Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles or Achilleus (in ancient Greek Ἀχιλλεύς or also Ἀχιλἣος and in modern Greek Αχιλλέας) was a hero of the Trojan War and one of the main protagonists and greatest warriors of Homer's Iliad.
He was a grandson of Aeacus and son of Peleus and Thetis, which is why he is often called "Pelida" and "Eacid". In the famous Homeric work, Achilles is usually described as "the one of the light feet", since he was considered the fastest of men.
Later legends (beginning with a poem by Statius from the I century) state that Achilles was invulnerable in all but his body. on his heel. These legends hold that Achilles was killed in battle by being struck in the heel by a poisoned arrow. It is from here where the expression "Achilles heel" takes shape to refer to the greatest weakness of a person; and in the field of anatomy, a tendon in the back of the leg is called the "Achilles Tendon".
Achilles is also famous for being the most beautiful of the heroes assembled at Troy. Crucial in his myth is his relationship with Patroclus, his comrade in arms.
Birth
Achilles was the son of the mortal Peleus, king of the Myrmidons in Phthia (southeastern Thessaly), and the sea nymph Thetis. Zeus and Poseidon had vied for her hand until Themis prophesied that Thetis would bear a son even greater than her father. For this reason Thetis was forced to marry Peleus. According to other sources, it was Prometheus or Proteus who made the prophecy or it was Momo who advised Zeus to marry Thetis to a mortal. There is an alternative version in Argonáuticas: in it, Hera alludes to Thetis's chaste resistance to Zeus's advances, for which reason she would have been loyal to Hera's marriage bond, coldly rejecting it.
According to the incomplete poem Aquileida, written by Statius in the I century, when Achilles Thetis tried to make him immortal by dunking it in the Styx, but forgot to wet the heel by which he was holding it, leaving that point vulnerable. It is unclear if this version of the myth was previously known. In another side of the story, Thetis anointed the child with ambrosia and put it on the hearth fire to burn the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted in these tasks by Peleo, who violently tore the child from her hands and he was left with a charred heel. Thetis, enraged, abandoned them both. Peleus replaced Achilles' burnt heel with the taba of the giant Damisus, famous for his running speed. Hence, Achilles was named 'the one of the light feet' (πόδας ὠκύς: podas ôkus).
However, none of the sources before Statius make any reference to this invulnerability. On the contrary, in the Iliad Homer mentions that Achilles is wounded: in Book XXI the Peonian hero Asteropeus, son of Pelegon, challenges Achilles by the river Scamander. He threw two spears at him at the same time, and one hit Achilles' shoulder, "from which black blood flowed". /i> (author of the poem lost in the Trojan cycle), Ethiopida by Arctinus of Miletus, Little Iliad by Lesques and Iliupersis by Arctinus— there is no trace of references to his invulnerability or his famous heel. On later painted vases depicting the death of Achilles, an arrow strikes his body; in some cases, multiple arrows.
On Mount Pelion, Peleus entrusted Achilles and Patroclus to the centaur Chiron to raise them. Chiron fed them wild boars, lion entrails, and bear marrow to increase their courage; In addition, he taught them archery, the art of eloquence and the healing of wounds.
The muse Calliope taught them to sing, and the prophet Calchas predicted that Achilles would be given a choice between a short and glorious life or long in years and dull.
In canto IX of the Iliad, it is said that in the embassy made up of Odysseus, Ajax Telamonio and Fénix that the latter, a myrmidon knight, had raised the hero when he was a child, and he alludes to intimate passages from his childhood. The same work speaks of Achilles' coexistence with his mother, the Nereid Thetis, in his father's palace: Peleus. In Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, Chiron is said to have predicted the exploits of Achilles.
Achilles on Scyrus
Some post-Homeric sources claim that to keep Achilles out of the war, Thetis (or, according to little-known tradition, Peleus) hid the young man at the court of Lycomedes, king of Scyrus. There Achilles was disguised as maiden and lived among the daughters of Lycomedes under the name of Pyrrha ('redhead'). With one of them, Deidamía, whom in Statius' version he raped, he had his only son, Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus, after his father's nickname). According to this story, Odysseus learned from the prophet Calchas that the Achaeans would be unable to capture Troy without the help of Achilles, so he marched to Scyrus with clothes and jewels to present to the women but between them he placed a shield and a spear. Odysseus then ordered a trumpet or clarion sounded in alarm. Achilles prepared to defend the court taking the shield and spear and tore his clothes, thus revealing his identity.
Achilles in the Trojan War
Telephus and "empathic magic"
When the Greeks left for the Trojan War they stopped in Mysia, where King Telephus ruled. In the resulting battle, Achilles wounded Telephus. The wound would not heal, and Telephus asked for an oracle, who said "the one he wounded will heal."
Telephus went to Argos disguised as a beggar and asked Achilles for help to heal his wound. Alternatively, Telephus kidnapped Orestes, then a child, and demanded as a ransom that Achilles heal the wound. Achilles refused, claiming no medical knowledge. Odysseus pointed out that the spear was the one that had inflicted the wound and that therefore the spear must be able to heal it. A few pieces of the spear were scraped over the wound, and Telephus was healed. This is an example of empathic magic.
Colona Cyno
According to some traditions collected by Plutarch, Ovid and the Byzantine researcher John Tzetzes, once the Greek ships reached Troy, Achilles fought and killed Cycnus of Colona, son of Poseidon. Cycnus was invulnerable, except for his head.
Troilus
According to the Account of the Destruction of Troy by Dares Phrygium, the Latin summary that transmitted the story of Achilles to medieval Europe, while Troilus, the youngest son of Priam and Hecuba (some say that in reality his father was Apollo), was watering his horses at the Lion's Fountain outside the walls of Troy, Achilles saw him and fell in love with his beauty (whose "goodness of forms" was described by Ibicos as "thrice gold." refined"). The young man rejected his proposals and took refuge in the temple of Apollo. Achilles pursued him into the sanctuary and beheaded him on the god's own altar. Troilus was said to be a year shy of his twentieth birthday at that time, and legend has it that if Troilus had reached that age, Troy would have been invincible.
In the Iliad
The Iliad is the most famous account of Achilles' exploits in the Trojan War. The Homeric epic covers only a few weeks of the war and does not narrate the death of Achilles. Its theme is, on the contrary, the anger of the hero. The first two lines of the work read:
μ marginνιν γειδε θε θίικιλιλιλιλιλεω χχιτος
ο,λομέν Cristianν,, μυρί' χαιος σλγε' θθκενSing, O goddess, the cholera of Achilles Peel,
that caused infinite evil to the aqueous
The poem begins with Achilles withdrawing from the Achaean camp because of an offense committed against him by Agamemnon, the leader of the besieging army. Agamemnon had taken a woman named Chryseis as his slave, and her father, Chryses, a priest of Apollo, begged him to return her to him. Agamemnon refused, and Apollo sent a plague among the Greeks. The prophet Calchas correctly determined the source of the trouble but would not speak unless Achilles swore to protect him. Achilles did so, so Calchas declared that Chryseis should be returned to her father. Agamemnon agreed, but then demanded that Achilles's slave, Briseis, be given to him as a replacement. Angered by this dishonor and at the urging of Thetis, Achilles refused to fight and lead his Myrmidons alongside the Greek forces.
As the battle turned against the Greeks, Nestor declared that if Agamemnon had not angered Achilles, the Trojans would not be winning, and asked Achilles to placate him. Agamemnon agreed and sent Odysseus and two other chiefs to offer Achilles the return of Briseis and other gifts. Achilles stubbornly refused them and asked the Greeks to sail home as he was planning to do.
However, wishing to retain his glory despite his absence from the battle, Achilles eventually prayed to his mother Thetis, asking her to beg Zeus to allow the Trojans to drive back the Greek forces. The Trojans, led by Hector, thus drove the Greek army back to the beaches and raided their ships. With the Greek forces on the brink of utter destruction, Achilles agreed to let Patroclus lead the Myrmidons into battle, but he continued to refuse to fight. Patroclus managed to repel the Trojans from the beaches, but was killed by Hector before they could actually storm the city of Troy. After receiving the news of Patroclus's death from Antilochus, Nestor's son, Achilles wept over the body of his friend. His mother Thetis came to comfort the afflicted Achilles, persuading him to have Hephaestus make him new armor, instead of the one Patroclus had worn and which was taken away by Hector. The new armor included the shield of Achilles, described in great detail by the aedus (Iliad, XVIII, 478-608). Angered by the death of Patroclus, Achilles befriended Agamemnon and returned angrily to the battlefield killing many men in search of Hector. He even fought the river god Scamander, who was angry that he was clogging his waters with all the men he killed. The god tried to drown him but was stopped by Hera and Hephaestus. Zeus himself warned of Achilles' fury and sent the gods to contain them, since Troy was not yet to be destroyed. Finally Achilles found his victim and pursued Hector around the walls of Troy. They circled around them three times until Athena took the form of Deiphobo, Hector's brother, and thus convinced the latter to fight Achilles face to face. Achilles killed Hector by sticking his spear into his neck and to complete his revenge he tied his body to his chariot and dragged him across the battlefield for nine days. He then presided over the funeral games in honor of Patroclus.
With the help of the god Hermes, Hector's father Priam went to Achilles' tent and convinced him to allow him to perform his son's funeral rites. With this gesture, Achilles finally deposes his anger. The final passage of the Iliad is Hector's funeral. In the Iliad, Achilles is the only mortal to experience a non-trivial anger, which makes special reference to the gods (menis). His anger is sometimes hesitant and other times absolute. The "humanization" of Achilles by the events of the war is an important theme of the story.
In Ethiopian
The cyclical epic Ethiopid, a work believed to have been composed after the Iliad, continues to narrate the events of the war. This work has been lost although its plot is known from scattered fragments cited by later authors. The story continues as follows:
Without the help of its greatest hero, the fall of Troy was imminent. However, the defenders would receive the help of two foreign nations: the Amazons first, and the Ethiopians later.
After his temporary truce with Priam, the Achaeans fought the Amazons and Achilles killed Queen Penthesilea. Achilles pierced her chest with a spear, but seeing her die he was overwhelmed by her beauty, and when Thersites, one of the Greek soldiers, mocked him for her display of weakness, Achilles killed him.
After Patroclus' death, Achilles' closest companion had become Nestor's son Antilochus. When Memnon of Cush slew Antilochus, Achilles again stormed the battlefield seeking revenge and slew Memnon. The fight between Achilles and Memnon for Antilochus echoes that of Achilles and Hector for Patroclus, except that Memnon (unlike Hector) is also the son of a goddess, like Achilles.
Death of Achilles
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As Hector had predicted with his dying breath, his younger brother Paris killed Achilles, either with an arrow (in the heel according to Statius) or with a knife through the back while visiting Polyxena, a Trojan princess. According to some versions, the god Apollo guided the arrow of Paris, or it was Apollo himself who killed him disguised as Paris.
His bones were mixed with those of Patroclus, and funerary games were held. In the Ethiopian of Arctinus of Miletus it was said that he was taken by Thetis to the island of Leuce (or White Island). There the Achaeans erected a mound in his honor and held funerary games.
Later, Philoctetes killed Paris using Heracles' huge bow.
The Fate of Achilles' Armor
Achilles' armor was the subject of a dispute between Odysseus and Ajax the Great (Achilles' younger cousin). Both competed for it giving speeches about why they were the bravest after Achilles and the most deserving of it. Odysseus won. Ajax went mad with pain and anguish and swore to kill his companions; he began to kill the herds, believing in his madness that they were Greek soldiers. When he regained his sanity, he committed suicide by falling on the sword that had previously been bestowed on him by his favorite enemy: the Trojan prince Hector.
Achilles and Patroclus
Achilles' relationship with Patroclus is a key aspect of his myth. Its exact nature has been the subject of dispute both in the classical period and in modern times. In the Iliad it is clear that the two heroes have a deep and extremely meaningful friendship and Patroclus even tells Achilles in a dream to bury his ashes along with his. Some modern authors have argued that Achilles From some passages of the Iliad, the existence of an erotic relationship between Achilles and Patroclus can be deduced, but the most widespread opinion is that Homer's text makes no allusion to the fact that there was that type of relationship between them. relationship. Patroclus was sent by his father to Ptia, where he met Achilles and where he became his companion-in-arms (therapon). On the other hand, in song IX of the Iliad presents Achilles and Patroclus each sleeping with a woman, Achilles with Diomede and Patroclus with Ifis, a woman who, by the way, Achilles himself gave to Patroclus.
Post-Homeric literature, beginning in the V century a. C., explores an interpretation in which Achilles and Patroclus would have been lovers. The first explicit evidence of an erotic relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is a fragment of The Myrmidons, a lost tragedy by Aeschylus. This type of relationship between the two is also present in works by Plato and Aeschines, and it seems to have inspired the enigmatic verses in Lycophron's Alexandra that affirmed that Achilles had killed Troilus, of which a scholium by the Byzantine writer John Tzetzes adds that it was because of a matter of unrequited love.
The Cult of Achilles
At the Euxine Point
There was an archaic cult of Achilles on Leuce (Island of Serpents) in the Black Sea, off the coast of present-day Romania and Ukraine. On the island there was a temple and an oracle that survived until Roman times. The ruins of a 30 m square temple, possibly dedicated to Achilles, were discovered by N. D. Kritskij in 1823. Excavations have revealed to light remains of a building whose origin could be placed in the VI century BC. C. Votive vessels, gems and coins from different places in Ancient Greece have also been found.
Pliny mentions in his Naturalis Historia a burial mound on the island sacred to Achilles, which was no longer evident, located at a distance of fifty Roman miles from Peuce Island next to the Danube delta, and the temple that was there. Pausanias was told that the island was covered with forests and that there was the temple of Achilles and his statue.
Pomponius Mela tells that Achilles is buried on the island called Aquileia, between the Boristhenes and the Ister. The Greek geographer Dionysius Periegeta, who lived in the time of Domitian, wrote that the island was called Leuce because the animals The savages who lived there were white.
The work by Flavio Arriano Periplo del Ponto Euxino also mentions the temple of Achilles and the statue on the island of Leuce, as well as the numerous offerings left there by the navigators who arrived at the place and the presence of an oracle.
Leuce also had a reputation as a place of healing. In his Description of Greece, Pausanias tells that the Delphic sibyl sent a lord of Croton to be healed of a chest wound. Ammianus Marcellinus attributes the healing to the island's waters.
The cult of Achilles was extended in antiquity to different places on the shores of the Black Sea, where numerous inscriptions have been found indicating that he was venerated with the epithet Pontarch, lord and owner of the sea Black, protector of sailors and navigation.
Elsewhere
Several trading ports in Greek waters, called Achilles, were dedicated to Achilles in Messenia and in Laconia. Nicolae Densuşianu even thought that the cult of Achilles could be recognized in the name of the Italian city of Aquileia, located on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, and in the northern arm of the Danube delta, the Chilia arm (Achileii).
In addition, Achilles was also worshiped in Sigeon —the place where tradition says his tomb was found—, in Epirus, in Olympia and in Arcadia.
The Cult of Achilles in Modern Times: The Achilleion of Corfu
In the region of Gastouri (Γαστούρι) south of the city of Corfu (Greece), the Austrian Empress Sissi built a summer palace in 1890 with Achilles as the main theme, in what is a monument to Platonic romanticism. Naturally, the palace was named in her honor: Achilleion (Αχίλλειον). In this elegant construction, paintings and sculptures of Achilles abound, both in the main hall and in the splendid gardens, representing the heroic and tragic scenes of the Trojan War.
The name of Achilles
Achilles' name can be analyzed as a combination of ἄχος akhos ('pain', 'sorrow') and λαός laos ('people', 'tribe', 'nation', etc.). In other words, Achilles is a personification of grief, pain being a theme that appears numerous times in the Iliad (often due to Achilles). Achilles' role as the hero of sorrows is an ironic juxtaposition to the conventional view of Achilles as the hero of kleos ('glory', usually in battle).
Laos has been interpreted by Gregory Nagy, following Leonard Palmer, as meaning 'corps of soldiers'. With this derivation, the name would have a double meaning in the poem: when the hero acts correctly, his men fill the enemy with pain, but when he is wrong, it is his men who receive the pain. The poem is in part about the mismanagement of anger by leadership.
On the other hand, in the Mythological Library of Apollodorus it is said that Peleus gave Achilles his name because he did not bring his lips close to a breast and that before calling himself that, he had been called Ligiron. In this way, Apollodorus relates the name to the word "χείλος" which, preceded by the privative particle "ἀ", would have the meaning "without lips".
Other stories about Achilles
Unlike Briseis in the Iliad, who does not utter a word, in Ovid's Heroides, Briseis sends a letter to Achilles asking him to to do everything possible to rescue her from Agamemnon's power and expresses her feelings towards him.
In the Odyssey there is a passage in which Odysseus sails to the underworld and converses with the shadows of the dead. One of them is the shadow of Achilles, who is greeted as "blessed in life, blessed in death"; the warrior replies that he would rather be a slave to the worst of masters than king of all the dead.
The kings of Epirus claimed descent from Achilles because tradition said his son Neoptolemus had reigned there. Alexander the Great, son of Princess Olympias of Epirus, could therefore also claim this kinship, and she strove to be like his great ancestor in many ways. It is said that he visited his tomb while passing through Troy.
Some also claim that Achilles married Medea and that after his death the two were united on the Elysian Fields of Hades, as Hera promised Thetis in Apollonius' Argonautics.
Achilles in the Greek tragedy
The Greek dramatist Aeschylus wrote a trilogy of plays about Achilles, called Achilleis by modern scholars. The tragedies recounted Achilles' exploits during the Trojan War, including his victory over Hector and ultimately his death by an arrow shot by Paris. Another lost play by Aeschylus, The Myrmidons, focused on the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. Only a few lines are preserved.
The playwright Sophocles also wrote a play starring Achilles, Achilles' Lovers, of which only a few fragments survive. Euripides also dealt with themes in which the character of Achilles appears in several works of which only fragments survive: The Scyrians and Telephus.
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