Achilles (in Greek old Ἀχιλλεύς / Akhilleús ) is a legendary hero of the Trojan War, wire of Pélée, king of Phthie in Thessalie, and of Thétis, a Néréide (marine nymph). It is frequently called “Péléide” or “Éacide”, epithet S which points out its ascent.

Plunged by his/her mother in the Styx, one of the rivers of the Enfers, so that it becomes invulnerable, it is educated by the Centaure Chiron which teaches him arts from the war, the music and the medicine. Whereas it is still adolescent, it chooses a life short, but glorious, rather than a long existence but without glare. Hidden by his/her mother, who wants to prevent it from taking part in the Trojan War, at the court of the king Lycomède, the young man is discovered by Ulysses and is joined, with her friend and lover Patrocle, Greek forwarding. At the time of the tenth year of the conflict, a quarrel with Agamemnon pushes it to leave the combat: it is the “anger of Achilles” sung by Iliade . The death of Patrocle pushes it to take again the weapons to face Hector, best of Troyens. Achilles finds death shortly after to have killed it, reached with ankle by an arrow of Pâris guided by the god Apollon.

Achilles is honoured like a hero, even like a god by the Greek world. Beautiful, valorous, champion of a proud morals of the honor, it incarnates “the moral ideal of the perfect Homeric knight. ”

Myth

Birth

One of the most outstanding facts of its legend comes from the desire of his/her mother to make it immortal. Then, the accounts diverge. According to an old tradition, Thétis places all his/her children in an ebullient water cauldron or fire, to check if they are not immortal; Shovelful stops it before it can make undergo the same fate with Achille. According to others, it rubs them ambrosia and places them in fire so that this one consumes the share mortal of the children - a similar legend is attached to Démophon Éleusis or, in Egyptian mythology, with Isis.

Lastly, the alternative the most popular watch soaking his/her son in water of the Styx, the river of the Hells, by holding it by the heel. It becomes thus invulnerable, except for heel by which its mother it had held, which gave place to the expression “Achilles' heel”, who means “vulnerable place, not sensitive”. Nevertheless, Iliade does not mention any of these traditions related to the birth of Achilles, and nothing in the epopee makes it possible to affirm that it is insensitive with the blows. In the Continuation of Homère of Quintus of Smyrna, it is wounded by the prince Ethiopia N Memnon. With the remainder, Achille is not the only famous Greek hero (almost) invulnerable: the Old ones grant also this privilege to Ajax Large the.

Education

The dominant tradition wants that following the example other heroes like Jason and Actéon, Achille is entrusted by his father to the centaur Chiron, living the Mont Pélion in Thessalie. There, he learns medicine, the handling of the weapons, art to ride a horse and to drive out, anisi that the music. The literature does not bring back a particular exploit on behalf of the boy, if they are not its prowesses with hunting.

Iliade is shown not very eloquent on Chiron, and puts rather ahead the character of Phœnix which learns to the boy art from the eloquence and the handling from the weapons. In a touching scene of song IX, the old man remembers to have held the hero on his knees, cutting out his meat and helping it to drink his wine. Lastly, elsewhere in the poem, Thétis clamp also to have raised his/her son itself.

The first mobilization with Aulis

The events of the Trojan War which precede those by Iliade are particularly confused. In Iliade , Achille is sent directly by Pélée, with Patrocle and the Myrmidons, when the Greek chiefs gather with Aulis. The Songs cypriens , an epopee of the Trojan Cycle, tells then how, thorough by the winds, the Greek fleet unloads by error in Mysie. Believer to have reached Troy, the Achaens pass to the attack and run up against the local king, Télèphe, wire of Héraclès. Achilles faces it and wounds it. Greek forwarding sets out again, but a storm carries it to the island of Skyros, where Achille marries Déidamie, girl of the king Lycomède. The Chants cypriens tell then how Télèphe, casualty, go to Argos to be neat by Achille in exchange of information on the road towards Troy.

Iliade does not refer to these events, but does not contradict them either. With, the epic of Achilles and Télèphe is known of Pindare, which referred there in one of its Isthmiques , as well as Eschyle, Sophocle and Euripide. The first devote each one to him a tragic cycle (lost today) probably covering the unit of the account, of the arrival in Mysie to the cure with Argos. The Télèphe of Euripide, as lost to him, is known by many allusions as there made Aristophane: it concentrates on the arrival of Télèphe and its cure by Achille. Later sources specify than Télèphe, after having killed good number of Greeks, flees when it meets Achille. Taken in vines deployed by Dionysos, it is wounded by the lance of Achilles. According to a frequent magic diagram, only this same lance will be able then to look after it.

The way in which Achille joined Greek forwarding been the subject of a later alternative which is essential then like dominant. A oracle learned to the Achaens that the young man is essential to the catch of Troy. Thétis or Shovelful, fearing for its life, disguises it as a woman and the mask among the girls of Lycomède, in order to withdraw it from the pressure warriors.

To Lycomède, which according to the versions is with the current or not of trickery, Achille bears the name of Pyrrha, “the russet-red one”. Under its disguise, it allures or violates Déidamie, which will give him Néoptolème, also called Pyrrhus which will appear essential to the catch of Troy.

Having had wind of the trick, Diomède and Ulysses arrive then at Skyros and identify Achille, who joined the Greek army then. The episode is the subject of a tragedy of Euripide, Skyriens . Ovide specifies how are caught the two heroes there: disguised as a merchant, the king of Ithaque proposes to the girls of Lycomède invaluable fabrics and weapons; Achilles reveals himself while being the only one to seize a sword and a shield. At Apollodore, it is a ringing of trumpet which awakes the heroism of the young man, who reveals himself thus. At Hygin, the hero shows himself a little less naive: hearing trumpets, Achille believes the attacked city, and seizes the weapons to defend it.

The fleet leaves shortly after and stops in the course of road on the island of Ténédos, where a feast is organized. Achilles, invited tardily, puts himself then in anger. We know another occasion during which Achille puts itself in anger during a dinner: in the Odyssey , the aède Démodocos proposes at the court Alcinoos to sing the argument between Achille and Ulysses, argument whose oracle of Delphien Apollo would have predicted that it would be the precursory sign of the fall of Troy. An allusion of Plutarque to a lost part of Sophocle reports just as Ulysses makes fun, during a banquet, anger of Achilles: he shows this last to have taken fear by seeing Troy and Hector, and to seek a pretext to flee. It is not easy to determine if it is about a single episode or of two distinct angers.

A second incident takes seat with Ténédos: the island is controlled by Ténès, wire of Apollon, which pushes back the Achaens. Achilles kills it, in spite of the recommendation of his mother not to kill it under penalty of perishing itself with the hands of Apollo. Plutarque reconte on its side that Thétis sends to the sides of Achilles a servant charged to point out the warning to him; Achilles is held to with it until it meets the sister of Ténès, which strikes it by its beauty. Ténès interposes to protect his/her sister and Achille, forgetting the warning, kills it.

First years of the war

When the Greek fleet arrives in front of Troy, Achille must face Cycnos, wire of Poséidon and king of Colone, which prevents them from unloading. This one with the characteristic to be Albino and invulnerable: no weapon can wound it. Achilles finally manages to kill it by strangling it with the chin-strap of his helmet or, according to another version, of a stone jet.

The Greeks install their camp on the beach which extends in front of Troy; an Achaean embassy to claim Helene fails. Achilles tests the desire then to see the young woman. the Songs cypriens state only that the meeting is arranged by Aphrodite and Thétis, without more detail. However, a hellenistic alternative evokes a prediction of Cassandre according to which Helene would have five husbands - Thésée, Ménélas, Pâris, Déiphobe and Achille. It is not obviously about an allusion to the reign of Achilles after his death with the Champs Elysées, since the same source makes to Médée his wife postmortem . Perhaps should it be concluded from it that the appointment between Achille and Helene ended in the union of the two protagonists and Calchas, encouraged by Achille, reveals that Apollon punished Agamemnon to have refused with its priest, Chrysès, to return his/her Chryséis daughter to him. Obliged to yield, furious Agamemnon claims another share of honor. Achilles récrie and Agamemnon, to humiliate it, decides to take Briséis, his prisoner. In anger, this last decides to be withdrawn under its tent and swears on the sceptre of Agamemnon, gift of Zeus, not to turn over to the combat. He beseeches his mother to ask Zeus the advantage in Troyens, as long as he will be absent from battle field. Zeus grants to him. It is what the first summarize towards Iliade :

“Sings, O goddess, the ire of Péléide Achille,
Fatal ire which caused thousand evils in Achéens
And reduced to Hadès so much from hearts valeureuses
Hero, whose bodies were used as grazing ground with the chiens
And with the birds without number: thus Zeus it had wanted it. ”

Deprived of its support, the Greeks essuient defeats on defeats, and whereas the Greeks are driven back and that Troyens threaten to burn their naves, the wise old man Nestor, Phoenix and Ulysses comes in embassy to plead the Achaean cause. Achilles remains firm but Patrocle, moved by misfortunes by its compatriots, obtains the authorization of Achilles to save the Greeks while carrying its weapons. The operation succeeds but Patrocle, in spite of its promise with Achille, engages the continuation. It is killed by Hector, which takes the weapons of Achilles like spoils. Furious and humiliated - misled by Patrocle, which died about it and thus out of punishment, and symbolically overcome by Hector -, Achille decides to be avenged, in spite of the warnings of his mother: if he faces Hector, he will die little of time afterwards. Héphaïstos forges new weapons to him, with which it leaves to research Hector.

Covered of its divine armor, it engages again in the combat and cuts down a great number of Troyens on its passage, so much that water of the Scamandre is soiled corpses. Offended, Scamandre misses drowning Achille. Saved by the intervention of Héphaïstos, this one meets finally Hector, defies it and kills it with the assistance of Athéna. He trails his skin three times around the city with his tank before bringing back it in the Achaean camp.

Returned in his tent, the hero cries his dead friend. At the time to burn the skin, it cuts its hair as a sign of mourning and sacrifices four horses, nine dogs and twelve young Troyens whose body is thrown on roughing-hew it. The following day, he again trails behind his tank the body of Hector, this time around the tomb of Patrocle.

Achilles however shows humanity by leaving the king Priam, come in his tent while begging, to carry the body of his son to grant worthy funeral to him. He obeys thus his mother, sent by the gods dissatisfied with the treatment inflicted to the skin of the hero.

Memnon and Penthésilée

Éthiopide , one of the epopees of the Trojan Cycle, takes again the account of the Trojan War where Iliade stops. She tells how, after the death of Hector, the town of Priam sees arriving of new champions. It is initially the the Amazon Penthésilée, girl of Arès. Achilles faces it in duel and éprend of it at the time when he kills it, which excites the mockeries of Thersite. Exceeded, the hero kills it and must then purify on the island of Lesbos.

Shortly after Memnon, wire of Éos (Dawn) arrives and prince of the Ethiopian . There still, it meets Achille in singular combat and is killed by him.

Died

The days of Achilles from now on are counted. Xanthos, one of the horses of Achilles, predicted it to the hero, allotting his death to a “strong god”. In the same way, Thétis informed it on several occasions that he would die young person, specifying even that “Apollon E would kill out of his fast arrows/when am under the walls of quarrelsome Troyens. ” Lastly, Hector expiring with predicted the death of its adversary, killed by Pâris and Apollon, close to the Scées Doors.

Several versions exist as for its death. Éthiopide specifies that he dies with the hand of Pâris and Apollon whereas he continues Troyens under the walls of the city. Pindare implies that the god takes the shape of the son of Priam and keep silent Achille to delay the catch of Troy, like it already does it in Iliade to stop Patrocle in its attack. Énéide is the first to state explicitly that Pâris draws the fatal arrow, which is guided by Apollon.

At this stage, no text evokes the famous Achilles' heel. The reason for the vulnerable place appears for the first time at Stace, a poet of second half of; a little later Hygin mentions expressly ankle, that Apollon transpierces his arrow, like its only vulnerable point. However, four vases of the antiquated period and the beginning of the traditional period represent either Pâris stripping an arrow to the bottom of the body of Achilles (the thigh, the tibia or the foot), or Achille died, an arrow through the foot, which tends to prove that the tradition of the “Achilles' heel” is old. Lastly, all the authors speak well about ankle ( Latin slope in , σφυρόν into Greek old), but the word slope changes then direction to give the French “heel”.

Another tradition binds the death of Achilles to his love for Polyxène, girl of Priam: the hero is killed whereas it negotiates with the Trojan king the hand of his daughter in the temple of Thymbrien Apollo. In another version, Achilles éprend of Polyxène whereas it accompanies her father come to claim the skin of Hector; Priam promises its hand then to him provided it puts an end to the war - it is actually about an ambush, since Pâris awaits it, the arc with the hand, tapi behind a column of the temple.

Its funeral is told in song XXIV of the Odyssey by the heart of Agamemnon, as in book III of the Continuation of Homère of Quintus of Smyrna. Its ashes are frays with those of Patrocle and Antiloque in a gold ballot box. It is buried, in the middle of the tears and of moanings, on the shore of the Hellespont and thus does not know the final victory of the Greeks.

After its death

Homère, in the Odyssey , represents it reigning on the Pré of the Asphodel in the Hadès, and quite disillusioned. Ulysses who congratulates it to reign among deaths, he answers:

“Does not seek to soften me death, O noble Ulysses!
I would like to better be on domestic ground of a peasant,
It without inheritance and almost without resources,
was To reign here among these consumed shades…”

In Éthiopide , Thétis represents it after death like living the ideal life of the warrior, on the White Île, in the middle of combat without number and of eternal feasts, married to Médée, Helene, Iphigénie or with Polyxène. Pindare, in its Néméennes , for its part evokes a “brilliant” island located in the Euxine Sea. Euripide also takes again this version in its Andromaque .

Interpretation

Although descendant of Zeus and Thétis, Achille is subjected to a condition mortal. However Homère marks it of a divine print: its mênis , i.e. its anger. It does not have anything commun run with the rage and the rancour which characterize the human ones, it is a divine passion. The other heroes of Iliade are dominated them by the handled, the warlike madness which plugs them all (except for only the Ulysses).

When Agamemnon tears off Briséis to him, it is deeply wounded, it seems to him that it loses its heroic honor, grace that Zeus grants to its preferred. Consequently it does not matter in Achille the expiatory present that sends Agamemnon, worse, they do nothing but poke its anger because Agamemnon believes capacity to dominate its mênis divine by simple objects. Indeed, also invaluable they are, they are human and thus without value with respect to what constitutes for Achille the proof of his divinity.

Achilles is thus an ambiguous character, because free to respect in turn the codes and rites of the heroes and human manners. This freedom obliges it to belong to none the factions, which gives him a special place in the work of Homère.

Worship

Achilles is the subject of a heroic worship in several areas of the the Mediterranean. It is difficult to know how the worship took its rise, because the heroic worships are generally focused on the tomb of the hero. In the species, the remainders of Achilles are supposed to be on banks of the Hellespont, not far from Troy: in Iliade (XXIII), Patrocle is buried at this place, and its phantom requires of Achille that their ashes be buried at the same place; the Odyssey specifies that large a Tumulus, visible since the sea, is raised by the Achaens. A worship is attested there as of fifth century BC and a city, Achilléion, are founded on the site. The Thessalie NS carry out an annual pilgrimage there, and the texts mention that the Persian army comes to venerate Achille there during the medic Guerres, followed by Alexandre Large the or Caracalla

The worship of Achilles is not confined with its tomb: he is also venerated with Érythrées (minor Asia), with Crotona, Sparte and with Élis (Peloponnese) or with Astypalaia, an island of the Cyclades. The worship for which we have largest the number of traces is that of the area of Olbia, in Black Sea, which has course of sixth century BC to the Roman period. A series of steles registered of the watch that Achille is venerated there under the épiclèse of “Pontarque” (in Greek, king of the Pont). It is even one of the principal divinities of the area at the time Roman. A fragment of Alcée, taking again the phraseology of these inscriptions, evokes Achille reigning on the Scythie. In the same area, the étroire peninsula of Will tend is called in Antiquity the “track of race of Achilles”. The name is probably explained by athletic plays organized in the honor of the heroes, attested with. Lastly, the island of Leukè (current island of the Snakes), literally the “white island”), in the North-West of the Euxine Sea, is the site of worship of the most known Achilles under Antiquity. It shelters a temple and a statue of worship. The hero is famous to live there: he appears in vision with the sailors who approach the island.

The worship of Achilles is often related to the sea, association which is not explained by the elements of its myth, but only by its filiation with a néréide; he is thus venerated jointly with Thétis with Érythrées. He is particularly popular near the sailors, who are at the origin of the majority of the votive offerings with Achille discovered in the Euxine Sea. The question indeed arose as of Antiquity: the Pseudo-Apollodore explains thus that its name means “which does not have lips” (of one α- privative and of χεῖλος / kheĩlos , “lip”), “because never it had not approached its lips of a center”. However, this popular etymology does not rest on nothing.

One of the most convincing assumptions gives in the name of the hero the direction of “that with which the army is afflicted”, of ἀχός / akhós , “sorrow, the affliction”, and of λαός / laós , “the army, the crowd of the warriors”. Indeed, the figure of Achilles is closely related to sorrow: that tested by the Achaens when Achille withdraws battle, then when he dies.

Sources

• (III, 13,5-8), (III, 14-16).

• (I; IV, 783-879).
• .
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• .
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• ( passim ), (XI, 467-540; XXIV, 16 and suiv.).
• (III), (XI, 217-265; XII, 70; XII, 580 - XIII, 398; XIV, 39).
• (III, 19).
• .
• ( Olympic , IX).
• ( passim ).
• .
• ( passim ).
• .
• ( passim ).
• (I, 133,255 and 409).