The meaning of the word ACHILLES in the Dictionary-Reference Book of Myths of Ancient Greece,
ACHILLES
(Achilles) - in the Iliad, one of the bravest Greek heroes who besieged Troy. Son of Thetis and Peleus, grandson of Aeacus. Achilles' mother, the goddess Thetis, wanting to make her son immortal, immersed him in the sacred waters of the Styx; only the heel, by which Thetis held him, did not touch the water and remained vulnerable. The armor forged by Hephaestus also contributed to Achilles' invulnerability. Before entering the Trojan War, dressed in a woman's dress, he lived on the island of Skyros, among the daughters of King Lycomedes, where the goddess Thetis hid Achilles, wanting to protect him from participating in the war. Odysseus exposed his deception: having arrived at Skyros under the guise of a merchant, he laid out many goods attractive to women, and among these goods was a set of weapons. While the daughters of Lycomedes examined the jewelry and fabrics, Achilles looked only at the weapons. At this time, Odysseus’s comrades raised a false alarm in front of the palace, the princesses fled, and Achilles, grabbing his sword, rushed towards the imaginary danger. By this he gave himself away and soon left with Odysseus to go to war. He accomplished many feats at Troy, but in the tenth year of the war, Achilles died from an arrow from Paris, which Apollo aimed at his heel. Hence the expression “Achilles heel” (weak spot). From the union with Elena a son, Euphorion, was born. From Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomedes, Neotolemus was born, without whose participation the Trojan War could not end.
// Gottfried BENN: Fifth Century // Valery BRYUSOV: Achilles at the Altar // Konstantinos CAVAFY: Treason // Konstantinos CAVAFY: Horses of Achilles // Marina TSVETAEVA: Achilles on the Rampart // Marina TSVETAEVA: From the cycle “Under the Shawl”
Myths of Ancient Greece, dictionary-reference book. 2012
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Achilles(ancient Greek Ἀχιλλεύς, Achilleus) (lat. Achilles) - in the heroic tales of the ancient Greeks, he is the bravest of the heroes who undertook a campaign against Troy under the leadership of Agamemnon. Name a-ki-re-u(Achilleus) was recorded in ancient Knossos, worn by ordinary people.
Myths about Achilles
Achilles' childhood
From the marriages of the Olympian gods with mortals, heroes were born. They were endowed with enormous strength and superhuman capabilities, but did not have immortality. Heroes were supposed to carry out the will of the gods on earth and bring order and justice into people's lives. With the help of their divine parents, they performed all kinds of feats. Heroes were highly revered, legends about them were passed down from generation to generation.
Thetis immerses Achilles in the waters of the Styx
(Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640)
The legends unanimously call Achilles the son of a mortal - Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, while his mother, the sea goddess Thetis, belongs to the host of immortals. The earliest versions of the birth of Achilles mention the oven of Hephaestus, where Thetis, wanting to deify Achilles (and make him immortal), laid her son, holding his heel. According to another ancient legend, which Homer does not mention, Achilles’ mother, Thetis, wanting to test whether her son was mortal or immortal, wanted to plunge the newborn Achilles into boiling water, just as she did with her previous children, but Peleus opposed this. Later legends tell that Thetis, wanting to make her son immortal, plunged him into the waters of the Styx or, according to another version, into fire, so that only the heel by which she held him remained vulnerable; hence the proverb still used today—“Achilles’ heel”—to denote someone’s weakness.
Baby Achilles is given to Chiron to be raised
As a child, Achilles was named Pyrrhisias (translated as “Icy”), but when fire burned his lips, he was called Achilles (“lipless”). According to other authors, Achilles was called Ligiron in childhood. Such a change from a child’s name to an adult’s, associated with injury or feat, is a relic of the initiation ritual (cf. the change of the child’s name “Alcides” to “Hercules” after the hero killed the lion of Kiferon and defeated King Ergin).
The Training of Achilles (James Barry (1741-1806)
Achilles was raised by Chiron on Pelion. He was not Helen's fiancé (as only Euripides calls him). Chiron fed Achilles the bone marrow of deer and other animals, from here, supposedly, from a-hilos, and his name came from “fedless,” that is, “not breastfed.” According to one interpretation, Achilles found a herb that could heal wounds.
The education of Achilles and the beginning of the War of Troy
Achilles received his upbringing from Phoenix, and the centaur Chiron taught him the art of healing. According to another legend, Achilles did not know the art of medicine, but nevertheless healed Telephus.
At the request of Nestor and Odysseus and in accordance with the will of his father, Achilles joined the campaign against Troy at the head of 50 ships (or 60), and took with him his teacher Phoenix and childhood friend Patroclus (some authors call Patroclus the beloved of Achilles). According to Homer, Achilles arrived in the army of Agamemnon from Phthia. According to Lesha's poem, the storm brought Achilles to Skyros.
Identification of Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes (Bray)
The legend of the post-Homeric cycle conveys that Thetis, wanting to save her son from participating in a fatal campaign for him, hid him with Lycomedes, king of the island of Skyros, where Achilles in women's clothes was between the royal daughters. The cunning trick of Odysseus, who, under the guise of a merchant, laid out women's jewelry in front of the girls and, mixing weapons with them, ordered an unexpected battle cry and noise, discovered the sex of Achilles (who immediately grabbed the weapon), as a result, the exposed Achilles was forced to join the Greek campaign.
According to some authors, Achilles was 15 years old at the beginning of the campaign, and the war lasted 20 years. The first shield of Achilles was made by Hephaestus, this scene is depicted on vases.
During the long siege of Ilium, Achilles repeatedly launched raids on various neighboring cities. According to the existing version, he wandered the Scythian land for five years in search of Iphigenia.
At the beginning of the war, Achilles tried to take the city of Monenia (Pedas), and a local girl fell in love with him. “There is nothing strange in the fact that he, being amorous and intemperate, could zealously study music.”
Achilles in the Iliad
The main character of the Iliad.
In the tenth year of the siege of Ilion, Achilles captured the beautiful Briseis. She served as a bone of contention, which forced Astynous to return his captive to her father Chryses, and therefore laid claim to the possession of Briseis.
Achilles receives ambassadors from Agamemnon
(Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
The angry Achilles refused to further participate in battles (compare with the similar refusal to fight of the insulted Karna, the greatest hero of the Indian legend “Mahabharata”). Thetis, wanting to take revenge on Agamemnon for the insult inflicted on her son, begged Zeus to grant victory to the Trojans.
Angry Achilles (Herman Wilhelm Bissen (1798-1868)
The next morning, Thetis brought her son new armor, forged by the skillful hand of Hephaestus himself (in particular, the shield is described in the Iliad as a marvelous work of art, a description that is important for the original history of Greek art). ; Hector alone dared to resist him here, but still fled from Achilles.
Achilles duel with Hector
Pursuing the murderer of his friend, Achilles forced Hector to run around the walls of Troy three times, finally overtook and killed him, and tied him naked with him to the Greek camp. Having magnificently celebrated the funeral feast for his fallen friend Patroclus, Achilles returned Hector’s corpse to his father, King Priam, for a rich ransom, who came to the hero’s tent to beg him about it.
Priam asking Achilles for the body of Hector, 1824
(Alexander Andreevich Ivanov (1806-1858)
In the Iliad, 23 Trojans, named by name, for example, Asteropeus, died at the hands of Achilles. Aeneas crossed arms with Achilles, but then fled from him. Achilles fought Agenor, who was saved by Apollo.
Death of Achilles
The legends of the epic cycle tell that during the further siege of Troy, Achilles killed in battle the queen of the Amazons and the Ethiopian prince, who came to the aid of the Trojans. Achilles killed Memnon, avenging his friend Antilochus, the son of Nestor. In Quintus' poem, Achilles killed 6 Amazons, 2 Trojans and the Ethiopian Memnon. According to Hyginus, he killed Troilus, Astynome and Pylemenes. In total, 72 warriors fell at the hands of Achilles.
Having defeated many enemies, Achilles in the last battle reached the Scaean Gate of Ilion, but here the hero died. According to some authors, Achilles was directly killed by Apollo himself, or by the arrow of Apollo, who took the form of Paris, or by Paris, hiding behind the statue of Apollo of Thymbrey. The earliest author to mention the vulnerability of Achilles' ankle is Statius, but there is an earlier depiction on a 6th-century amphora. BC e., where we see Achilles wounded in the leg.
Death of Achilles
Later legends transfer the death of Achilles to the temple of Apollo at Thimbra, near Troy, where he came to marry Polyxena, the youngest daughter of Priam. These legends report that Achilles was killed by Paris and Deiphobus when he wooed Polyxena and came to negotiate.
According to Ptolemy Hephaestion, Achilles was killed by Helenus or Penthesilea, after which Thetis resurrected him, he killed Penthesilea and returned to Hades
Subsequent legends
According to the current version, Achilles' body was ransomed for an equal weight of gold from the gold-bearing river Pactolus.
Shield of Achilles 
The Greeks erected a mausoleum for Achilles on the banks of the Hellespont, and here, in order to pacify the shadow of the hero, they sacrificed Polyxena to him. According to Homer's story, Ajax Telamonides and Odysseus Laertides argued for the armor of Achilles. Agamemnon awarded them to the latter. In the Odyssey, Achilles is in the underworld, where Odysseus meets him. Achilles was buried in a golden amphora (Homer), which Dionysus gave to Thetis (Lycophron, Stesichorus).
But already “Ethiopida,” one of the epics of the epic cycle, tells that Thetis took her son away from the burning fire and transferred him to the island of Levka (called Snake Island at the mouth of the Istra Danube), where he continues to live in the company of other idolized heroes and heroines . This island served as the center of the cult of Achilles, as well as the mound that rises on the Sigean hill in front of Troy and is still known as the tomb of Achilles. The sanctuary and monument of Achilles, as well as the monuments of Patroclus and Antilochus, were at Cape Sigei. There were also his temples in Elis, Sparta and other places.
Philostratus (born in 170) in his essay “On Heroes” (215) cites a dialogue between a Phoenician merchant and a winegrower, telling about the events on Snake Island. With the end of the Trojan War, Achilles and Helen married after death (the marriage of the bravest with the most beautiful) and live on the White Island (Levka Island) at the mouth of the Danube on the Pontus Euxine. One day, Achilles appeared to a merchant who had sailed to the island and asked him to buy a slave girl for him in Troy, indicating how to find her. The merchant fulfilled the order and delivered the girl to the island, but before his ship had time to sail far from the shore, he and his companions heard the wild screams of the unfortunate girl: Achilles tore her into pieces - she, it turns out, was the last of the descendants of the royal family of Priam. The screams of the unfortunate woman reach the ears of the merchant and his companions. The role of the owner of the White Island, performed by Achilles, becomes understandable in the light of the article by H. Hommel, who showed that even in the 7th century. BC e. this character, who had long ago turned into an epic hero, still acted in his original function as one of the afterlife demons.
Called “reigning over the Scythians.” Demodocus sings a song about him. The ghost of Achilles appeared in Troy, hunting animals.
The spear of Achilles was kept in Phaselis in the temple of Athena. The cenotaph of Achilles was in Elis, in the gymnasium. According to Timaeus, Periander built the fortification of Achilleus against the Athenians from the stones of Ilium, which Demetrius of Skepsis refutes. Statues of naked ephebes with spears were called Achilles.
Origin of the image
There is a hypothesis that initially in Greek mythology Achilles was one of the demons of the underworld (which included other heroes - for example, Hercules). The assumption about the divine nature of Achilles was expressed by H. Hommel in his article. He shows on the material of Greek early classical texts that even in the 7th century. BC e. this character, who had long ago turned into an epic hero, still acted in his original function as one of the afterlife demons. Hommel's publication caused an active discussion, which has not yet been completed.
Image in art
Literature
The protagonist of Aeschylus's tragedies "The Myrmidons" (fr. 131-139 Radt), "Nereids" (fr. 150-153 Radt), "The Phrygians, or the Ransom of the Body of Hector" (fr. 263-267 Radt); the satyr dramas of Sophocles “The Worshipers of Achilles” (fr. 149-157 Radt) and “The Companions” (fr. 562-568 Radt), the tragedy of Euripides “Iphigenia in Aulis”. The tragedies “Achilles” were written by Aristarchus of Tegea, Iophon, Astydamas the Younger, Diogenes, Karkin the Younger, Cleophon, Evaret, Chaeremon had the tragedy “Achilles - the killer of Thersites”, from the Latin authors Livy Andronicus (“Achilles”), Ennius (“Achilles according to Aristarchus "), Aktii ("Achilles, or Myrmidons").
art
The plastic art of antiquity repeatedly reproduced the image of Achilles. His image has come down to us on many vases, bas-reliefs with individual scenes or a whole series of them, also on a group of pediments from Aegina (kept in Munich, see Aegina art), but there is not a single statue or bust that could be attributed to him with certainty.
One of the most remarkable busts of Achilles is kept in St. Petersburg, in the Hermitage. The sad and at the same time indignant head is crowned with a helmet, which ends in a crest hanging forward, mounted on the back of the sphinx; at the back this ridge curls like a long tail. On both sides of the crest there is a sculpture in flat relief along the fingerboard; they are separated by a palmette. The front supra-frontal plaque of the helmet, ending in curls on both sides, is also decorated with a palmette in the middle; on either side of her are a pair of sharp-faced, thin-tailed dogs with long, flat ears, wearing collars (apparently a pair of hunting dogs sniffing the ground). The facial expression is reminiscent of a bust kept in Munich. It must be assumed that this captures the moment when they had already put the armor on the hero, chained by Hephaestus, and now his face was already ablaze with anger, a thirst for vengeance, but sadness for his dear friend still trembles on his lips, like a reflection of inner heart longing. This bust apparently dates back to the 2nd century AD. e. to the era of Hadrian, but its design is too deep for this era, poor in creative thought, and therefore we can only assume that this head, like the Munich one, is an imitation, the original of which could have been created no later than Praxiteles, that is, no later than IV-III V. BC e.
In cinema
In 2003, a two-part television film “Helen of Troy” was released, where Achilles is played by Joe Montana.
Brad Pitt plays the role of Achilles in the 2004 film Troy.
In astronomy
The asteroid (588) Achilles, discovered in 1906, is named after Achilles.
Name: Achilles
A country: Greece
Creator: ancient greek mythology
Activity: bravest of heroes
Family status: not married
Achilles: character story
A character from the heroic tales of the ancient Greeks. The bravest of the heroes who went on a campaign against Troy under the leadership of the Mycenaean king. Son of Peleus and the sea nymph. Mentioned in the epic poem The Iliad.
Origin story
Researchers put forward the theory that initially in the mythology of the ancient Greeks, Achilles was considered a demon of the underworld. Other ancient Greek heroes, for example, also belonged to this category of characters. In defending this point of view, researcher Hommel refers to early classical Greek texts, where Achilles is already transformed into an epic hero, but still demonstrates the functions characteristic of demons of the underworld.
Myths and legends
Like other Greek heroes, Achilles was born from the marriage of a mortal and a goddess. Such characters in ancient Greek mythology have capabilities exceeding human ones, enormous physical strength, but are not endowed with immortality, like the gods. The hero's calling is to bring justice to people and fulfill the will of the gods. And heroes are often helped by divine parents in performing feats.
Achilles' mother, the sea nymph Thetis, wanted to make her son immortal. To do this, Thetis, according to different versions, either placed the baby in the forge of the god, then immersed him in fire, or in the waters of the Styx - the rivers of the kingdom of the dead. In all cases, the mother held the baby by the heel during dipping, so that the heel remained the hero’s only vulnerable spot. Later, the Trojan killed Achilles, hitting him in the heel with an arrow.
As a child, the hero had a different name, but after one incident when his lips were burned by fire, he received the name Achilles, which means “lipless.” The hero was raised on the slopes of Mount Pelion by the centaur Chiron. The centaur taught Achilles the art of healing. The hero found a certain herb with which he could heal wounds.
Achilles later joined the Greek campaign against Troy. The king of Ithaca persuaded the hero to do this. Achilles acted at the head of fifty ships. A childhood friend, whom some authors call Achilles' lover, went on a hike with the hero.
One of the myths says that Achilles’ mother, the nymph Thetis, wanted to protect her son from participating in the fatal war. To do this, the nymph hid the young man on the island of Skyros, with the local king Lycomedes. Achilles was dressed in women's clothes, and in this form the hero hid among the king's daughters.
The cunning Odysseus arrived there, pretending to be a merchant, and laid out jewelry in front of the girls, and laid out weapons along with the trinkets. Then the people, persuaded by Odysseus, made a noise and began to make war cries. Achilles grabbed his weapon and thereby gave himself away to the girls.
After this revelation, the hero had to go to Troy. When the campaign began, Achilles was only fifteen years old. The first shield for the hero was forged by the god Hephaestus himself.
The Trojan War lasted 20 years. The siege of the city was long, and during this time the hero managed to make many raids on neighboring cities. It was already the tenth year of the siege when Achilles captured the beautiful Trojan Briseis. The man quarreled with Agamemnon over her. The Mycenaean king demanded that Briseis be given to him; in response, Achilles became angry and refused to further participate in the battles.
The Greeks began to lose and began to beg the hero to return to battle, but this did not help. When the Trojans, led by Hector, invaded the Greek camp, the still angry Achilles did not enter the battle himself, but allowed Patroclus to come to the aid of the Greeks along with a detachment. To make the enemies afraid, Achilles ordered Patroclus to put on his Achilles armor. The Trojan hero Hector killed Patroclus and took Achilles' armor for himself as a trophy.
Only after this did Achilles appear on the battlefield in person. Seeing the hero, the Trojans began to flee. The next morning, the god Hephaestus forged new armor for the hero, and Achilles rushed into battle, burning with a thirst for vengeance. The hero was able to push the Trojans back to the city gates, and at the same time killed Hector and dragged the corpse to the Greek camp. After a magnificent funeral feast for Patroclus, the hero returned Hector’s body to the Trojans for a large ransom.
Achilles fell in a battle at the city gates, struck down by the archer Paris, whom he himself led. The shooter hit Achilles in the only vulnerable spot - the heel. According to another version, Apollo himself took on the appearance of Paris in order to defeat the hero. This is where the hero's life story ended.
Achilles did not have a wife, but he had several lovers, among whom was Deidamia, the daughter of King Lycomedes. From her the hero had a son, Neoptolemus.
Greek bas-reliefs depict Achilles as a muscular youth with curly hair. The hero can also be seen on vases, where he is depicted in armor.
Film adaptations
In 2004, the action adventure film Troy was released, based on Homer's poem The Iliad. The role of Achilles in this film was played by the actor.
In the film, Achilles helps the Mycenaean king Agamemnon subjugate the cities of Greece. Agamemnon dreams of destroying the rebellious Troy, and then an opportunity arises. The king's brother, the Trojan Paris, stole his wife, and Menelaus appears to Agamemnon, demanding revenge.
To seduce Achilles to go to fight at Troy, the cunning Odysseus, king of Ithaca, comes to the hero. And the hero on his ship joins the Greek army, although his own mother predicted Achilles’ death under the walls of Troy.
Achilles' warriors are the first to land on the Trojan shore and enter the battle, completely destroying a detachment of Trojan warriors. King Agamemnon, however, publicly insulted Achilles when he saw that the hero released Hector, the leader of the Trojan detachment, without wanting to engage him in battle.
After this incident, Achilles and his men do not join the battle with the rest of the Greeks, but only watch the battle from the sidelines. Without Achilles, the Greeks are unable to defeat the Trojans in battle, and during negotiations they refuse to accept Agamemnon’s terms. The Trojan Hector nobly refuses to finish off the defeated Greeks and concludes a truce with them. Achilles is going to return home and start a family there and live peacefully.
Still from the film "Troy" Later, the Trojans attack the Greeks under the cover of darkness, and Achilles's squad also goes into battle, thinking that the leader is with them. It turns out, however, that it was Achilles’ brother Patroclus who entered the battle wearing Achilles’ helmet, so that at night both his own and his enemies mistook him for Achilles. Hector defeats Patroclus in battle and kills him.
After this, Achilles' plans change. Instead of sailing home, the hero goes to the walls of Troy and challenges Hector to battle. Having defeated him in a duel, Achilles rides to the Greek camp, and Hector’s body, tied by the legs, is dragged behind the chariot.
Hector’s father, the king, sneaks into the Greek camp and begs Achilles to give up his son’s body. Achilles agrees to this. Later, when Troy has already been captured, Achilles rushes around the city in search of the Trojan Briseis, daughter of Priam, with whom the hero is in love. Achilles saves his beloved from his own compatriots, but at this time Achilles himself is shot from a bow by the Trojan Paris.
The plot of the Iliad is greatly distorted in the film. Some heroes are missing, such as the Trojan prophetess Cassandra and the priest who tried to warn their compatriots. The costumes of the Greeks are not historical, as are the fighting techniques used by the heroes.
Many heroes die in the wrong place and in the wrong way. For example, Homer’s King Agamemnon was killed by his own unfaithful wife after returning from Troy. In the film, Agamemnon was stabbed to death by Briseis while the Greeks were plundering Troy.
Achilles himself in the Iliad does not run around the dying city in search of a girl and does not die ingloriously on a neat lawn. In Homer, Paris struck Achilles with an arrow at the city gates, and a terrible battle broke out for the hero's body. The Greeks did not want to leave the hero’s body to the enemies for desecration, and a real dump took place around Achilles until the dead hero was taken out of the battlefield.
In 2003, the two-part film Helen of Troy was released in the United States, also based on the Iliad, where the role of Achilles was played by actor Joe Montana. Here Achilles is a minor character who appears in the fight scene with Hector and pins him to a post with a spear. Achilles later attacks Paris, but Paris is shot in the heel by Achilles.
In 1997, the director shot in the United States a two-part film “The Odyssey” - a free interpretation of the Homeric poem of the same name, which deals with the return of the king of Ithaca home after the Trojan War. The supporting role of Achilles is played here by Richard Truett.
Achilles also appeared in the Doctor Who episode "The Myth Makers", which aired in the autumn of 1965. The Doctor's TARDIS ship materializes beneath Troy at the exact moment Achilles fights Hector. The Trojan is distracted, and Achilles kills him, and the Doctor, who comes out of the TARDIS, mistakes him for the supreme god, who pretended to be an old beggar.
Still from the series "Doctor Who" Achilles calls the imaginary "Zeus" to go with him to the Greek camp. There, King Agamemnon demands that “god” help the Greeks against the Trojans, and the cunning Odysseus believes that he is not a god, but a Trojan spy. The role of Achilles is played by actor Cavan Kendall.
Quotes
“Go home, prince. Drink wine, caress your wife. Tomorrow we will fight."
“Do you love me, brother? Will you protect me from enemies?
“You asked me questions like this when you were nine and stole your father’s horse.” What have you done now?
“Last night was a mistake.
- And the night before that?
“I made a lot of mistakes this week.”
I watched Troy again. Then I thought, why is everyone with beards, and Brad Pitt, who is Achilles, without a beard? It seems that among the Greeks it was indecent for a mature husband to flash his bare chin. I went to re-read the Iliad, various articles on the topic and dictionaries. I discovered... I don’t know how widely this is known, but I collected everything that interested me.
Still, it’s funny when they try to fashion something big and whole from different sources.
Achilles and Helen the Beautiful.
Achilles is (I’ll focus on this, more familiar to me, Latinized version of his name) the youngest of the heroes of the Trojan War, therefore in the vast majority of images he is drawn without a beard. The story of the bone of contention, with which, in fact, the whole war began, happened not just anywhere, but at the wedding of King Peleus and the nymph Thetis, the parents of Achilles. Achilles himself was not yet in the project.
At this time, Paris in the American film, the young and also beardless Orlando Bloom, no longer only tended flocks, but also lived a non-platonic life with the nymph Oenone. That is, he was definitely already 15 years old. But, judging by the story with the apple, he didn’t have much brains or he thought about something completely different. Well, would a sane person agree to exchange the goddess who loved him, then still a simple shepherd, for a simple mortal woman who had already been kidnapped once and who had already had at least two men before him and whom he had not even seen, just because some... then another goddess said that she was the most beautiful of all! And to believe that there is something even more beautiful after three great goddesses, among whom was the goddess of beauty herself, appeared to him in the costume of Eve!
By the way, Oenone continued to love him even after Paris cheated on her with Helen and committed suicide when he died. Oenon was also involved in the death of Paris, because she could have saved, but did not want to. But there is no point in thinking about someone else when you ask your ex for help.
All the Achaean leaders, except Achilles, at one time managed to woo Helen the Beautiful and were once her suitors. And they went to Troy because they were bound by an oath to guard the honor of Helen’s future husband. This oath was invented by the cunning Odysseus, so that Helen’s suitors would not cut each other off out of jealousy.
Achilles' friend Patroclus is also named among Helen's suitors. Although in the film he is slightly younger than Achilles and is even his student, the Iliad suggests that he was older. And, going to Troy, he received an order from his father in emergency cases to slow down the too young and hot-tempered Achilles. It is also mentioned there that Achilles, a pupil of Chiron, introduced Patroclus to the medical knowledge that the centaur revealed to him. Their ability to treat wounds and knowledge of medicinal herbs was very useful in the war.
It seems that despite the passing years, Elena remained just as beautiful, so after her death the gods decided to give her to Achilles as a wife, although he did not ask them for this at all, and there were more than enough others who wanted it. She was 20 years older than him, if not more, and had already been married three times, and if her return to Menelaus is considered a separate marriage, then four times.
Age of Achilles.
How old was Achilles? As already mentioned, he and his son Neoptolemus are the youngest heroes of the Trojan War. Despite the abundance of many powerful men in the Achaean camp, their soothsayers for some reason could not imagine victory without the participation in the war of the teenager Achilles and the almost child Neoptolemus. And the local Katsura, named Odysseus, does everything so that they end up under Troy and, in the pursuit of glory, personally kill almost half of its population. This does not include the surrounding area.
Unlike the other heroes, Achilles still wore long hair - a youthful hairstyle. On the day he came of age, he had to cut them and sacrifice them to the local river god. (The Sperchius River in Thessaly, where he was born.) But when he went to war, he was not yet of age, so he promised to donate his hair to God when he returned. He did not fulfill his promise, cutting off his hair as a sign of grief for Patroclus and placing it in the hand of his dead friend before burning it. I haven’t found anywhere what time the age of majority in Phthia came, but it is known that in Athens it was at the age of 18, in Crete - at 17.
One more nuance. The nymph Thetis hid Achilles from the war on the island of Skyros among the daughters of King Lycomedes, and Odysseus, sent to search for him, could not identify him among the girls. This means that by the beginning of the Trojan War, Achilles looked gentle and graceful enough to resemble a girl. But at the same time, he had already matured enough that Deidamia, one of the daughters of Lycomedes, could conceive a child from him.
The Iliad says that 10 years also passed from the time of the abduction of Helen to the arrival of the Greeks at Troy. It took Menelaus and Agamemnon so many years to gather troops and find the way to Troy. The war itself lasted ten years. This means that Achilles was 14-15 years old when Odysseus came to call him to the war, 15-17 years old when it began, and 24-27 when he died. But these are my personal teapot calculations. The Russian version of the wiki, for example, believes that he was 35 at the time of his death.
From the moment of the apple story to the kidnapping, at least another 8-10 years also passed. This figure is derived from the age of Achilles' son, Neoptolemus. Achilles left for war when he was not yet born. The Trojan War lasted 10 years, but in the end he managed to take part in it, and his father’s armor was just right for him. Even if we assume that Neoptolemus was an accelerator, he must have been at least thirteen years old. We add up the smallest probable ages of father and son, subtract the twenty years that passed from the abduction of Helen to the fall of Troy. It turns out seven to eight years, at least. Aphrodite needed that much to reward Paris. However, “the gods have nowhere to rush, they have eternity ahead of them.”
Achilles and women.
With women, as I understand it, Achilles was usually kind and gentle, but women had terrible luck with him.
- The already mentioned daughter of Lycomedes, Deidamia, gave birth to the hero’s son and raised him alone. When his son grew up a little, he also went to war. Deidamia never waited for her lover to return.
As a reward for future participation in the war, King Agamemnon promised Achilles his daughter Iphigenia as a wife. But Artemis was angry with Agamemnon. Priest Kalkhant said that there would be no fair wind to Troy until Iphigenia was sacrificed. Reluctantly, Agamemnon summoned his daughter under the pretext of a wedding with Achilles. Having learned about the impending murder, the young man tried to save the bride, promising to kill anyone who touched her. To avoid strife among the Achaeans, Iphigenia herself ascended the sacrificial altar. At the last moment, Artemis spared the girl, replacing her with a doe, and she herself was transferred to Tauris in Crimea, where she made her her priestess, whose duties included sacrificing all the foreigners who came to those lands. She never saw Achilles again.
It was assumed that in return for Iphigenia and to strengthen ties after the victory over Troy, Achilles would receive one of the three remaining daughters of Agamemnon as his wife. But he did not live to see this happiness.
Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons who fought on the side of Troy, fell in love with Achilles (according to another version, she fell in love at first sight). Perhaps this love during their duel with Achilles prevented her from winning; the Achaean pierced her chest with a spear. Having removed the helmet from the dead girl, he saw her beauty (according to other versions, he recognized her as the unknown girl whom he had recently met and fallen in love with) and was very sad. The freak and idiot Thersites, who had annoyed all the Greeks, dared to laugh at him and desecrated the body of Penthesilea, was torn off by Achilles. However, there are later versions of the myth, where Penthesilea kills Achilles in love, but Zeus, at the request of Thetis, resurrects him. As for Thersites, he was a freak only because the ancient Greeks simply were not able to imagine a bastard with a beautiful body.
Henry Justice Ford. Achilles and Penthesilea.
Near Troy, Achilles met the daughter of King Priam Polyxena and killed her little brother before her eyes. According to another version, he did not kill anyone, but simply met and fell in love with her, was going to marry and end the war. But either Agamemnon ruined everything again, or the Trojans killed Achilles, whom they hated, during an attempt at peace negotiations. Be that as it may, after the fall of Troy, the shadow of Achilles appeared to the Achaeans and demanded that Polyxena be sacrificed to him, which his son Neoptolemus did. Polyxena calmly met death, seeing in it deliverance from slavery and a possible union with Achilles. According to one version, she took her own life.
There is nothing special to say about Briseis, and everyone knows that her seizure from Achilles (Agamemnon tried again) led to the Trojans killing almost all the Greeks and almost burning their ships. Achilles did not plan to marry her. She was beloved, but just a concubine. It seems that after the death of Achilles her fate was also unenviable.
In addition, other women are mentioned who became the hero’s spoils of war, lived in his tent, performed various household chores and served for the pleasure of the owner of the tent, his friends and guests. For example, in the absence of Briseis, “... Achilles rested inside a strong-winged bush. A lesbian, captivated by him, lay down with him...” And having returned Briseis, Agamamnon gives Achilles 7 more lesbian girls skilled in needlework. Gee, in the 19th century the last word was still used in its original meaning. The same one in which the words “Muscovite” or “Parisian” are used. During the 10 years of standing near Troy, the warlike Achaeans actively ravaged neighboring cities and surrounding areas. They also visited the nearby island of Lesbos, so there were great numbers of lesbian slaves in the Achaean camp.
What else can you say about Achilles?
He is not a demigod, he is a 3/4 god. If not more. His paternal great-grandparents were Zeus himself and the nymph Aegina. And according to one of the mythical versions, Poseidon could have been his great-great-grandfather. 
As in the film, in the Iliad, Achilles was blond and Hector was brunette. Translators call Achilles' hair "brown curls", but on Skyros, where Achilles was hiding under the guise of a girl, he bore the female name "Pyrrha", which means "Red-haired". The name "Pyrrhus" - "Red" was the original name of his son Neoptolemus.
According to the Iliad, Achilles had increased fluffiness. Veresaev’s translation mentions “shaggy chest”, while Gnedich’s mentions “the hero’s hairy breasts”.
As for the Achilles heel, in early versions of the myth the invulnerable hero actually dies from a wound in the heel. In later and more realistic versions, Paris's arrow, which hits Achilles in the heel, only immobilizes him, and he dies from a second arrow aimed at the chest. Just like in the film, when Paris, having wounded him in the heel, then shoots him in cold blood.
Fulfilling the prediction of the Delphic oracle, Achilles healed the unhealed wound of Telephus, king of Mysia, which he himself had once inflicted with his spear, simply by applying this spear to the wound. In gratitude, Telephus showed the Achaeans the way to Troy.
Achilles and company sailed to Troy on black ships. Just like Matthew Perry's squadron to Japan.
Unlike Achilles, the horses driving his chariot are immortal. Once they were titans, and their mother was a harpy. Under the guise of horses, they hide from the revenge of their own kind. Poseidon gave them to Peleus for his wedding. The horses' names are Xanth (the name means "red, brown, light golden") and Baliy ("spotted"). Xanth also knows how to speak and has the gift of prophecy. After Xanthus said that it was not they, but the vengeful gods, who were to blame for the death of Patroclus, and prophesied a quick death for Achilles, the hero became angry, and the evil Erinyes silenced the talking horse forever. From now on, Xanthus preferred to remain silent.
Only Achilles himself, his friend Patroclus and another of his friends, Automedon, who was Achilles’ charioteer, could control the immortal horses. The latter became so famous for his reckless driving that his name became a household name.
Hector's horse was also named Xanthus, but no strange things were noticed about him.
Achilles in Homer has the constant epithet “swift-footed,” but during the pursuit of Hector, when they ran around the walls of Troy four times, he was never able to close the gap and catch up with the enemy. And they ran a lot. Even if Troy were as small as the Moscow Kremlin, they would have covered about 9 kilometers. And if there was at least a kilometer between the opposite walls, then this distance would increase to 12 - 16 km. Achilles was unable to catch up with the enemy, despite the fact that he was running in a narrower circle, trying to push Hector away from the wall, from which the Trojans could shoot him, Achilles. Hector ran along the outer path. He was not afraid of the enemy's arrows, because Achilles forbade his own to shoot and steal the glory of victory from him. However, the fleet-footed Achilles could not catch up not only with Hector. He didn't even catch up with the turtle. ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_tortoise
By the way, about constant epithets. Hector remains shiny even when he puts on his head the trophy helmet that belonged to Achilles. Achilles' helmet did not shine. Maybe Hector chalked him up before going into battle?
The overgrown child Achilles constantly complains to his mother, the goddess, about his misfortunes. Mom immediately appears, pats him on the head, consoles him, and then begins to correct the situation. Considering that she has better connections than the ladies from the committee of soldiers' mothers, those who offended Achilles are terribly sorry afterwards.
From the age of nine, Achilles knew that without him victory at Troy was impossible. Starting from early childhood and almost until his death, all fortune-tellers and soothsayers, including a talking horse, told him that he would die at Troy. He has no personal interests in Ilion. He only needs fame and for some reason he prefers this fame to a long life.
Achilles, the character of the Iliad, has almost come to terms with the fact of his imminent death. Therefore, he does not value his life. Just like other people's lives. “Oh, anyway, sooner or later we’ll all be there.” The bitterness of his best friend's death makes him even more cruel.
In later versions of the myth, the hero looks much more humane.
Achilles (lat. Achilles) is one of the most striking and valiant characters in the ancient epics about the Trojan War. He was not just a hero and the son of the majestic King Peleus, but also half a god. He was given birth to the incredible beauty of Thetis, one of the goddesses of the sea. Prometheus predicted that the son of Thetis would become stronger and more powerful than his father. The gods were afraid of competition and gave Thetis in marriage to the Myrmidon king. They had a wonderful son, who was named Ligiron. But later he burned his lips with the flame of a fire and was nicknamed Achilles, “lipless.”
Achilles grew up to be a real hero, possessed superhuman capabilities and had enormous strength. But like all demigods, he did not have the gift of immortality.
Thetis loved her son very much and tried to make him immortal. She bathed him in the waters of the underground stormy river Styx, which flows through the world of the dead, rubbed him with the food of the gods - ambrosia and tempered him in healing fire. During these procedures, his mother held his heel. So he became practically invulnerable to enemy arrows and swords, but with the only dangerous place for himself - the fifth. This is where the expression “Achilles' heel” came from, as a symbol of special vulnerability. This is what they say about a person’s weakest point.
The hero's father was against the mother's rituals over her son. He insisted on placing Achilles in the care and education of the valiant centaur Chiron. Chiron fed the boy the entrails of boars, bears and lions, taught him the basics of medicine, warfare and even singing.
Achilles grew up to be a fearless and skillful young man, but when the Trojan War began, he was only fifteen years old. The priest Kalkhant prophesied that Achilles would die in this war, but would bring victory to the Greeks. Thetis was afraid to send her son to certain death, and hid him in the palace of King Lycomedes, dressing him in a girl’s dress.
At this time, the cunning Greeks sent the wise Odysseus, disguised as a merchant, to find Achilles. Odysseus invited the palace young ladies to see his goods. Among the many decorations, a sword was also offered. While all the girls were admiring the jewelry, an alarm suddenly sounded. In fright, the court ladies fled, and only one grabbed a sword and took a fighting stance. It was Achilles! He gave himself away, and he still had to go to war. He was a very brave, dexterous, strong warrior and relied only on his skills. Achilles knew that he had a short life ahead and tried to live in such a way that the glory of his valor would reach his descendants. On the way to Troy, on the island of Tenedos, he defeated the local king. And already under the walls of Troy, in the very first battle he killed Cycnus, the Trojan hero.
There was a period when, during the Trojan military campaign, Achilles stopped fighting. The reason for this was Agamemnon, who took the Trojan princess Briseis from him. It was given to Achilles as a reward, as an honorary trophy. After Achilles refused to fight, the Greeks began to noticeably lose. Achilles returned to the battlefield only when his friend Patroclus, who had donned the armor of Achilles, fell in battle at the hands of the Trojan prince Hector. The hero vowed to avenge his friend and did so.
In new battle armor created by the god Hephaestus, Achilles mercilessly defeats many opponents, including Hector. He kept the body for twelve days, and only Thetis was able to convince him to return the remains to the relatives of the deceased.
Achilles himself died from Apollo’s arrow, which hit him in the very heel that was unprotected by Thetis’ spells. Some myths say that his ashes are buried at Cape Sigei, near the tomb of Patroclus, and the soul of the hero is on the island of Levka. In other stories, his mother took his body. In fact, where exactly the ancient hero Achilles rests for many centuries is unknown. Only tales of his legendary military exploits have survived to this day.