Achilles (P1)

Achilles is a Greek hero and demigod. He is the son of a sea nymph, Thetis, and King Peleus of Myrmidons. Zeus and Poseidon were fighting to marry Thetis, until Prometheus, the creator of the humans, told of prophesy that the son Thetis bore would be in greater power than his father. Because of this, Zeus and Poseidon withdrew from competing each other and let her marry King Peleus.

He was a Greek hero in the Trojan War, and was the main character in Homer’s epic poem, Iliad. Achilles is most famous for the killing of Hector, the Trojan hero in Homer’s poem. After fighting Hector, Achilles found out that his friend Patroclus of Antilocus was killed. Achilles was distraught and he held many funeral games in his honor. His mother came to help him through his grieving, and convinced Hephaestus to make him new armor. His old armor was destroyed in the fight against Hector. His new armor included the Shield of Achilles, which is described in Iliad.

Achilles’s mother bathed him in the River of Styx when he was first born. This was to prevent him from dying when he went into battle. To bathe him, she held his heal, and put him into the river. This made every part of him that was exposed to the river water immortal.

During the Trojan War, Paris, the king of Troy, shot and killed Achilles with a bow and arrow. His heal was the only part of him that was mortal because his mother held him by his ankle as she made him immortal in the River of Styx. Achilles ended up dying from bleeding too much from his ankle. Hence, Achilles’s heel or Achilles’s tendon is what someone would call their weak spot, because Achilles’s ankle was the only vulnerable place on his entire body.