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Achilles, in Greek mythology, son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, and the sea nymph Thetis; the bravest, handsomest, and greatest warrior of the army of Agamemnon before Troy. According to Homer, Achilles was brought up by his mother at Phthia with his cousin and inseparable companion Patroclus. One of the non-Homeric tales of his childhood relates that Thetis dipped Achilles in the waters of the River Styx, by which he became invulnerable, except for the part of his heel by which she held him: the proverbial “heel of Achilles.”
The later mythographers related that Peleus, having received an oracle that his son would die fighting at Troy, sent Achilles to the court of Lycomedes on Scyros, where he was dressed as a girl and kept among the king’s daughters (one of whom, Deidamia, bore him Neoptolemus). On the warning of the soothsayer Calchas that Troy could not be taken without Achilles, the Greeks searched for and found him.
During the first nine years of the war, Achilles ravaged the country around Troy and took 12 cities, In the tenth year a quarrel with Agamemnon occurred when Achilles insisted that Agamemnon restore Chryseis, his prize of war, to her father, a priest of Apollo, in order to appease the wrath of Apollo, who had decimated the camp with a pestilence.
An irate Agamemnon then recouped his loss by depriving Achilles of his favourite slave, Briseis.
Achilles refused further service, and consequently the Greeks floundered so badly that at last Achilles allowed Patroclus to impersonate him, lending him his chariot and armour. Hector (son of King Priam of Troy) slew Patroclus, and Achilles, having reconciled with Agamemnon, obtained new armour from the god Hephaestus and slew Hector.
The poet Arctinus in his Aethiopis took up the story of the Iliad, relating that Achilles, having slain the Ethiopian king Memnon and the Amazon Penthesilea, was himself slain by Paris (q.v.), whose arrow was guided by Apollo.
Achilles was worshipped in many places, including Leuke, Sparta, Elis, and especially Sigeum on the Hellespont.
