Achilles

Achilles (Greek Άχιλλεύς, transliterated Akhilleus or Achilleus) is a hero of the Acheans in the legends of the Trojan War, and the principal character of Homer's 8th century BC epic poem the Iliad.

Homer's narrative

The Iliad begins nine years into the Trojan War, but contains passages explaining the backstory. Achilles' father was Peleus, king of the Myrmidons of Phthiotis, Thessaly, and his mother was the sea nymph Thetis. He was educated in elequence and the arts of war by Phoenix, and in the arts of healing by the centaur Cheiron. His mother foretold two possible futures for him: if he took part in the Trojan War, his life would be glorious but short, and he would not return home; if he did not, his life would be long but unremarkable. Achilles chose the former. He led fifty ships of his countrymen to Troy, and became the Achaeans' most formidable warrior, until his dispute with the Achaean high king Agamemnon.

As part of the sharing of booty from the sacking of the towns around Troy, Agamemnon and Achilles were each given a beautiful captive woman as a slave. Agamemnon's prize, Cryseïs, was the daughter of a priest of Apollo, who offered a ransom for her freedom, and when Agamemnon refused, prayed to Apollo to send a plague against the Achaeans. Achilles persuaded Agamemnon to free Cryseïs and stop the plague, but Agamemnon demanded Achilles' slave, Briseïs, in compensation. Outraged at this violation of his honour, Achilles withdrew himself and his men from the fighting, and Thetis used her influence with Zeus to persuade him to favour the Trojans until the Achaeans treated her son with honour once again.

With Zeus on their side, the war began to turn in the Trojans' favour, and the Achaeans sent an embassy to Achilles, offering him great gifts and the return of Briseïs in exchange for a reconciliation and return to the war, but Achilles refused. When the Trojan prince Hector stormed the Achaean naval camp, Achilles' closest friend Patroclus begged him to join the battle. Achilles still refused to fight himself, but agreed to allow Patroclus to wear his armour and lead the Myrmidons to the Achaeans' aid. But Patroclus was killed in the battle by Hector, and Achilles was overcome with grief and rage. Thetis provided him with new armour made by the craftsman-god Hephaestus, and he reconciled himself with Agamemnon and re-entered the fray, refusing to eat or drink until he could avenge Patroclus and rescue his body. In the renewed fighting, Achilles encountered Hector, and after a long chase around the walls of Troy, killed him and dragged his body behind his chariot back to the naval camp. He held funeral games for Patroclus, and cremated his body along with twelve Trojan prisoners as a sacrifice to his spirit. With the assistance of Hermes, the Trojan king Priam visited Achilles in his tent and persuaded him to return his son Hector's body for his funeral rites.

Achilles' death does not occur in the Iliad, which ends with Hector's funeral, although it does contain allusions to his demise at the hands of Apollo and Paris at the Scaean gate before the fall of Troy. Homer's Odyssey mentions his funeral, after which his cremated remains were buried under a mound on the Hellespont, in the same urn, a present from Dionysus to Thetis, as those of Patroclus.

Later traditions

Invulnerability

One well-known tradition which does not appear in Homer concerns Achilles' near-invulnerability. The earliest version of this comes from the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BC), in which his mother Thetis attempted to make him immortal as a baby by anointing him with ambrosia and putting him on a fire. His father, Peleus, did not understand and interrupted the ritual, and Thetis left him in a rage. The better known story, in which Thetis attempted to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx, but left the heel she gripped him by vulnerable, is first alluded to in the Roman poet Statius' incomplete epic, the Achilleid (1st century AD).

Childhood

to come

The sacrifice of Iphigeneia

Another tradition involving Achilles, best represented by Euripedes' 5th century BC play Iphigeneia at Aulis, concerns the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter Iphigeneia before the Achaean fleet set sail for Troy. The fleet, gathered at Aulis, was prevented from sailing by unfavourable winds, the cause of which was identified as a debt owed by Agamemnon to the goddess Artemis, who demanded Iphigeneia's death as payment. Agamemnon summoned her to Aulis under the pretence that she was to be married to Achilles, but when Achilles discovered the deception he swore to defend her, against the entire Achaean army if necessary. However, Iphegeneia agreed to be sacrificed to allow her father to take Troy. According to Euripedes, Artemis substituted a deer as the sacrifice at the last minute, and took Iphegeneia to live with the gods. In other versions, for example Aeschylus' 5th century BC play Agamemnon, Iphegeneia was indeed sacrificed, in revenge for which Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon after his return from the war.

Trojan War traditions

to come

Achilles and Patroclus as lovers

Achilles and Patroclus are not portrayed as lovers in the Iliad, but such an interpretation of their relationship seems to have been made as early as the 5th century BC by Aeschylus. This interpretation was not uncontroversial among the classical Greeks: Plato and Aeschines accept it, but Xenophon rejects it, arguing that Achilles and Patroclus were simply comrades.

Death

to come

Afterlife and cult

to come