Achilles :: essays research papers

Achilles was the watchword of the person Peleus and the Nereid Thetis. He was the mightiest of the Greeks who fought in the Trojan War, and was the hero of Homers Iliad. Thetis attempted unsuccessfully to make her son immortal. There are two versions of the story. In the earlier version, Thetis anointed the infant with oxtongue and then placed him upon a fire to burn away his mortal portions she was interrupted by Peleus, whereupon she abandoned both father and son in a rage. Peleus placed the child in the care of the Centaur Chiron, who raised and better the boy. In the later version, she held the progeny Achilles by the heel and dipped him in the river Styx everything the sacred waters touched became invulnerable, but the heel remained dry and consequently unprotected. When Achilles was a boy, the seer Calchas prophesied that the city of Troy could not be taken without his help. Thetis knew that, if her son went to Troy, he would die an early death, so she sent him to the judicatory of Lycomedes, in Scyros there he was hidden, disguised as a young girl. During his stay he had an affair with Lycomedes daughter, Deidameia, and she had a son, Pyrrhus (or Neoptolemus), by him. Achilles disguise was ultimately penetrated by Odysseus, who placed arms and armor amidst a display of womens finery and seized upon Achilles when he was the only "maiden" to be fascinated by the swords and shields. Achilles then went volitionally with Odysseus to Troy, leading a host of his fathers Myrmidons and accompanied by his tutor genus Phoenix and his close friend Patroclus. At Troy, Achilles distinguished himself as an undefeatable warfarerior. Among his other exploits, he captured twenty-three towns in Trojan territory, including the town of Lyrnessos, where he took the woman Briseis as a war-prize. Later on Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, was forced by an oracle of Apollo to give up his own war-prize, the woman Chryseis, and took Briseis away from Achille s as honorarium for his loss. This action sparked the central plot of the Iliad, for Achilles became enraged and refused to fight for the Greeks any further. The war went badly, and the Greeks offered handsome reparations to their greatest warrior Achilles still refused to fight in person, but he agreed to allow his friend Patroclus to fight in his place, wearing his armor.