73-643: Achilleis is a title used to refer to several literary works concerning Achilles : The Achilleis , the modern designation for a trilogy of lost plays by Aeschylus The Achilleid , an unfinished epic by Statius, Achilleis being the Latin nominative of the title The Achilleis byzantina , or "byzantine Achilleid ", a 13th or 14th century Greek romance; see Byzantine literature The Achilleis , an unfinished German poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Topics referred to by
146-430: A "horse fighter" or "chariot fighter" according to Homer. Prophecies linked Troilus' fate to that of Troy and so he was ambushed in an attempt to capture him. Yet Achilles, struck by the beauty of both Troilus and his sister Polyxena , and overcome with lust, directed his sexual attentions on the youth—who, refusing to yield, instead found himself decapitated upon an altar-omphalos of Apollo Thymbraios . Later versions of
219-638: A Pre-Greek origin of the name, based among other things on the coexistence of -λλ- and -λ- in epic language, which may account for a palatalized phoneme /l / in the original language. Among the appellations under which Achilles is generally known are the following: Achilles was the son of Thetis —a Nereid and daughter of the Old Man of the Sea —and Peleus , the king of the Myrmidons . Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals for Thetis's hand in marriage until Prometheus ,
292-517: A divine arrow, killing him. According to some accounts, he had married Medea in life, so that after both their deaths they were united in the Elysian Fields of Hades —as Hera promised Thetis in Apollonius ' Argonautica (3rd century BC). Achilles' armour was the object of a feud between Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax (Ajax the greater). They competed for it by giving speeches on why they were
365-405: A dream where Patroclus begs Achilles to hold his funeral, Achilles hosts a series of funeral games in honour of his companion. At the onset of his duel with Hector, Achilles is referred to as the brightest star in the sky, which comes on in the autumn, Orion's dog ( Sirius ); a sign of evil. During the cremation of Patroclus, he is compared to Hesperus , the evening/western star ( Venus ), while
438-509: A female gladiator fighting an "Amazon". Achilles' name can be analyzed as a combination of ἄχος ( áchos ), 'distress, pain, sorrow, grief' and λαός ( laós ), 'people, soldiers, nation', resulting in a proto-form *Akhí-lāu̯os , 'he who has the people distressed' or 'he whose people have distress'. The grief or distress of the people is a theme raised numerous times in the Iliad (and frequently by Achilles himself). Achilles' role as
511-546: A few weeks of the decade-long war, and does not narrate Achilles' death. It begins with Achilles' withdrawal from battle after being dishonoured by Agamemnon , the commander of the Achaean forces. Agamemnon has taken a woman named Chryseis as his slave. Her father Chryses , a priest of Apollo , begs Agamemnon to return her to him. Agamemnon refuses, and Apollo sends a plague amongst the Greeks. The prophet Calchas correctly determines
584-432: A mane ( χαίτη ). Along with other characters, his hair is described with the word xanthḗ ( ξανθή ), which meant ' yellow ', or at times shades thereof, such as brown or auburn , and was used mostly for fair hair. A later Latin account, probably from the 5th century AD, falsely attributed to Dares Phrygius described Achilles as having "... a large chest, a fine mouth, and powerfully formed arms and legs. His head
657-571: A mortal could craft. Thetis had the gear made for Achilles because his first set was worn by Patroclus when he went to battle and taken by Hector when he killed Patroclus. The Shield of Achilles was also made by the fire god. His legendary spear was given to him by his mentor Chiron before he participated in the Trojan War . It was called the Pelian Spear, which allegedly no other man could wield. A relic claimed to be Achilles' bronze-headed spear
730-687: A reason that he ravaged their country. The spread and intensity of the hero's veneration among the Greeks that had settled on the northern coast of the Pontus Euxinus , today's Black Sea , appears to have been remarkable. An archaic cult is attested for the Milesian colony of Olbia as well as for an island in the middle of the Black Sea, today identified with Snake Island ( Ukrainian Зміїний, Zmiinyi , near Kiliia , Ukraine). Early dedicatory inscriptions from
803-749: A series of international colloquia starting in Paris in 1956. After the third meeting in 1961 at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin , a standard proposed primarily by Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. became known as the Wingspread Convention, which was adopted by a new organization, the Comité International Permanent des Études Mycéniennes (CIPEM: Permanent International Committee of Mycenaean Studies), affiliated in 1970 by
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#1732856180437876-454: A slave to the worst of masters than be king of all the dead. But Achilles then asks Odysseus of his son's exploits in the Trojan war, and Odysseus tells him of Neoptolemus' actions. Book 24 of Odyssey gives dead King Agamemnon's ghostly account of Achilles' death: the bleached bones from Achilles' funeral pyre had been mixed with those of Patroclus and put into his mother's golden vase. Also,
949-635: A spear from each hand; one grazed Achilles' elbow, "drawing a spurt of blood". In the few fragmentary poems of the Epic Cycle which describe the hero's death (i.e. the Cypria , the Little Iliad by Lesches of Pyrrha , the Aethiopis and Iliupersis by Arctinus of Miletus ), there is no trace of any reference to his general invulnerability or his famous weakness at the heel. In the later vase paintings presenting
1022-520: A tale not mentioned in the literary traditions. At some point in the war, Achilles and Ajax were playing a board game ( petteia ). They were absorbed in the game and oblivious to the surrounding battle. The Trojans attacked and reached the heroes, who were saved only by an intervention of Athena. The tomb of Achilles, extant throughout antiquity in Troad , was venerated by Thessalians , but also by Persian expeditionary forces, as well as by Alexander
1095-557: A wound that would not heal; Telephus consulted an oracle, who stated that "he that wounded shall heal". Guided by the oracle, he arrived at Argos , where Achilles healed him in order that he might become their guide for the voyage to Troy. According to other reports in Euripides ' lost play about Telephus, he 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,
1168-476: A younger one, usually a teenager. In Patroclus and Achilles' case, Achilles would have been the younger as Patroclus is usually seen as his elder. In Plato's Symposium , the participants in a dialogue about love assume that Achilles and Patroclus were a couple; Phaedrus argues that Achilles was the younger and more beautiful one so he was the beloved and Patroclus was the lover. However, ancient Greek had no words to distinguish heterosexual and homosexual , and it
1241-599: Is a syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek , the earliest attested form of the Greek language . The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examples dating to around 1400 BC. It is adapted from the earlier Linear A , an undeciphered script perhaps used for writing the Minoan language , as is the later Cypriot syllabary , which also recorded Greek. Linear B, found mainly in
1314-480: Is a medieval invention. In Dares Phrygius ' Account of the Destruction of Troy , the Latin summary through which the story of Achilles was transmitted to medieval Europe, as well as in older accounts, Troilus was a young Trojan prince, the youngest of King Priam 's and Hecuba 's five legitimate sons (or according other sources, another son of Apollo). Despite his youth, he was one of the main Trojan war leaders,
1387-526: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Achilles In Greek mythology , Achilles ( / ə ˈ k ɪ l iː z / ə- KIL -eez ) or Achilleus ( Ancient Greek : Ἀχιλλεύς , romanized : Achilleús ) was a hero of the Trojan War who was known as being the greatest of all the Greek warriors. The central character in Homer 's Iliad , he
1460-435: Is no direct evidence in the text of the Iliad that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, this theory was expressed by some later authors. Commentators from classical antiquity to the present have often interpreted the relationship through the lens of their own cultures. In 5th-century BC Athens, the intense bond was often viewed in light of the Greek custom of paiderasteia , which is the relationship between an older male and
1533-574: Is older and found already in Plautus ' Bacchides . Homer's Iliad is the most famous narrative of Achilles' deeds in the Trojan War. Achilles' wrath (μῆνις Ἀχιλλέως, mênis Achilléōs ) is the central theme of the poem. The first two lines of the Iliad read: οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, [...] the accursed rage that brought great suffering to the Achaeans, [...] The Homeric epic only covers
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#17328561804371606-449: Is shown below. (Note that "q" represents the labialized velar stops [ɡʷ, kʷ, kʷʰ] , not the uvular stop of the IPA.) Initial consonants are in the leftmost column; vowels are in the top row beneath the title. The transcription of the syllable, which may not have been pronounced that way, is listed next to the sign along with Bennett's identifying number for the sign preceded by an asterisk (as
1679-432: Is that he fell deeply in love with one of the Trojan princesses, Polyxena . Achilles asks Priam for Polyxena's hand in marriage. Priam is willing because it would mean the end of the war and an alliance with the world's greatest warrior. But while Priam is overseeing the private marriage of Polyxena and Achilles, Paris, who would have to give up Helen if Achilles married his sister, hides in the bushes and shoots Achilles with
1752-519: Is the only Bronze Age Aegean script to have been deciphered, with Linear A, Cypro-Minoan , and Cretan hieroglyphic remaining unreadable. Linear B consists of around 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs. These ideograms or "signifying" signs symbolize objects or commodities. They have no phonetic value and are never used as word signs in writing a sentence. The application of Linear B texts appear to have been mostly confined to administrative contexts, mainly at Mycenaean palatial sites. In
1825-514: The Dnieper-Bug Estuary ; furthermore, at 125 Roman miles from this island, he places a peninsula "which stretches forth in the shape of a sword" obliquely, called Dromos Achilleos (Ἀχιλλέως δρόμος, Achilléōs drómos , ' the Race-course of Achilles ') and considered the place of the hero's exercise or of games instituted by him. This last feature of Pliny's account is considered to be
1898-486: The Greek colonies on the Black Sea ( graffiti and inscribed clay disks, these possibly being votive offerings , from Olbia, the area of Berezan Island and the Tauric Chersonese ) attest the existence of a heroic cult of Achilles from the sixth century BC onwards. The cult was still thriving in the third century CE, when dedicatory stelae from Olbia refer to an Achilles Pontárchēs (Ποντάρχης, roughly 'lord of
1971-550: The palace archives at Knossos , Kydonia , Pylos , Thebes and Mycenae , disappeared with the fall of Mycenaean civilization during the Late Bronze Age collapse . The succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages , provides no evidence of the use of writing. Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris based on the research of American classicist Alice Kober . It
2044-648: The 10th (in the tradition of Niobe 's offspring). The poem ends with a description of Hector's funeral, with the doom of Troy and Achilles himself still to come. Later works, including the Aethiopis (7th century BC) and a work named Posthomerica , composed by Quintus of Smyrna in the fourth century CE, relate further events from the Trojan War . When Penthesilea , queen of the Amazons and daughter of Ares , arrives in Troy, Priam hopes that she will defeat Achilles. After his temporary truce with Priam, Achilles fights and kills
2117-531: The 500 BC Polyxena sarcophagus , which depicts the sacrifice of Polyxena near the tumulus of Achilles. Strabo (13.1.32) also suggested that such a cult of Achilles existed in Troad: Near the Sigeium is a temple and monument of Achilles, and monuments also of Patroclus and Anthlochus . The Ilienses perform sacred ceremonies in honour of them all, and even of Ajax . But they do not worship Hercules , alleging as
2190-760: The Great and the Roman emperor Caracalla . Achilles' cult was also to be found at other places, e. g. on the island of Astypalaea in the Sporades , in Sparta which had a sanctuary, in Elis and in Achilles' homeland Thessaly , as well as in the Magna Graecia cities of Tarentum , Locri and Croton , accounting for an almost Panhellenic cult to the hero. The cult of Achilles is illustrated in
2263-596: The Scaean Gates leading to Troy (with an arrow to the heel according to Statius). In book 23, the sad spirit of dead Patroclus visits Achilles just as he drifts off into slumber, requesting that his bones be placed with those of Achilles in his golden vase, a gift of his mother. In book 11 of the Odyssey , Odysseus sails to the underworld and converses with the shades. One of these is Achilles, who when greeted as "blessed in life, blessed in death", responds that he would rather be
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2336-522: The advances of Zeus, pointing out that Thetis was so loyal to Hera's marriage bond that she coolly rejected the father of gods. Thetis, although a daughter of the sea-god Nereus , was also brought up by Hera, further explaining her resistance to the advances of Zeus. Zeus was furious and decreed that she would never marry an immortal. According to the Achilleid , written by Statius in the 1st century AD, and to non-surviving previous sources , when Achilles
2409-519: The basis of the cyclic epic Aethiopis , which was composed after the Iliad , possibly in the 7th century BC. The Aethiopis is now lost, except for scattered fragments quoted by later authors. The exact nature of Achilles' relationship with Patroclus has been a subject of dispute in both the classical period and modern times. In the Iliad , it appears to be the model of a deep and loyal friendship. Homer does not suggest that Achilles and his close friend Patroclus had sexual relations. Although there
2482-524: The battle is inevitable. Wanting to go down fighting, he charges at Achilles with his only weapon, his sword, but misses. Accepting his fate, Hector begs Achilles not to spare his life, but to treat his body with respect after killing him. Achilles tells Hector it is hopeless to expect that of him, declaring that, "my rage, my fury would drive me now to hack your flesh away and eat you raw – such agonies you have caused me." Achilles then kills Hector and drags his corpse by its heels behind his chariot. After having
2555-454: The battlefield, killing Memnon. Consequently, Eos will not let the sun rise until Zeus persuades her. The fight between Achilles and Memnon over Antilochus echoes that of Achilles and Hector over Patroclus, except that Memnon (unlike Hector) was also the son of a goddess. Many Homeric scholars argued that episode inspired many details in the Iliad ' s description of the death of Patroclus and Achilles' reaction to it. The episode then formed
2628-480: The beaches and assault the Greek ships. With the Greek forces on the verge of absolute destruction, Patroclus leads the Myrmidons into battle, wearing Achilles' armour, although Achilles remains at his camp. Patroclus succeeds in pushing the Trojans back from the beaches, but is killed by Hector before he can lead a proper assault on the city of Troy. After receiving the news of the death of Patroclus from Antilochus ,
2701-554: The bones of Antilochus , who had become closer to Achilles than any other following Patroclus' death, were separately enclosed. The customary funeral games of a hero were performed, and a massive tomb or mound was built on the Hellespont for approaching seagoers to celebrate. Achilles was represented in the Aethiopis as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the river Danube . Another version of Achilles' death
2774-441: The bravest after Achilles to their Trojan prisoners, who, after considering both men's presentations, decided Odysseus was more deserving of the armour. Furious, Ajax cursed Odysseus, which earned him the ire of Athena, who temporarily made Ajax so mad with grief and anguish that he began killing sheep, thinking them his comrades. After a while, when Athena lifted his madness and Ajax realized that he had actually been killing sheep, he
2847-405: The burning of the funeral pyre lasts until Phosphorus , the morning/eastern star (also Venus) has set (descended). With the assistance of the god Hermes (Argeiphontes), Hector's father Priam goes to Achilles' tent to plead with Achilles for the return of Hector's body so that he can be buried. Achilles relents and promises a truce for the duration of the funeral, lasting 9 days with a burial on
2920-531: The cattle of Aeneas , sacked neighbouring cities (such as Pedasus and Lyrnessus , where the Greeks capture the queen Briseis ) and killed Tenes , a son of Apollo , as well as Priam's son Troilus in the sanctuary of Apollo Thymbraios ; however, the romance between Troilus and Chryseis described in Geoffrey Chaucer 's Troilus and Criseyde and in William Shakespeare 's Troilus and Cressida
2993-467: The court, thus giving his identity away. According to the Iliad , Achilles arrived at Troy with 50 ships, each carrying 50 Myrmidons . He appointed five leaders (each leader commanding 500 Myrmidons): Menesthius, Eudorus , Peisander, Phoenix and Alcimedon. When the Greeks left for the Trojan War, they accidentally stopped in Mysia , ruled by King Telephus . In the resulting battle, Achilles gave Telephus
Achilleis - Misplaced Pages Continue
3066-620: The death of Achilles, the arrow (or in many cases, arrows) hit his torso. Peleus entrusted Achilles to Chiron , who lived on Mount Pelion and was known as the most righteous of the Centaurs , to be reared. In some accounts, Achilles' original name was "Ligyron" and he was later named Achilles by his tutor Chiron. According to Homer, Achilles grew up in Phthia with his childhood companion Patroclus . Homer further writes that Achilles taught Patroclus what he himself had been taught by Chiron, including
3139-570: The enemy, but when wrongly, his men get the grief of war. The poem is in part about the misdirection of anger on the part of leadership. Some researchers deem the name a loan word , possibly from a Pre-Greek language. Achilles' descent from the Nereid Thetis and a similarity of his name with those of river deities such as Acheron and Achelous have led to speculations about his being an old water divinity ( see § Worship and heroic cult , below ). Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested
3212-426: The field, killing many men in his rage but always seeking out Hector. Achilles even engages in battle with the river god Scamander , who has become angry that Achilles is choking his waters with all the men he has killed. The god tries to drown Achilles but is stopped by Hera and Hephaestus. Zeus himself takes note of Achilles' rage and sends the gods to restrain him so that he will not go on to sack Troy itself before
3285-506: The fifth colloquium with UNESCO . Colloquia continue: the 13th occurred in 2010 in Paris. Many of the signs are identical or similar to those in Linear A ; however, Linear A encodes an as yet unknown language, and it is uncertain whether similar signs had the same phonetic values . The grid developed during decipherment by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick of phonetic values for syllabic signs
3358-457: The flames with only a burnt foot, and confided him to the centaur Chiron. Later Chiron exhumed the body of the Damysus , who was the fastest of all the giants, removed the ankle, and incorporated it into Achilles' burnt foot. In Homer's Iliad , Achilles is portrayed as tall and striking, with strength and looks that were unmatched among the Greek warriors. Homer describes him as having long hair or
3431-455: The fore-thinker, warned Zeus of a prophecy (originally uttered by Themis , goddess of divine law) that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father. For this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit, and had her wed Peleus. There is a tale which offers an alternative version of these events: In the Argonautica (4.760) Zeus' sister and wife Hera alludes to Thetis' chaste resistance to
3504-436: The gates of Troy . Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the Iliad , other sources concur that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris , who shot him with an arrow. Later legends (beginning with Statius ' unfinished epic Achilleid , written in the 1st century AD) state that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for one heel. According to that myth, when his mother Thetis dipped him in
3577-409: The guise of a pedlar selling women's clothes and jewellery and placed a shield and spear among his goods. When Achilles instantly took up the spear, Odysseus saw through his disguise and convinced him to join the Greek campaign. In another version of the story, Odysseus arranged for a trumpet alarm to be sounded while he was with Lycomedes' women. While the women fled in panic, Achilles prepared to defend
3650-750: The handwriting of all the thousands of clay tablets, a relatively small number of scribes have been detected: 45 in Pylos (west coast of the Peloponnese , in Southern Greece ) and 66 in Knossos ( Crete ). The use of Linear B signs on trade objects like amphora was more widespread. Once the palaces were destroyed, the script disappeared. Linear B has roughly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values and ideograms with semantic values. The representations and naming of these signs have been standardized by
3723-420: The hero of grief or distress forms an ironic juxtaposition with the conventional view of him as the hero of κλέος kléos ('glory', usually in war). Furthermore, laós has been construed by Gregory Nagy , following Leonard Palmer , to mean 'a corps of soldiers', a muster . With this derivation, the name obtains a double meaning in the poem: when the hero is functioning rightly, his men bring distress to
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#17328561804373796-550: The iconic spit , called today Tendra (or Kosa Tendra and Kosa Djarilgatch ), situated between the mouth of the Dnieper and Karkinit Bay , but which is hardly 125 Roman miles ( c. 185 km) away from the Dnieper-Bug estuary , as Pliny states (to the "Race-course" he gives a length of 80 miles, c. 120 km, whereas the spit measures c. 70 km today). Linear B Linear B
3869-412: The king to appease the warrior. Agamemnon agrees and sends Odysseus and two other chieftains, Ajax and Phoenix . They promise that, if Achilles returns to battle, Agamemnon will return the captive Briseis and other gifts. Achilles rejects all Agamemnon offers him and simply urges the Greeks to sail home as he is planning to do. The Trojans, led by Hector , subsequently push the Greek army back toward
3942-490: The medical arts. Thetis foretold that her son's fate was either to gain glory and die young, or to live a long but uneventful life in obscurity. Achilles chose the former, and decided to take part in the Trojan War. According to Photius , the sixth book of the New History by Ptolemy Hephaestion reported that Thetis burned in a secret place the children she had by Peleus. When she had Achilles, Peleus noticed, tore him from
4015-503: The mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage. None of the sources before Statius make any reference to this general invulnerability. To the contrary, in the Iliad , Homer mentions Achilles being wounded: in Book 21 the Paeonian hero Asteropaios , son of Pelagon , challenged Achilles by the river Scamander . He was ambidextrous, and cast
4088-437: The name " Pyrrha " (the red-haired girl), Cercysera or Aissa ("swift" ). With Lycomedes' daughter Deidamia , with whom he had begun a relationship, Achilles there fathered two sons, Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus, after his father's possible alias) and Oneiros. According to this story, Odysseus learned from the prophet Calchas that the Achaeans would be unable to capture Troy without Achilles' aid. Odysseus went to Skyros in
4161-506: The personal name Achilleus in the forms a-ki-re-u and a-ki-re-we , the latter being the dative of the former. The name grew more popular, becoming common soon after the seventh century BC and was also turned into the female form Ἀχιλλεία ( Achilleía ), attested in Attica in the fourth century BC ( IG II² 1617) and, in the form Achillia , on a stele in Halicarnassus as the name of
4234-513: 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. According to the Cypria (the part of the Epic Cycle that tells the events of the Trojan War before Achilles' wrath), when the Achaeans desired to return home, they were restrained by Achilles, who afterwards attacked
4307-434: The river Styx as an infant, she held him by one of his heels, leaving it untouched by the waters and thus his only vulnerable body part. Alluding to these legends, the term Achilles' heel has come to mean a point of weakness which can lead to downfall, especially in someone or something with an otherwise strong constitution. The Achilles tendon is named after him following the same legend. Linear B tablets attest to
4380-415: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Achilleis . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Achilleis&oldid=1034526343 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
4453-559: The sea', or 'lord of the Pontus Euxinus '), who was invoked as a protector of the city of Olbia, venerated on par with Olympian gods such as the local Apollo Prostates, Hermes Agoraeus, or Poseidon . Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) in his Natural History mentions a "port of the Achæi" and an "island of Achilles", famous for the tomb of that "man" ( portus Achaeorum, insula Achillis, tumulo eius viri clara ), situated somewhat nearby Olbia and
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#17328561804374526-490: The son of Nestor, Achilles grieves over his beloved companion's death. His mother Thetis comes to comfort the distraught Achilles. She persuades Hephaestus to make new armour for him, in place of the armour that Patroclus had been wearing, which was taken by Hector. The new armour includes the Shield of Achilles , described in great detail in the poem. Enraged over the death of Patroclus, Achilles ends his refusal to fight and takes
4599-426: The source of the troubles but will not speak unless Achilles vows to protect him. Achilles does so, and Calchas declares that Chryseis must be returned to her father. Agamemnon consents, but then commands that Achilles' slave Briseis , the daughter of Briseus , be brought to him to replace Chryseis. Angry at the dishonour of having his plunder and glory taken away (and, as he says later, because he loves Briseis), with
4672-476: The story suggested Troilus was accidentally killed by Achilles in an over-ardent lovers' embrace. In this version of the myth, Achilles' death therefore came in retribution for this sacrilege. Ancient writers treated Troilus as the epitome of a dead child mourned by his parents. Had Troilus lived to adulthood, the First Vatican Mythographer claimed, Troy would have been invincible; however, the motif
4745-400: The time allotted for its destruction, seeming to show that the unhindered rage of Achilles can defy fate itself. Finally, Achilles finds his prey. Achilles chases Hector around the wall of Troy three times before Athena , in the form of Hector's favorite and dearest brother, Deiphobus , persuades Hector to stop running and fight Achilles face to face. After Hector realizes the trick, he knows
4818-465: The urging of his mother Thetis, Achilles refuses to fight or lead his troops alongside the other Greek forces. At the same time, burning with rage over Agamemnon's theft, Achilles prays to Thetis to convince Zeus to help the Trojans gain ground in the war, so that he may regain his honour. As the battle turns against the Greeks, thanks to the influence of Zeus, Nestor declares that the Trojans are winning because Agamemnon has angered Achilles, and urges
4891-495: The warrior queen, only to grieve over her death later. Initially taken aback, he did not fight as intensely as usual. Once he realized that his distraction was endangering his life, he refocused and killed her. Following the death of Patroclus, Nestor's son Antilochus becomes Achilles' closest companion. When Memnon , son of the Dawn Goddess Eos and king of Ethiopia , slays Antilochus, Achilles once more obtains revenge on
4964-489: Was assumed that a man could both desire handsome young men and have sex with women. Many pairs of men throughout history have been compared to Achilles and Patroclus to imply a homosexual relationship. The death of Achilles, even if considered solely as it occurred in the oldest sources, is a complex one, with many different versions. Starting with the oldest account, In book 22 of the Iliad , Hector predicts with his last dying breath that Paris and Apollo will slay him at
5037-406: Was born Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx ; however, he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him: his left heel (see Achilles' heel , Achilles tendon ) . It is not clear if this version of events was known earlier. In another version of this story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire in order to burn away
5110-469: Was covered with long wavy chestnut-colored hair. Though mild in manner, he was very fierce in battle. His face showed the joy of a man richly endowed." Some post-Homeric sources claim that in order to keep Achilles safe from the war, Thetis (or, in some versions, Peleus) hid the young man dressed as a princess or at least a girl at the court of Lycomedes , king of Skyros . There, Achilles, properly disguised, lived among Lycomedes' daughters, perhaps under
5183-486: Was preserved for centuries in the temple of Athena on the acropolis of Phaselis , Lycia, a port on the Pamphylian Gulf. The city was visited in 333 BC by Alexander the Great , who envisioned himself as the new Achilles and carried the Iliad with him, but his court biographers do not mention the spear; however, it was shown in the time of Pausanias in the 2nd century CE. Numerous paintings on pottery have suggested
5256-474: Was so ashamed that he committed suicide. Odysseus eventually gave the armour to Neoptolemus , the son of Achilles. When Odysseus encounters the shade of Ajax much later in the House of Hades ( Odyssey 11.543–566), Ajax is still so angry about the outcome of the competition that he refuses to speak to Odysseus. The armour they fought for was made by Hephaestus and thus much stronger and more beautiful than any armour
5329-467: Was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus , king of Phthia and famous Argonaut . Achilles was raised in Phthia along with his childhood companion Patroclus and received his education by the centaur Chiron . In the Iliad , he is presented as the commander of the mythical tribe of the Myrmidons . Achilles' most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan prince Hector outside
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