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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: A10-ADA |
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ACHILLES (Gr. 'AxtXXeus) , one of the most famous of the legendary heroes of ancient Greece and the central figure of Homer's Iliad. He was said to have been the son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidones of Phthia in Thessaly, by Thetis
Post-Homeric sources add to the legend certain picturesque details which bear all the evidence of their primitive origin, andwhich in some cases belong to the common stock of Indo-Germanic myths. According to one of these stories Thetis
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During the first nine years of the war as described in the Iliad, Achilles ravaged the country round Troy, and took twelve cities. In .the tenth year occurred the quarrel with Agamemnon. In order to appease the wrath of Apollo, who had visited the camp with a pestilence, Agamemnon had restored Chryseis, his prize of war, to her father, a priest of the god, but as a compensation deprived Achilles, who had openly demanded this restoration, of his favourite slave Briseis. Achilles withdrew in wrath to his tent, where he consoled himself with music and singing, and refused to take any further part in the war. During his absence the Greeks were hard pressed, and at last he so far relaxed his anger as to allow his friend Patroclus to personate him, lending him his chariot and -armour. The slaying of Patroclus by the Trojan hero Hector roused Achilles from his indifference; eager to avenge his beloved comrade, he sallied forth, equipped with new armour fashioned by Hephaestus
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earnest entreaty. The Iliad concludes with the funeral rites of Hector. It makes no mention of the death of Achilles, but hints at its taking place "before the Scaean gates." In the Odyssey (xxiv. 36. 72) his ashes are said to have been buried in a golden urn, together with those of Patroclus, at a place on the Hellespont, where a tomb was erected to his memory; his soul dwells in the lower world, where it is seen ,by Odysseus. The contest between Ajax and Odysseus for his arms is also mentioned. The A ethiopis of Arctinus of Miletus took up the story of the Iliad. It told how Achilles, having slain the Amazon Penthesileia and Memnon, king of the Aethiopians, who had come to the assistance of the Trojans, was himself slain by Paris (Alexander), whose arrow was guided by Apollo to his vulnerable heel (Virgil, Aen. vi. 57; Ovid, Met. xii. 600). Again, it is said that Achilles, enamoured of Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, offered to join the Trojans on condition that he received her hand in marriage. This was agreed to; Achilles went unarmed to the temple of Apollo Thymbraeus, and was slain by Paris (Dictys iv. 1r). According to some, he was slain by Apollo himself (Quint. Smyrn. iii. 61; Horace , Odes, iv. 6, 3). Hyginus (Fab. 107) makes Apollo assume the form of Paris.Later stories say that Thetis snatched his body from the pyre and conveyed it to the island of Leuke, at the mouth of the Danube, where he ruled with Iphigeneia as his wife; or that he was carried to the Elysian fields, where his wife was Medea or Helen. He was worshipped in many places: at Leuke, wherh he was honoured with offerings and games; in Sparta, Elis, and especially Sigeum on the Hellespont, where his famous tumulus was erected. Achilles is a typical Greek hero; handsome, brave, celebrated for his fleetness of foot, prone to excess of wrath and grief, at the same time he is compassionate, hospitable, full of affection for his mother and respect for the gods. In works of art he is represented, like Ares, as a young man of splendid physical pro-portions, with bristling hair like a horse's mane and a slender neck. Although the figure of the hero frequently occurs in groupssuch as the work of Scopas showing his removal to the island of Leuke by Poseidon and Thetis, escorted by Nereids and Tritons, and the combat over his dead body in the Aeginetan sculpturesno isolated statue or bust can with certainty be identified with him; the statue in the Louvre (from the Villa Borghese), which was thought to have the best claim, is generally taken for Ares or possibly Alexander. There are many vase and wall
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See E. H. Meyer, Indogermanische Mythen, ii., Achilleis, 1887; F. G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus, 18651882; articles in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des Antiquites and Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie; see also T. W. Allen in Classical Review, May 1906; A. E. Crawley, J. G. Frazer, A. Lang, Ibid., June, July 1893, on Achilles in Scyros. In the article GREEK ART, fig. 12 re-presents the conflict over the dead body of Achilles. End of Article: ACHILLES (Gr. 'AxtXXeus) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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