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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 (also called Cremaste), 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" (literally, "defending with the foot," from the verb ἀρκέω, "to defend, ward off"); Ptolemy Hephaestion, alternatively, says that it was due to the wings of Arke being attached to his feet.
Hidden on Skyros Some post-Homeric sources claim that in order to keep Achilles safe from the war, Thetis (or, in some versions, Peleus) 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' daughters, perhaps under the name "Pyrrha" (the red-haired girl), Cercysera or Aissa ("swift").
With Lycomedes' daughter Deidamia, with whom he had begun a relationship, Achilles there fathered two sons, Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus, after his father's possible alias) and Oneiros.
According to this story, Odysseus learned from the prophet Calchas that the Achaeans would be unable to capture Troy without Achilles' aid.
Odysseus went to Skyros in the guise of a peddler 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' 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 (each leader commanding 500 Myrmidons): 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' 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.
Troilus According to the Cypria (the part of the Epic Cycle that tells the events of the Trojan War before Achilles' wrath), when the Achaeans desired to return home, they were restrained by Achilles, who afterwards attacked the cattle of Aeneas, sacked neighbouring cities (like Pedasus and Lyrnessus, where the Greeks capture the queen Briseis) and killed Tenes, a son of Apollo, as well as Priam's son Troilus in the sanctuary of Apollo Thymbraios; however, the romance between Troilus and Chryseis described in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and in William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida is a medieval invention.
In Dares Phrygius' Account of the Destruction of Troy, the Latin summary through which the story of Achilles was transmitted to medieval Europe, as well as in older accounts, Troilus was a young Trojan prince, the youngest of King Priam's and Hecuba's five legitimate sons (or according other sources, another son of Apollo).
Despite his youth, he was one of the main Trojan war leaders, a "horse fighter" or "chariot fighter" according to Homer.
Prophecies linked Troilus' fate to that of Troy and so he was ambushed in an attempt to capture him.
Yet Achilles, struck by the beauty of both Troilus and his sister Polyxena, and overcome with lust, directed his sexual attentions on the youth – who, refusing to yield, instead found himself decapitated upon an altar-omphalos of Apollo Thymbraios.
Later versions of the story suggested Troilus was accidentally killed by Achilles in an over-ardent lovers' embrace.
In this version of the myth, Achilles' death therefore came in retribution for this sacrilege.
Ancient writers treated Troilus as the epitome of a dead child mourned by his parents.
Had Troilus lived to adulthood, the First Vatican Mythographer claimed, Troy would have been invincible; however, the motif is older and found already in Plautus' Bacchides.
In the Iliad Homer's Iliad is the most famous narrative of Achilles' deeds in the Trojan War.
Achilles' wrath (μῆνις Ἀχιλλέως, mênis Achilléōs) is the central theme of the poem.
The first two lines of the Iliad read: The Homeric epic only covers a few weeks of the decade-long war, and does not narrate Achilles' death.
It begins with Achilles' withdrawal from battle after being dishonoured by Agamemnon, the commander of the Achaean forces.
Agamemnon has taken a woman named Chryseis as his slave.
Her father Chryses, a priest of Apollo, begs Agamemnon to return her to him.
Agamemnon refuses, and Apollo sends a plague amongst the Greeks.
The prophet Calchas correctly determines the source of the troubles but will not speak unless Achilles vows to protect him.
Achilles does so, and Calchas declares that Chryseis must be returned to her father.
Agamemnon consents, but then commands that Achilles' battle prize Briseis, the daughter of Briseus, be brought to him to replace Chryseis.
Angry at the dishonour of having his plunder and glory taken away (and, as he says later, because he loves Briseis), with the urging of his mother Thetis, Achilles refuses to fight or lead his troops alongside the other Greek forces.
At the same time, burning with rage over Agamemnon's theft, Achilles prays to Thetis to convince Zeus to help the Trojans gain ground in the war, so that he may regain his honour.
As the battle turns against the Greeks, thanks to the influence of Zeus, Nestor declares that the Trojans are winning because Agamemnon has angered Achilles, and urges the king to appease the warrior.
Agamemnon agrees and sends Odysseus and two other chieftains, Ajax and Phoenix.
They promise that, if Achilles returns to battle, Agamemnon will return the captive Briseis and other gifts.
Achilles rejects all Agamemnon offers him and simply urges the Greeks to sail home as he was planning to do.
The Trojans, led by Hector, subsequently push the Greek army back toward the beaches and assault the Greek ships.
With the Greek forces on the verge of absolute destruction, Patroclus leads the Myrmidons into battle, wearing Achilles' armour, though Achilles remains at his camp.
Patroclus succeeds in pushing the Trojans back from the beaches, but is killed by Hector before he can lead a proper assault on the city of Troy.
After receiving the news of the death of Patroclus from Antilochus, the son of Nestor, Achilles grieves over his beloved companion's death.
His mother Thetis comes to comfort the distraught Achilles.
She persuades Hephaestus to make new armour for him, in place of the armour that Patroclus had been wearing, which was taken by Hector.
The new armour includes the Shield of Achilles, described in great detail in the poem.
Enraged over the death of Patroclus, Achilles ends his refusal to fight and takes the field, killing many men in his rage but always seeking out Hector.
Achilles even engages in battle with the river god Scamander, who has become angry that Achilles is choking his waters with all the men he has killed.
The god tries to drown Achilles but is stopped by Hera and Hephaestus.
Zeus himself takes note of Achilles' rage and sends the gods to restrain him so that he will not go on to sack Troy itself before the time allotted for its destruction, seeming to show that the unhindered rage of Achilles can defy fate itself.
Finally, Achilles finds his prey.
Achilles chases Hector around the wall of Troy three times before Athena, in the form of Hector's favorite and dearest brother, Deiphobus, persuades Hector to stop running and fight Achilles face to face.
After Hector realizes the trick, he knows the battle is inevitable.
Wanting to go down fighting, he charges at Achilles with his only weapon, his sword, but misses.
Accepting his fate, Hector begs Achilles not to spare his life, but to treat his body with respect after killing him.
Achilles tells Hector it is hopeless to expect that of him, declaring that "my rage, my fury would drive me now to hack your flesh away and eat you raw – such agonies you have caused me".
Achilles then kills Hector and drags his corpse by its heels behind his chariot.
After having a dream where Patroclus begs Achilles to hold his funeral, Achilles hosts a series of funeral games in honour of his companion.
At the onset of his duel with Hector, Achilles is referred to as the brightest star in the sky, which comes on in the autumn, Orion's dog (Sirius); a sign of evil.
During the cremation of Patroclus, he is compared to Hesperus, the evening/western star (Venus), while the burning of the funeral pyre lasts until Phosphorus, the morning/eastern star (also Venus) has set (descended).
With the assistance of the god Hermes (Argeiphontes), Hector's father Priam goes to Achilles' tent to plead with Achilles for the return of Hector's body so that he can be buried.
Achilles relents and promises a truce for the duration of the funeral, lasting 9 days with a burial on the 10th (in the tradition of Niobe's offspring).
The poem ends with a description of Hector's funeral, with the doom of Troy and Achilles himself still to come.
Later epic accounts: fighting Penthesilea and Memnon The Aethiopis (7th century BC) and a work named Posthomerica, composed by Quintus of Smyrna in the fourth century CE, relate further events from the Trojan War.
When Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons and daughter of Ares, arrives in Troy, Priam hopes that she will defeat Achilles.
After his temporary truce with Priam, Achilles fights and kills the warrior queen, only to grieve over her death later.
Initially taken aback, he did not fight as intensely as usual.
Once he realized that his distraction was endangering his life, he refocused and killed her.
Following the death of Patroclus, Nestor's son Antilochus becomes Achilles' closest companion.
When Memnon, son of the Dawn Goddess Eos and king of Ethiopia, slays Antilochus, Achilles once more obtains revenge on the battlefield, killing Memnon.
Consequently, Eos will not let the sun rise until Zeus persuades her.
The fight between Achilles and Memnon over Antilochus echoes that of Achilles and Hector over Patroclus, except that Memnon (unlike Hector) was also the son of a goddess.
Many Homeric scholars argued that episode inspired many details in the Iliads description of the death of Patroclus and Achilles' reaction to it.
The episode then formed the basis of the cyclic epic Aethiopis, which was composed after the Iliad, possibly in the 7th century BC.
The Aethiopis is now lost, except for scattered fragments quoted by later authors.
Achilles and Patroclus The exact nature of Achilles' relationship with Patroclus has been a subject of dispute in both the classical period and modern times.
In the Iliad, it appears to be the model of a deep and loyal friendship.
Homer does not suggest that Achilles and his close friend Patroclus had sexual relations.
Although there is no direct evidence in the text of the Iliad that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, this theory was expressed by some later authors.
Commentators from classical antiquity to the present have often interpreted the relationship through the lens of their own cultures.
In 5th-century BC Athens, the intense bond was often viewed in light of the Greek custom of paiderasteia, which is the relationship between an older male and a younger one, usually a teenager.
In Patroclus and Achilles' case, Achilles would have been the younger as Patroclus is usually seen as his elder.
In Plato's Symposium, the participants in a dialogue about love assume that Achilles and Patroclus were a couple; Phaedrus argues that Achilles was the younger and more beautiful one so he was the beloved and Patroclus was the lover.
However, ancient Greek had no words to distinguish heterosexual and homosexual, and it was assumed that a man could both desire handsome young men and have sex with women.
Many pairs of men throughout history have been compared to Achilles and Patroclus to imply a homosexual relationship.
Death The death of Achilles, even if considered solely as it occurred in the oldest sources, is a complex one, with many different versions.
Starting with the oldest account, In the Iliad Book XXII, Hector predicts with his last dying breath that Paris and Apollo will slay him at the Scaean Gates leading to Troy (with an arrow to the heel according to Statius).
In Book XXIII, the sad spirit of dead Patroclus visits Achilles just as he drifts off into slumber, requesting that his bones be placed with those of Achilles in his golden vase, a gift of his mother.
In the Odyssey Book XI, 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 to the worst of masters than be king of all the dead.
But Achilles then asks Odysseus of his son's exploits in the Trojan war, and Odysseus tells him of Neoptolemus' actions.
In the Odyssey Book XXIV we read dead King Agamemnon's ghostly account of his death: Achilles' funeral pyre bleached bones had been mixed with those of Patroclus and put into his mother's golden vase.
Also, the bones of Antilocus, who had become closer to Achilles than any other following Patroclus' death, were separately enclosed.
And, the customary funeral games of a hero were performed, and a massive tomb or mound was built on the Hellespont for approaching seagoers to celebrate.
Achilles was represented in the Aethiopis as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the river Danube.