Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles or Achilleus 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 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's most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan prince Hector outside 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 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 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.
Etymology
tablets attest to 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 BCE and was also turned into the female form Ἀχιλλεία, attested in Attica in the fourth century BCE and, in the form Achillia, on a stele in Halicarnassus as the name of a female gladiator fighting an "Amazon".Achilles's name can be analyzed as a combination of ἄχος, 'distress, pain, sorrow, grief', and λαός, '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. Achilles's role as the hero of grief or distress forms an ironic juxtaposition with the conventional view of him as the hero of κλέος . Furthermore, 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 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's 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. Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested 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 /ly/ in the original language.
Other names
Among the appellations under which Achilles is generally known are the following:- Pyrisous, "saved from the fire", his first name, which seems to favour the tradition in which his mortal parts were burned by his mother Thetis
- Aeacides, from his grandfather Aeacus
- Aemonius, from Aemonia, a country which afterwards acquired the name of Thessaly
- Aspetos, "inimitable" or "vast", his name at Epirus
- Larissaeus, from Larissa, a town of Achaia Phthiotis in Thessaly
- Ligyron, his original name
- Nereius, from his mother Thetis, one of the Nereids
- Pelides, from his father, Peleus
- Phthius, from his birthplace, Phthia
- Podarkes, "swift-footed", from the wings of Arke being attached to his feet
Birth and early years
There is a tale which offers an alternative version of these events: In the Argonautica Zeus's sister and wife Hera alludes to Thetis's chaste resistance to 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.
File:The Education of Achilles 1862 Delacroix.jpg|thumb|The Education of Achilles, by Eugène Delacroix, pastel on paper,
According to the Achilleid, written by Statius in the first century CE, and to non-surviving previous sources, when Achilles 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. 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 the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage.
File:The Education of Achilles, by James Barry.jpg|thumb|The Education of Achilles, by James Barry
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 a spear from each hand; one grazed Achilles's elbow, "drawing a spurt of blood". In the few fragmentary poems of the Epic Cycle which describe the hero's death, there is no trace of any reference to his general invulnerability or his famous weakness at the heel. In the later vase paintings presenting the death of Achilles, the arrow 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's 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 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.
File:Achilleus Lyra.jpg|thumb|Chiron teaching Achilles how to play the lyre, Roman fresco from Herculaneum, first century CE
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 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's burnt foot.
Physical description
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 a mane. Along with some other characters, his hair is described with the word xanthḗ, which meant 'yellow' and was used for light hair, including blond, brown, tawny and auburn. A later Latin account, probably from the fifth century CE, falsely attributed to Dares Phrygius described Achilles as having "... a large chest, a fine mouth, and powerfully formed arms and legs. His head 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."Hidden on Skyros
Some post-Homeric sources claim that in order to keep Achilles safe from the war, Thetis 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's daughters, perhaps under the name "Pyrrha", Cercysera or Aissa. With Lycomedes's daughter Deidamia, with whom he had begun a relationship, Achilles there fathered two sons, Neoptolemus and Oneiros. According to this story, Odysseus learned from the prophet Calchas that the Achaeans would be unable to capture Troy without Achilles's aid. Odysseus went to Skyros in 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's women. While the women fled in panic, Achilles prepared to defend the court, thus giving his identity away.
In the Trojan War
According to the Iliad, Achilles arrived at Troy with 50 ships, each carrying 50 Myrmidons. He appointed five leaders : Menesthius, Eudorus, Peisander, Phoenix and Alcimedon.Telephus
When the Greeks left for the Trojan War, they accidentally stopped in Mysia, ruled by King Telephus. In the resulting battle, Achilles gave Telephus 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's 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, the ransom being Achilles's 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.