Achilles

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For other uses, see Achilles (disambiguation).

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In Greek mythology, Achilles, also Akhilleus or Achilleus (Ancient Greek Template:Polytonic) was a hero of the Trojan War, the central character and greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.

He is known for being the most handsome of the heroes assembled at Troy,<ref>Plato, Symposium, 180a</ref> as well as the fleetest. Central to his myth is his love for his friend, Patroclus.

Contents

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The name of Achilles

The very first two lines of the Iliad read:

Template:Polytonic
Template:Polytonic
Rage—sing, goddess, the rage of Achilles, the son of Peleus,
the destructive rage that brought countless griefs upon the Achaeans...

Achilles' name can be analyzed as a combination of Template:Polytonic (akhos) "grief" and Template:Polytonic (laos) "a people, tribe, nation, etc." In other words, Achilles is an embodiment of the grief of the people, grief being a theme raised numerous times in the Iliad (frequently by Achilles). Achilles' role as the hero of grief forms an ironic juxtaposition with the conventional view of Achilles as the hero of kleos (glory, usually glory in war).

Laos has been construed by Gregory Nagy, following Leonard Palmer, to mean a corps of soldiers. With this derivation, the name would have a double meaning in the poem: When the hero is functioning rightly, his men bring grief 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.

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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 had been rivals for the hand of Thetis until Prometheus the fire-bringer prophesized that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father. For this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit, and had her wed to Peleus.

When Achilles was born, according to the most common version of the myth, Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx. But she forgot to wet the heel she held him by, leaving him vulnerable at that spot. (See Achilles' tendon.) 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. Homer does not make reference to this invulnerability in the Iliad. To the contrary, he mentions Achilles being wounded, although not seriously.

Peleus gave him together with Patroclus (his cousin, friend, and, in many versions of the tale, lover) to Chiron the Centaur, on Mt. Pelion, to be raised.

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Achilles in the Trojan War

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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".

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, 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.

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During the Trojan War

Image:The Rage of Achilles by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.jpeg

In Homer's Iliad, Achilles is the only mortal to experience consuming rage (menis). His anger is at some times wavering, at other times absolute. The humanization of Achilles by the events of the war is an important theme of the Iliad.

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Troilus

According to Dares Phrygius' Account of the Destruction of Troy [1], while Troilus, the youngest son of Priam and Hecuba (whom some say was fathered by Apollo), 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 lived to be twenty, Troy would have been invincible. (First Vatican Mythographer)

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Agamemnon and the death of Patroclus

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Achilles took 23 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. After the Greeks are pushed back to the ships, which are just starting to be set on fire by the Trojan hero Hector, Achilles is visited by Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix, who attempt to persuade him to return to battle.

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Wrath and vengeance

Achilles still refuses to fight, but agrees to allow Patroclus to fight in his place, wearing his armor. In other versions, Patroclus used Achilles armor and fought as Achilles without the knowledge of the latter. Either way, the next day, Patroclus is killed and stripped of the armor by Hector, who mistakes him for Achilles.

Achilles is overwhelmed with grief for his beloved friend, and the rage he once harbored toward Agamemnon quickly shifts to Hector. The respect he held for Hector as a warrior and leader is dimmed by his lust for revenge. Thetis, his mother, rises from the sea floor and sympathizes with his grief. She obtains magnificent new armor for him from Hephaestus. The goddess Athena provides him with the aegis of Zeus.

When he goes to the battlefield, the entire Trojan army flees behind the walls of Troy. Achilles' wrath is terrible, and he slays many Trojan warriors and allies, including Priam's son Lycaon (whom Achilles had previously captured and sold into slavery, but who had been returned to Troy).

Eventually Hector comes out of the walls to defend the honour of Troy. He asks Achilles to agree that the body of the loser would be returned for proper burial by the winner. Achilles rejects this arrangement, saying, "Though twenty ransoms and thy weight in gold were offered, I would refuse it all."

Stories tell that Hector ran about Troy three times and Achilles followed him; however, seeing that Achilles would not be outrun, Hector stands his ground and fights. 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 traps Hector and challenges him.

After a legendary fight, Achilles kills Hector by slitting his throat. Also, some stories say that Athena tricked Hector into fighting Achilles.

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; it does not decay as normally expected. Aphrodite, the goddess of love who sides with Troy throughout the whole conflict has put a protective barrier over Hector which keeps him looking as he did before he was viciously killed and dragged 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 warrior, but in knowing the choice provided to him by Destiny. His mother Thetis had prophesied to him that if he did not fight in the Trojan War, he would enjoy a long but uneventful life. If Achilles fought, however, he would die before the walls of Troy but would be assured an everlasting glory, surpassing that of all other heroes. Achilles chose the latter option, making him one of Greece's most well-known and celebrated mythical heroes.

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Xanthus

During the Trojan War, Xanthus, one of Achilles' horses, was rebuked by Achilles for allowing Patroclus to be killed. Xanthus 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 as well.

Achilles' charioteer's name was Automedon.

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Memnon, Cycnus, Penthesilea, and the death of Achilles

Image:TBanksThetis.jpg 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, and is said to have been guided by Apollo), 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 due to the common conception that Paris was a coward and not the man his brother Hector was, and Achilles remains undefeated on the battlefield (Paris was later killed by Philoctetes using the enormous bow of Heracles). His bones are mingled with those of Patroclus, and funeral games are held. He was represented in the lost Trojan War epic of Aktinos of Miletus as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the Danube (see below).

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The fate of Achilles' armor

Achilles' armor was the object of a feud between Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax (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.

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The Cult of Achilles in Antiquity

There was an archaic cult of Achilles on the White Island, Leuce, in the Black Sea off the modern coasts of Romania and Ukraine, with a temple and an oracle which survived into the Roman period.

In the lost epic Aithiopis, a continuation of the Iliad attributed to Arktinus of Miletos, Achilles’ mother Thetis returned to mourn him and removed his ashes from the pyre and took them to Leuce at the mouths of the Danube. There the Achaeans raised a tumulus for him and celebrated funeral games.

Pliny's Natural History (IV.27.1) mentions a tumulus that is no longer evident (Insula Achillis tumulo eius viri clara), on the island consecrated to him, located at a distance of fifty Roman miles from Peuce by the Danube Delta, and the temple there. Pausanias has been told that the island is "covered with forests and full of animals, some wild, some tame. In this island there is also Achilles’ temple and his statue” (III.19.11). Ruins of a square temple 30 meters to a side, possibly that dedicated to Achilles, were discovered by Captain Kritzikly in 1823, but there has been no modern archeology done on the island.

Pomponius Mela tells that Achilles is buried in the island named Achillea, between Boristhene and Ister (De situ orbis, II, 7). And the Greek geographer Dionysius Periegetus of Bithynia, who lived at the time of Domitian, writes that the island was called Leuce "because the wild animals which live there are white. It is said that there, in Leuce island, reside the souls of Achilles and other heroes, and that they wander through the uninhabited valleys of this island; this is how Jove rewarded the men who had distinguished themselves through their virtues, because through virtue they had acquired everlasting honor” (Orbis descriptio, v. 541, quoted in Densuşianu 1913).

The Periplus of the Euxine Sea gives the following details: "It is said that the goddess Thetis raised this island from the sea, for her son Achilles, who dwells there. Here is his temple and his statue, an archaic work. This island is not inhabited, and goats graze on it, not many, which the people who happen to arrive here with their ships, sacrifice to Achilles. In this temple are also deposited a great many holy gifts, craters, rings and precious stones, offered to Achilles in gratitude. One can still read inscriptions in Greek and Latin, in which Achilles is praised and celebrated. Some of these are worded in Patroclus’ honor, because those who wish to be favored by Achilles, honor Patroclus at the same time. There are also in this island countless numbers of sea birds, which look after Achilles’ temple. Every morning they fly out to sea, wet their wings with water, and return quickly to the temple and sprinkle it. And after they finish the sprinkling, they clean the hearth of the temple with their wings. Other people say still more, that some of the men who reach this island, come here intentionally. They bring animals in their ships, destined to be sacrificed. Some of these animals they slaughter, others they set free on the island, in Achilles’ honor. But there are others, who are forced to come to this island by sea storms. As they have no sacrificial animals, but wish to get them from the god of the island himself, they consult Achilles’ oracle. They ask permission to slaughter the victims chosen from among the animals that graze freely on the island, and to deposit in exchange the price which they consider fair. But in case the oracle denies them permission, because there is an oracle here, they add something to the price offered, and if the oracle refuses again, they add something more, until at last, the oracle agrees that the price is sufficient. And then the victim doesn’t run away any more, but waits willingly to be caught. So, there is a great quantity of silver there, consecrated to the hero, as price for the sacrificial victims. To some of the people who come to this island, Achilles appears in dreams, to others he would appear even during their navigation, if they were not too far away, and would instruct them as to which part of the island they would better anchor their ships”. (quoted in Densuşianu)

The heroic cult of Achilles on Leuce island was widespread in Antiquity, not only along the sealanes of the Pontic Sea but also in maritime cities whose economic interests were tightly connected to the riches of the Black Sea.

Achilles from Leuce island was venerated as Pontarches the lord and master of the Pontic (Black) Sea, the protector of sailors and navigation. Sailors went out of their way to offer sacrifice. To Achilles of Leuce were dedicated a number of important commercial port cities of the Greek waters: Achilleion in Messenia (Stephanus Byzantinus), Achilleios in Laconia (Pausanias, III.25,4) Nicolae Densuşianu (Densuşianu 1913) even thought he recognized Achilles in the name of Aquileia and in the north arm of the Danube delta, the arm of Chilia ("Achileii"), though his conclusion, that Leuce had sovereign rights over Pontos, evokes modern rather than archaic sea-law."

Leuce had also a reputation as a place of healing. Pausanias (III.19,13) reports that the Delphic Pythia sent a lord of Croton to be cured of a chest wound. Ammianus Marcellinus (XXII.8) attributes the healing to waters (aquae) on the island.

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Other stories about Achilles

Some post-Homeric sources claim that in order to keep Achilles safe from the war, Thetis (or, in some versions, Peleus) hides the young man at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros. There, Achilles is disguised as a girl and lives among Lycomedes' daughters, perhaps under the name "Pyrrha" (the red-haired girl). With Lycomedes' daughter Deidamia, whom in the account of Statius he rapes, Achilles there fathers a son, Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus, after his father's possible alias). According to this story, Odysseus learns from the prophet Calchas that the Achaeans would be unable to capture Troy without Achilles' aid. Odysseus goes to Skyros in the guise of a peddler selling women's clothes and jewelry and places a shield and spear among his goods. When Achilles instantly takes up the spear, Odysseus sees through his disguise and convinces him to join the Trojan campaign. In another version of the story, Odysseus arranges for a trumpet alarm to be sounded while he was is Lycomedes' women; while the women flee in panic, Achilles prepares to defend the court, thus giving his identity away.

In Homer's Odyssey, there is a passage in which 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 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 the 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.

Post-Homeric literature explores a homosexual interpretation of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. By the fifth and fourth centuries, the deep — and arguably ambiguous — friendship portrayed in Homer blossomed into an unequivocal love affair in the works of Aeschylus, Plato, and Aeschines, and seems to have inspired the enigmatic verses in Lycophron's third century Alexandra that claim Achilles slayed Troilus in a matter of unrequited love.

Achilles fought and killed the Amazon Helene.

Some also said he married Medea, and that after both their deaths they were united in the Elysian Fields of Hades — as Hera promised Thetis in Apollonius' Argonautica.

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Achilles in lost plays

In the early 1990s fragments of a lost play by Aeschylus were 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. Another lost play by Aeschylus, The Myrmidons, focussed on the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus; only a few lines survive today.

There is another lost play with Achilles as the main character, The Lovers of Achilles, by Sophocles.

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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)
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Achilles in music

Achilles has frequently been mentioned in music.

  • Achilles is referred to in Bob Dylan's song, "Temporary Like Achilles".
  • "Achilles Last Stand", by Led Zeppelin; from the album Presence, 1976, Atlantic Records.
  • "Achilles' Revenge" is a song 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' Heel" is a song by the UK band Toploader.
  • "Achilles" is a song by the Colorado-based power metal band Jag Panzer, from the album Casting the Stones.
  • Achilles is referenced in the Indigo Girls song "Ghost".
  • "Achilles, Agony & Ecstasy In Eight Parts", by Manowar; from the album The Triumph of Steel, 1992, Atlantic Records.
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Achilles in film

The role of Achilles has been played by:

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Namesakes

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Notes

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References

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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 ;
  • Template:Cite journal
  • 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;
  • Johansson, Warren. Achilles. Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. Dynes, Wayne R. (ed.), Garland Publishing, 1990. p. 8
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See also

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External links

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