patroclus Patroclus and Achilles. Achilles bandages the arm of his friend Patroclus. The latter turns his head aside to avoid the sight of blood and of Achilles noticing his pain grimaces. The scene has been interpreted as an act of welfare and comradeship, or as a scene with sexual overtones. Achilles took twenty-three towns outside Troy, including Lyrnessos, where he captured Briseis to keep as a concubine. Meanwhile, Agamemnon took a woman named Chryseis and taunted her father, Chryses, a priest of Apollo, when he attempted to buy her back. Apollo sent a plague through the Greek armies and Agamemnon was forced to give Chryseis back to her father; however he took Briseis away from Achilles as compensation for his loss. This action sparked the central plot of the Iliad: Achilles becomes enraged and refuses to fight for the Greeks any further. The war goes badly, through the influence of Zeus, and the Greeks offer handsome reparations to their greatest warrior. Achilles is visited by Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix who attempt to persuade him to return to battle, but Achilles still refuses to fight. Once the Greeks are pushed back to the ships, which are just starting to be set on fire by Hector, he agrees to allow Patroclus to fight in his place, wearing his armor. The next day Patroclus is killed and stripped of the armor by the Trojan hero Hector, who mistakes him for Achilles. Achilles is overwhelmed with grief for his beloved friend, and the rage he once harbored toward Agamemnon begins shifting to Hector. Thetis, his mother, rises from the sea floor and berates him for excessive grief. She obtains magnificent new armor for him from Hephaestus. The goddess Athena provides him with the aegis of Zeus. Effectively Achilles is the sole mortal to use the powerful weapon of Zeus. When he goes to the battlefield, the entire Trojan army flees behind the walls of Troy. Hector comes out of the walls to defend the honour of Troy. After a legendary fight Achilles kills Hector. Other versions of the tale say that Achilles chased after Hector two times, and one time he was delivered by the gods, however on their second encounter Achilles trapped Hector and challanged him. Stories tell that Hector ran about Troy seven times and Achilles followed him, however seeing that Achilles would not be out run Hector stood his ground and fought. Before this however Hector asked for a compromise, that the body of the loser would be returned for proper burial by the winner. Achilles did however not honor this oath, which he did not necessarily agree to. Influenced by his anger, he drags the body of Hector behind his chariot round the walls of Troy three times, and refuses to allow it to receive funeral rites. Much to the dismay of Achilles, the body of Hector miraculously heals and will not decay as normally expected. Aphrodite, the goddess of love whom sided with Troy throughout the whole conflict, put a protective barrier over Hector, which kept him looking like he did before he was viciously killed by Achilles. When Priam, the king of Troy and Hector's father, comes secretly into the Greek camp to plead for the body, Achilles finally relents; in one of the most moving scenes of the Iliad, he receives Priam graciously and allows him to take the body away. The scene is intensely moving because Priam, the king of one of the greatest cities in the known world, kneels down, old and frail as he is, and kisses the hands of the man who killed his son. The greatness of Achilles lies in not just being the greatest Greek fighter ever, but in knowing the choice provided to him by Destiny. His mother Thetis had prophesied to him that if he pulled out of the Trojan War, he would enjoy a long and a happy life. If Achilles fought, however, he would die before the walls of Troy but assure an everlasting glory, surpassing that of all other heroes. He had made the choice, and coming face to face with it showed his greatness. Zanthus During the Trojan War, Xanthos, one of Achilles' horses, was rebuked by Achilles for allowing Patroclus to be killed. Xanthos responded by saying (Hera temporarily gave him voice to do so) that a god and a mortal had killed Patroclus and a god and a mortal would soon kill Achilles too. Memnon, Cycnus, Penthesilea, and the death of Achilles Thetis rising from the sea to comfort Achilles (Book 18), by Thomas Banks, English, 1778 Victoria and Albert Museum Shortly after the death of Hector, Achilles defeated Memnon of Ethiopia, Cycnus of Colonae and the Amazonian warrior Penthesilia (with whom Achilles also had an affair in some versions). As predicted by Hector with his dying breath, Achilles was thereafter killed by Paris — either by an arrow to the heel (which may have subsequently become fatally infected), or in an older version by a knife to the back while visiting Polyxena, a princess of Troy. Both versions conspicuously deny the killer any sort of valor, and Achilles remains undefeated on the battlefield. His bones are mingled with those of Patroclus, and funeral games are held. Like Ajax, he is represented (although not by Homer) as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the Danube. The Fate of Achilles' armor Achilles' armor was the object of a feud between Odysseus and Ajax the Greater (Achilles' older cousin). They competed for it and Odysseus won. Ajax went mad with grief and vowed to kill his comrades; he started killing cattle (thinking they were Greek soldiers), and then himself. Other Stories About Achilles After the Trojan War, Achilles sold Lycaon, son of Priam and Laothoe. Lycaon was later killed trying to escape. In the Odyssey, also by Homer, there is a passage where Odysseus sails to the underworld and converses with the shades. One of these is Achilles, who greeted as "blessed in life, blessed in death", responds that he would rather be a slave than be dead. This has been interpreted as a rejection of his warrior life, but also as indignity to his martyrdom being slighted. The kings of Epirus claimed to be descended from Achilles through his son. Alexander the Great, son of the Epiran princess Olympias, could therefore also claim this descent, and in many ways strove to be like his great ancestor; he is said to have visited his tomb while passing Troy. Achilles was worshipped as a sea-god in many of the Greek colonies on the Black Sea. Achilles fought and killed the Amazon Helene. Some also said he married Medea. The Lost Play of Aeschylus In the early 1990s a lost play by Aeschylus was discovered in the wrappings of a mummy in Egypt. The play, Achilles, was part of a trilogy about the Trojan War. It was known to exist due to mentions in ancient sources, but had been lost for over 2,000 years. There is another lost play with Achilles as the main character, The Lovers of Achilles, by Sophocles. Spoken-word myths (audio) Achilles myths as told by story tellers 1. Achilles and Patroclus, read by Timothy Carter Bibliography of reconstruction: Homer Iliad, 9.308, 16.2, 11.780, 23.54 (700 BC); Pindar Olympian Odes, IX (476 BC); Aeschylus Myrmidons, F135-36 (495 BC); Euripides Iphigenia in Aulis, (405 BC); Plato Symposium, 179e (388 BC-367 BC); Statius Achilleid, 161, 174, 182 (96 CE) Achilles in Music "Achilles, Agony & Ecstasy In Eight Parts", by Manowar; from the album The Triumph of Steel, 1992, Atlantic Records. "Achilles Last Stand", by Led Zeppelin; from the album Presence, 1976, Atlantic Records; "Achilles' Revenge", by Warlord. Achilles' Heel is an album by the indie rock band Pedro the Lion Achilles and his heel are referenced in the song "Special K" by the rock band Placebo Achilles in film The role of Achilles has been played by: Stanley Baker in Helen of Troy (1956) Arturo Dominici in La Guerra di Troia (1962) Derek Jacobi [voice] in Achilles (Channel Four Television) (1995) Steve Davislim in La Belle Hélène (TV, 1996) Joe Montana in Helen of Troy (TV, 2003) Brad Pitt in Troy (2004) References Homer, Iliad; Homer, Odyssey XI, 467-540; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca III, xiii, 5-8; Apollodorus, Epitome III, 14-V, 7; Ovid, Metamorphoses XI, 217-265; XII, 580-XIII, 398; Ovid, Heroides III; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica IV, 783-879; Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, V. Bibliography Ileana Chirassi Colombo, “Heros Achilleus— Theos Apollon.” In Il Mito Greco, éd. Bruno Gentili & Giuseppe Paione, Rome, 1977; Anthony Edwards: “Achilles in the Underworld: Iliad, Odyssey, and Æthiopis”, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 26 (1985): pp. 215-227 ; “Achilles in the Odyssey: Ideologies of Heroism in the Homeric Epic”, Beitrage zur klassischen Philologie, 171, Meisenheim, 1985 ; “Kleos Aphthiton and Oral Theory,” Classical Quarterly, 38 (1988): pp. 25-30 ; Hélène Monsacré, Les larmes d'Achille. Le héros, la femme et la souffrance dans la poésie d'Homère, Paris, Albin Michel, 1984; Gregory Nagy: The Best of The Acheans. Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry, Johns Hopkins University, 1999 (rev. edition); The Name of Achilles: Questions of Etymology and 'Folk Etymology', Illinois Classical Studies, 19, 1994; Dale S. Sinos, The Entry of Achilles into Greek Epic, Ph.D. thesis, Johns Hopkins University; External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Story of Achilles and Patroclus da:Achilleus de:Achilleus et:Achilleus es:Aquiles eo:Aĥilo fa:آشیل fr:Achille ko:아킬레우스 hr:Ahilej it:Achille he:אכילס la:Achilles lt:Achilas hu:Akhilleusz nl:Achilles ja:アキレウス no:Akilles pl:Achilles (mitologia) pt:Aquiles ru:Ахиллес sk:Achilles sl:Ahil sv:Akilles uk:Ахіллес zh:阿喀琉斯 Search Term: "Achilles" Categories: People who fought in the Trojan War | Anti-heroes