Know all the legends of Achilles the Hero. Discover the milestones of this universal myth and recognize all its fascinating stories.
Achilles the Hero
Achilles was a great, brave and loyal hero of Greek mythology who participated in the Trojan War. Accounts of this hero’s life are recorded in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. According to legend, heaven had already sealed his fate and it was said that he would die young. However, some accounts claim that he would live a long, unadventurous and quiet life.
who was Achilles?
He was a Greek hero of great power and skill in hand-to-handcombat. He was also credited with being a master of weapons, particularly with swords and spears. This hero was the son of the goddess Thetis, who attempted to make him immortal by immersing him in the river Styx or, according to other sources, by burning his mortality.
His destiny was to become the greatest hero of the Trojan War, but also to die there. He was truly a great warrior and his movements in combat seemed supernatural. Therefore, he influenced and inspired the rest of his fellow Greek warriors.
The Olympian god Hephaestus made him full armor, a shield and a spear at his mother’s request. His divine armor included greaves, helms, armor and gauntlets that have only enhanced his supposed immortality.
Etymology
Achilles’ name can be analyzed as a combination of ἄχος ( áchos ) “anguish, pain, sorrow, grief, grief” and λαός ( laós ) “people, soldiers, nation”, resulting in a proto-form * Akhí-lāu̯os ” he whose people are in anguish “or” he whose people are in anguish “. The pain or distress of the people is a theme that is raised on numerous occasions in the Iliad (and often by Achilles himself).
Achilles’ role as the hero of pain or distress forms an ironic juxtaposition with the conventional view of him as the hero of κλέος kléos (“glory,” usually in war). Moreover,it has been interpreted by Gregory Nagy, following Leonard Palmer, to mean “a body of soldiers,” a gathering.
With this derivation, the name gets a double meaning in the poem: when the hero is functioning correctly, his men bring anguish to the enemy, but when they are wrong, his men receive the pain of war. The poem is partly about the misdirection of anger by leadership.
Story of Achilles
Achilles was the son of the nymph Thetis, daughter of the sea god Nereus, and Peleus, king of the Myrmidons. Thetis was courted by Zeus and Poseidon before she eventually became a consort of Peleus. The reason the gods withdrew from their search for the goddess was the prophecy of Prometheus, who claimed that the child would be destined to be more powerful than his father.
When Achilles was born, Thetis took him to the river Styx, which separated the land of the living and the land of the dead. It was believed that everything that touched the river became invulnerable. She wanted to make him immortal and had therefore plunged him into the river, but she made a mistake. When she was bathing him in the river, she held him by his left ankle which had been left dry and, therefore, unprotected.
The Prophecy
When he was reaching infancy, his father Peleus sent him to Mount Pelion to be taught by the centaur Chiron, who taught him all about survival, hunting and warfare. During he was still young, the seer Calchas prophesied that the Greeks would not be able to conquer the city of Troy without the help of Achilles and that if he joined the war, he would die.
Because of this prophecy, his mother Thetis had no choice, in her mind, but to protect her son from ever entering the lands of Troy and, consequently, early death. Therefore, she sent him to Scyros where he was hidden and disguised as a girl. But his cover was soon blown by Odysseus, who placed armor and weapons among the female things.
It turned out that Achilles was the only one interested in armor and weapons and was not interested in girls’ clothes. With the cover blown, this hero agreed to travel to Troy with Odysseus and lead an army of his father’s people, the Myrmidons, into battle.
Achilles’ childhood and first profession
He was born to Peleus, an ancient mortal king of the Myrmidons and Thetis, an immortal Nereid. Achilles’ birth itself is intertwined with two important prophecies, one about his mother and one about him. Made nearly invulnerable by his mother, he would spend his childhood under the tutelage of the Centaur Chiron.
The prophecy about Thetis, Achilles’ mother
Although he grew up to become the greatest of all Greek heroes, for all we know, he might even have supplanted Zeus as the ruler of the entire universe had it not been for the timely intervention of Themis or Prometheus. That is, a year before the birth of Achilles, both Zeus and Poseidon fell in love with his eventual mother and did everything possible to win her hand in marriage.
And only Themis and Prometheus knew that it was vital to the Olympian order that neither of them should marry Thetis, for it was written “that the sea goddess should give birth to a princely son, stronger than his father, who would wield in his hand another weapon mightier than the thunderbolt or the irresistible trident.”
The Prophecy about Achilles
Whether it was Themis or Prometheus who let the cat out of the bag, we may never know, but we do know that he did it just in time. We also know that hero eventual father, Peleus, was chosen for a reason: he was, supposedly, the most pious man on the planet, worthy enough of a divine wife. More importantly, he was also a mortal, meaning he could not father an immortal son.
“Let Thetis accept the bed of a mortal,” Themis advised the Olympians ominously, “so that she may see her son die in battle, a son who is like Ares in the strength of his hands and like lightning in the fullness of his feet.”
Achilles’ heel
Achilles’ heel was the point of vulnerability in Achilles’ body, which caused his death. This hero died after his vulnerable left heel was shot with a poisoned arrow. Various accounts have different accounts of his death and killer; however, all claim that Apollo or Paris killed him. In modern times, the term “Achilles heel” refers to a person’s weakness, which is often fatal
Shortly after Achilles was born, Thetis went to the Underworld and immersed him in the waters of the river Styx. Thus, she managed to make his whole body invulnerable but for the part that held him: his left heel. Hence the expression “Achilles’ heel”, which means “an apparently small but crucial weakness”.
Achilles’ mentors
In the absence of his mother, Achilles spent most of his childhood on Mount Pelion, where he was raised and trained by the wise Centaur Chiron in numerous disciplines, from hunting to music. Needless to say, he excelled in all of them, and when he returned to his father’s house, it was already evident to many that the boy was destined for greatness.
Back in Phthia, he befriended Phoenix and Patroclus, two refugees that Peleus had taken in during Achilles’ absence. Both would have an enormous influence on the young man, the latter becoming his role model and dearest friend.
The Trojan War begins
When Helen, the wife of the Greek King Menelaus, was taken by the Prince of Paris, the Greeks went to war to get her back. Achilles joined the battle and brought a group of powerful soldiers called the Myrmidons.
Achilles commanded fifty ships containing fifty Myrmidons each during the beginning of the Trojan War. However, at first due to a mistake, they landed in Mysia, which was then ruled by Telephus, who was wounded by Achilles. He was told that only Achilles could heal him and, in return, Telephus led them to Troy.
Achilles fights against Troy
during the Trojan War, he was unstoppable. He killed many of Troy’s greatest warriors. However, the battle continued for years. Many of the Greek gods were involved, some helping the Greeks and some helping the Trojans.
Achilles refuses to fight
At one point in the war, Achilles captured a beautiful princess named Briseis and fell in love with her. However, the leader of the Greek army, Agamemnon, became angry with Achilles and took Briseis away from him. Achilles became depressed and refused to fight.
The Trojan War
Achilles’ anger with Agamemnon is the main theme of Homer’s “Iliad” which narrates the last year of the Trojan War, during which Achilles first withdraws from the battle and then, enraged by the death of his beloved comrade Patroclus, brings to the Greeks the body of Troy’s greatest warrior, Hector.
When Agamemnon, the leader of the Achaeans, enslaved a woman named Chryseis, her father, who was a priest of Apollo, begged the god for help. Apollo sent a plague on the Greeks. Agamemnon agreed to return the girl, but only in exchange for Achilles delivering his prize: a woman named Briseis. Achilles was furious at this dishonor and withdrew from the battle. His friend Patroclus went in his place.
Hector killed Patroclus in a battle that enraged Achilles. Killing Hector was not enough for Achilles, so he dragged his corpse with his chariot during Patroclus’ funeral games.
Achilles’ roles and responsibilities
- He was said to be the greatest warrior in Homer’s Iliad.
- He killed Hector and dragged him away in his chariot.
Appearance and personality of Achilles
- He was said to be extremely handsome and had supernatural strength.
- He was also said to be extremely loyal and sacrificial to his friends and family, but was vindictive and easily angered when he didn’t get what he wanted.
The death of Achilles
Achilles commanded fifty ships containing fifty Myrmidons each during the beginning of the Trojan War. However, at first due to a mistake, they landed in Mysia, which was then ruled by Telephus, who was wounded by Achilles. He was told that only Achilles could heal him and, in return, Telephus led them to Troy.
Although Hector predicted it with his dying breath, Achilles’ death is not narrated in the Iliad. However, as predicted, it occurs relatively soon after Hector’s death: Paris, Hector’s cowardly brother, manages to kill the greatest of the great heroes with an arrow that strikes Achilles’ heel, the only vulnerable part of his body.
Poisoned or not, the arrow was certainly guided by the god Apollo, since Paris was not a renowned archer. Thus, Achilles paid dearly for disobeying his mother’s wishes and killing Tenes.
The ghost of Achilles
One of the shadows Odysseus encounters after descending into the Underworld in Homer’s “Odyssey” is that of Achilles, apparently a kind of petty ruler of the dead souls of his region.
Realizing this, Odysseus admires Achilles for having been blessed in death as much as he had been in life. “If I had a choice,” Achilles memorably responds to this, “I would rather be a hired servant in a poor man’s house and be above the earth than a king of kings among the dead.
Appearance in works of art
He is usually depicted as a grown man wearing his divine armor, holding a shield and spear. There are also very few artworks of his childhood, such as training with Chiron, the famous centaur, and his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx.
Sources
Achilles is the central character in Homer’ s “Iliad”. In the eighth Isthmian ode of Pindar, you can read more about the prophecy surrounding his mother, and in Apollodorus all about how Thetis tried to make Achilles immortal. Odysseus’ encounter with his ghost is narrated in the eleventh book of the “Odyssey”.
Curious facts about Achilles
- He was predicted to die a hero’s death in battle
- He was burned by his mother, immersed in a river of stigmata, clothed in ambrosia, and
- He received a shield and sword forged by Hephaestus at the request of his mother
- He withdrew from the Trojan War when Agamemnon took Briseis, his wife to replace Chryseis.
- He returned to the battlefield when he heard that his friend, Patroclus died
- He was killed by Paris shooting an arrow at his heel (guided by Apollo)
- He killed Hector and dragged him in the chariot despite the latter’s plea to be buried in his land, was ignored by this hero and threw him away. In some sources, Hector returned him to his homeland
- Zeus and Poseidon pursued his mother, but Prometheus warned them that Thetis would give birth to a son who would be greater than his father.
- One story tells how Thetis disguised Achilles as a girl in the court of the king of Skyros to avoid war.
- Another Greek hero, Odysseus traveled to Skyros and tricked Achilles into surrendering.
- The Achilles tendon that connects the heel to the calf is named after the hero Achilles
- The Greek god Apollo was angry with Achilles because he killed his son
- He fought and killed Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons.
- After this hero death, the heroes Odysseus and Ajax competed for Achilles’ armor. Odysseus won and gave the armor to Achilles’ son.
