In Greek mythology, Achilles (/əˈkɪliːz/ ə-KIL-eez) or Achilleus (Ancient Greek: Ἀχιλλεύς, [a.

kʰil
ˈleu̯s]) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and is the central
character of Homer's Iliad. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, king of Phthia.
Achilles' most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan prince Hector outside
the gates of Troy. Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the Iliad, other sources concur
that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, who shot him in the heel with an arrow.
Later legends (beginning with Statius' unfinished epic Achilleid, written in the 1st century AD) state
that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for one heel, because when his
mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx as an infant, she held him by one of his heels. Alluding to
these legends, the term "Achilles' heel" has come to mean a point of weakness, especially in
someone or something with an otherwise strong constitution. The Achilles tendon is also named
after him due to these legends.
Linear B tablets attest to the personal name Achilleus in the forms a-ki-re-u and a-ki-re-we,[1] the
latter being the dative of the former.[2] The name grew more popular, even becoming common soon
after the seventh century BC[3] and was also turned into the female form Ἀχιλλεία (Achilleía), attested
in Attica in the fourth century BC (IG II² 1617) and, in the form Achillia, on a stele in Halicarnassus as
the name of a female gladiator fighting an "Amazon".
Achilles' name can be analyzed as a combination of ἄχος (áchos) "distress, pain, sorrow,
grief"[4] and λαός (laós) "people, soldiers, nation", resulting in a proto-form *Akhí-lāu̯os "he who has
the people distressed" or "he whose people have distress".[5][6] The grief or distress of the people is a
theme raised numerous times in the Iliad (and frequently by Achilles himself). Achilles' role as the
hero of grief or distress forms an ironic juxtaposition with the conventional view of him as the hero
of κλέος kléos ("glory", usually in war). Furthermore, laós has been construed by Gregory Nagy,
following Leonard Palmer, to mean "a corps of soldiers", a muster.[6] With this derivation, the name
obtains a double meaning in the poem: when the hero is functioning rightly, his men bring distress to
the enemy, but when wrongly, his men get the grief of war. The poem is in part about the
misdirection of anger on the part of leadership.

The Education of Achilles, by Eugène Delacroix, pastel on paper, c. 1862 (Getty Center, Los Angeles)

Another etymology relates the name to a Proto-Indo-European compound *h₂eḱ-pṓds "sharp foot"

which first gave an Illyrian *āk̂pediós, evolving through time into *ākhpdeós and then *akhiddeús.
The shift from -dd- to -ll- is then ascribed to the passing of the name into Greek via a Pre-
Greek source. The first root part *h₂eḱ- "sharp, pointed" also gave Greek ἀκή (akḗ "point, silence,
healing"), ἀκμή (akmḗ "point, edge, zenith") and ὀξύς (oxús "sharp, pointed, keen, quick, clever"),
whereas ἄχος stems from the root *h₂egʰ- "to be upset, afraid". The whole expression would be
comparable to the Latin acupedius "swift of foot". Compare also the Latin word family of aciēs "sharp
edge or point, battle line, battle, engagement", acus "needle, pin, bodkin", and acuō "to make
pointed, sharpen, whet; to exercise; to arouse" (whence acute).[7] Some topical epitheta of Achilles in
the Iliad point to this "swift-footedness", namely ποδάρκης δῖος Ἀχιλλεὺς (podárkēs dĩos
Achilleús "swift-footed divine Achilles")[8] or, even more frequently, πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς (pódas
ōkús Achilleús "quick-footed Achilles").[9]
Some researchers deem the name a loan word, possibly from a Pre-Greek language.[1] Achilles'
descent from the Nereid Thetis and a similarity of his name with those of river deities such
as Acheron and Achelous have led to speculations about him being an old water divinity (see
below Worship).[10] Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name, based
among other things on the coexistence of -λλ- and -λ- in epic language, which may account for a
palatalized phoneme /ly/ in the original language.[2]
Achilles was the son of the Nereid Thetis and of Peleus, the king of
the Myrmidons. Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals for the hand of Thetis until Prometheus, the
fore-thinker, warned Zeus of a prophecy (originally uttered by Themis, goddess of divine law) that
Thetis would bear a son greater than his father. For this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit,
and had her wed Peleus.[11]

There is a tale which offers an alternative version of these events: In the Argonautica (4.760) Zeus'
sister and wife Hera alludes to Thetis' chaste resistance to the advances of Zeus, pointing out that
Thetis was so loyal to Hera's marriage bond that she coolly rejected the father of gods. Thetis,
although a daughter of the sea-god Nereus, was also brought up by Hera, further explaining her
resistance to the advances of Zeus. Zeus was furious and decreed that she would never marry an
immortal.[12]

According to the Achilleid, written by Statius in the 1st century AD, and to non-surviving previous
sources, when Achilles was born Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx;
however, he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him: his left heel[13]
[14]
 (see Achilles' heel, Achilles' tendon). It is not clear if this version of events was known earlier. In
another version of this story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire in order
to burn away the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father
and son in a rage.[15]
None of the sources before Statius make any reference to this general invulnerability. To the
contrary, in the Iliad Homer mentions Achilles being wounded: in Book 21
the Paeonian hero Asteropaeus, son of Pelagon, challenged Achilles by the river Scamander. He
cast two spears at once, one grazed Achilles' elbow, "drawing a spurt of blood".
Also, in the fragmentary poems of the Epic Cycle in which one can find description of the hero's
death (i.e. the Cypria, the Little Iliad by Lesches of Pyrrha, the Aithiopis and Iliou persis by Arctinus
of Miletus), there is no trace of any reference to his general invulnerability or his famous weakness
at the heel; in the later vase paintings presenting the death of Achilles, the arrow (or in many cases,
arrows) hit his torso.
Peleus entrusted Achilles to Chiron the Centaur, on Mount Pelion, to be reared.[16] Thetis foretold that
her son's fate was either to gain glory and die young, or to live a long but uneventful life in obscurity.
Achilles chose the former, and decided to take part in the Trojan war.[17] According to Homer, Achilles
grew up in Phthia together with his companion Patroclus.[1]
According to Photius, the sixth book of the New History by Ptolemy Hephaestion reported that Thetis
burned in a secret place the children she had by Peleus; but when she had Achilles, Peleus noticed,
tore him from the flames with only a burnt foot, and confided him to the centaur Chiron. Later Chiron
exhumed the body of the Damysus, who was the fastest of all the giants, removed the ankle, and
incorporated it into Achilles' burnt foot.[18]

Other names
Among the appellations under which Achilles is generally known are the following:[19]

 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 Thessaly, which still bears the
same name
 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”, due to the wings of Arke being attached to his feet.[20]
Hidden on Skyros
Main article: Achilles on Skyros
Some post-Homeric sources[21] claim that in order to keep Achilles safe from the war, Thetis (or, in
some versions, Peleus) hid the young man at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros.
There, Achilles is disguised as a girl and lives among Lycomedes' daughters, perhaps under the
name "Pyrrha" (the red-haired girl). With Lycomedes' daughter Deidamia, whom in the account of
Statius he rapes, Achilles there fathers two sons, Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus, after his father's
possible alias) and Oneiros. According to this story, Odysseus learns from the prophet Calchas that
the Achaeans would be unable to capture Troy without Achilles' aid. Odysseus goes to Skyros in the
guise of a peddler selling women's clothes and jewellery and places a shield and spear among his
goods. When Achilles instantly takes up the spear, Odysseus sees through his disguise and
convinces him to join the Greek campaign. In another version of the story, Odysseus arranges for a
trumpet alarm to be sounded while he was with Lycomedes' women; while the women flee in panic,
Achilles prepares to defend the court, thus giving his identity away.