Achilles: The hero, the legend, the tragedy
During the late eighth century BCE, when Homer composed the Iliad, Greek audiences already widely knew of Achilles’ unmatched speed, his wrath, and his early death.
As the fiercest warrior of the Achaean forces at Troy, he fought for personal honour rather than duty, and his tale followed the arc of a man both blessed and cursed by divine parentage.
Over time, poets and dramatists returned to his story, and later historians did the same, as they wanted to do more than retell the events of the Trojan War and instead explore what it meant for a hero to destroy himself in the pursuit of eternal fame.
Birth of a demigod
According to most ancient sources, Achilles was the son of Thetis, a sea nymph whose beauty once attracted the attention of both Zeus and Poseidon.
After a prophecy had warned that her son would be greater than his father, she was married off to the mortal king Peleus.
At their wedding, which was held in Phthia, the goddess Eris caused chaos by introducing the golden apple of discord, an object inscribed “to the fairest.”
That act triggered the Judgement of Paris, which later caused the war at Troy.
Many later traditions expanded on Achilles’ supernatural qualities. According to Statius and others, Thetis attempted to protect her son when she dipped him in the River Styx and held him by the heel so that the rest of his body became invulnerable.
Other versions claimed she anointed him in ambrosia and placed him in fire to burn away his mortality, but Peleus interrupted the process.
As the boy grew, she learned of a prophecy that foretold either a long, unknown life or a short, glorious one if he joined the Greek expedition to Troy.
To delay the choice, she disguised him as a girl and hid him on the island of Scyros among the daughters of King Lycomedes.
Eventually, Odysseus lured him out when he laid out jewellery and weapons side by side.
Achilles reached for a blade, which revealed his identity. Before leaving, he had fathered a child, Neoptolemus, but chose war over family.
The wrath of Achilles
By the tenth year of the Trojan War, the Greeks had grown tired, and tensions grew within their army.
After a dispute over war prizes, Agamemnon took Briseis from Achilles, humiliating him before the army.
Briseis had been the wife of Mynes and was originally from Lyrnessus, which made the insult more severe.
Enraged, Achilles withdrew from the fighting and asked his mother to appeal to Zeus for punishment from the gods against the Greeks.
As a result, the Trojans gained the upper hand. Hector led the assault, and the Greek forces began to fall back toward their ships.
Meanwhile, Achilles refused to be persuaded by appeals from his fellow soldiers.
Patroclus was his closest companion and requested permission to wear Achilles’ armour in battle and lead the Myrmidons to support the Greeks.
At first, the deception worked. The Trojans believed Achilles had returned.
However, Hector met Patroclus in combat and killed him, and then stripped the armour from his body.
That act turned Achilles’ grief into rage. He re-entered the war to avenge Patroclus rather than to help the Greeks.
His wrath, once contained, turned into something more violent and unforgiving.
Hector’s death and the price of vengeance
After he rejoined the conflict, Achilles killed Trojans without pause so that their battle lines broke apart and the river Scamander filled with corpses.
The river god was enraged by the slaughter, rose up against Achilles, and forced him to flee before Hephaestus saved him.
Eventually, he chased Hector around the walls of Troy before striking him down in single combat.
However, he did not allow the death to satisfy him. He fastened Hector’s body to his chariot and dragged it across the plain as he circled the Greek camp and the city walls.
He repeated the act three times and refused to let grief subside.
For days, he refused to release the body and mistreated it in full view of Hector’s family.
According to Homer, the gods stepped in. Apollo shielded the corpse from decay, and Zeus ordered Thetis to persuade her son to relent.
After nightfall, King Priam entered the Greek camp alone. He knelt before Achilles, kissed the hands that had killed his son, and pleaded for the body’s return.
Achilles was moved by the father’s grief and agreed. He ordered a temporary truce to allow for Hector’s funeral and shared a silent meal with Priam, acknowledging, for the first time, the weight of sorrow on both sides.
Achilles’ death and memory
After Hector’s funeral, the Iliad ended, but other poets extended the story. In The Aethiopis, Paris killed Achilles with an arrow directed by Apollo, which struck the heel left unprotected by Thetis.
His fall came shortly after his victories over the Amazon queen Penthesilea and the Ethiopian prince Memnon.
After his death, Achilles’ armour became a prize. An argument broke out between Ajax and Odysseus.
After the armour went to Odysseus, Ajax descended into madness and later took his own life.
Next, the Greeks cremated Achilles, whose ashes were mixed with those of Patroclus.
Ajax had carried his body from the battlefield and helped defend it from the Trojans.
A great tumulus was raised in their honour. Later versions of the myth claimed that Achilles had been taken to the White Island in the Black Sea, where he lived as a spirit among other fallen heroes.
This belief developed during the Hellenistic period and showed the growing tradition of hero cults.
According to later accounts that drew from The Aethiopis, Thetis and the Nereids mourned loudly for him.
Alexander the Great, who later visited the supposed site of Achilles’ tomb at Sigeion in 334 BCE, held funeral games in his honour.
However, Homer painted a darker image. In the Odyssey, when Odysseus met Achilles in the Underworld, the dead hero regretted his choice.
He said he would rather be a poor man’s servant than rule among the dead.
The tragic ideal
By almost every measure of the heroic code, Achilles outdid all others. He fought with unmatched skill and moved with such speed that almost every opponent feared him.
However, he also carried within him a fury that consumed both friend and foe. His sense of honour allowed almost no compromise, and his pursuit of glory usually left no room for restraint.
As a result, he became a figure of sorrow as much as admiration.
At certain points, Achilles showed that he could be gentle. He wept for Patroclus and mourned with Priam.
He acknowledged too late that all men suffer. Still, his return to battle sealed his fate. He made the choice to die young but remembered.
His story, which had passed from Homer to the tragedians and into later Roman and Byzantine writings, raised a question for many readers that has never faded: whether greatness could ever be worth the cost of love, peace, and life itself.