Achilles

Who He Is

Achilles is the greatest warrior of the Achaean army and the hero of the wrath that opens the poem. He is the son of the mortal Peleus and of the goddess Thetis, and he lives knowing that his life will be short. In the first book, King Agamemnon takes from him his war prize before everyone, and Achilles withdraws from combat and asks the gods that the Achaeans feel his absence. From then on the plot revolves around a man who does not fight and around what his absence costs his companions. The wrath changes its target when Patroclus, his closest friend, dies, and it sets Achilles against Hector, the defender of Troy. He knows that Hector's death brings his own soon after, and he goes on anyway. The poem shows him in refusal, in mourning, in fury, and in victory, and only in the last book does it show him in another way, seated at table with the father of the man he killed.

Trajectory

In Book I, Achilles calls the assembly at the urging of Hera and lets the seer speak only after swearing to protect him. The truth angers Agamemnon: the plague is punishment for the insult to a priest, and the king's girl must return to her father. Agamemnon agrees, but demands another prize on the spot and decides to take Briseis, Achilles' own. Achilles recalls that he did not come to Troy because of the Trojans' fault, but to give honor to the Atrides brothers, and that the offense breaks that favor.

Athena, sent by Hera and visible only to him, seizes Achilles by the hair as he is about to draw his sword. He obeys the goddess, not the king: he puts the sword back, insults Agamemnon as a coward, and swears by the scepter that the Greeks will feel his absence when they fall before Hector, and he throws the scepter to the ground.

He hands Briseis over to the heralds without resisting, by the hand of Patroclus, and only afterward, alone, weeps at the seashore and calls his mother. His complaint is that of one who knows he will live little and counts on honor as his only payment. He asks Thetis to have Zeus give victory to the Trojans until the Achaeans are penned in beside the ships, so that all of them, Agamemnon himself included, will understand the error of having dishonored the best of them.

In Book II, Achilles does not appear, and the catalogue measures the army by his absence: Ajax was the best while Achilles raged, and the Myrmidons throw discus and spear while the horses graze. Thersites, whom Achilles hates, says from below the complaint that Achilles said from above, and adds that he has no wrath in his heart, the opposite of what the first verse of the poem announced.

In Book IV, when the battle resumes, Apollo shouts to the Trojans to hold firm: the flesh of the Achaeans is not iron, and Achilles does not fight, but nurses his wrath beside the ships. In Book VI, Achilles reappears through what he did to Andromache: she tells that he killed her father, but gave him pyre and tomb, killed her seven brothers in a single day, and that her mother, ransomed for an immense price, died afterward in her father's house. In Book VII, Agamemnon restrains Menelaus by saying that even Achilles trembled to face Hector, and Ajax warns the Trojan that the best of the Danaans lies by the ships, angry with the king.

In Book VIII, Achilles is not on stage, but is named three times: at the end of the row of ships, in the request of Thetis that Athena recalls with resentment, and in the prophecy of Zeus, who tells Hera that Hector will not stop the war until Achilles rises beside the ships, around the dead Patroclus.

In Book IX, the embassy finds him playing the lyre and singing the deeds of men. Achilles welcomes the visitors as the dearest of the Achaeans, despite his wrath, and answers each one with a refusal that shrinks over the night. He tells Odysseus, who repeats Agamemnon's gifts to him, that he hates the man who hides one thing and says another, that the same honor belongs to the one who fights and to the one who stays, and that he loved Briseis even though she was a captive. He says that nothing is worth as much as life, and he recounts what his mother told him: either he stays and dies with imperishable glory, or he returns and lives long without glory. He announces that he sails in the morning.

He answers Phoenix, who raised him, with affection and promises to decide in the morning. He answers Ajax, who asks him to respect the roof under which the others are, that he will think of the war only when Hector reaches the ships of the Myrmidons, burning them. The refusal now has a fixed point.

In Book X, Nestor makes Hector's fate depend on the day Achilles changes his heart, and the Trojan Dolon asks, as his pay, for Achilles' horses, which only Achilles can drive. In Book XI, Achilles stands on the stern of his ship and sees Nestor pass with a wounded man, but does not recognize who he is. He sends Patroclus to ask, and says he expects to see the Achaeans supplicating at his knees.

In Books XII, XIII, XIV, and XV, Achilles remains off stage, and his absence becomes part of the structure. The narrator says that the Greek wall lasts while Hector lives, that Priam's city is not sacked, and that Achilles keeps his wrath. Polydamas fears the man insatiable for war who is beside the ships. Agamemnon fears that the Achaeans themselves will hold Achilles' rage against him, and Poseidon, disguised as an old man, tells the king that Achilles' heart must be rejoicing, and then tells the army that no one will miss him if they help one another. Zeus tells Hera that he will fulfill Achilles' wish to the end, and the narrator calls Thetis's prayer excessive.

In Book XVI, Patroclus arrives weeping, and Achilles, who first asks him about Menoetius and Peleus, compares him to a little girl who begs to be picked up. Patroclus accuses him of having been begotten by the sea and the rocks, and asks to go at the head of the Myrmidons with his armor. Achilles answers that he knows no prophecy and that it hurts to see a man's prize taken by whoever has more power. But he lets it pass: he had said that his wrath would last until the cry of war reached his ships, and now it has arrived.

Achilles sets a limit: Patroclus must return once the ships are clear, and not go on to Ilion, because Apollo loves the Trojans. He gives as his reason his own honor, which Patroclus would leave diminished, and the text also sustains a second reason, that of protecting his friend. He prays alone to Zeus, with the cup that only he uses, and asks that Patroclus return safe and sound, with the armor and his companions.

In Book XVII, Achilles is the only one who still does not know: he expects Patroclus back alive, and his mother had not told him the full extent of the evil. In Book XVIII, Antilochus arrives weeping and brings the news, and a black cloud of pain covers Achilles. He pours ash on his head, tears his hair, and moans so that the moan reaches the bottom of the sea. Thetis rises and tells him that Zeus has already granted what he asked. Achilles answers that this gives him no more pleasure: he has lost Patroclus, and Hector has the armor that the gods gave to Peleus. Thetis tells him that his death comes right after Hector's.

Achilles does not draw back. He wants to die at once, because he did not come to the aid of his companion, and he sees himself as a useless burden on the earth. He speaks of wrath as something that grows in the chest even of the wisest, sweeter than dripping honey, and he sets it aside out of necessity. What moves him now is Patroclus. He accepts for himself the end of Heracles and asks for good fame, that of making one of the Trojan women moan and know that he has stayed away from the war for a long time.

Iris, sent by Hera, orders him to show himself to the Trojans even without armor. Athena casts the aegis over his shoulders and kindles a flame on his head. Achilles goes to the trench and shouts three times, and twelve Trojans die in the tumult. Over the body of Patroclus, he vows not to bury him before bringing back the armor and the head of Hector and before cutting the throats of twelve sons of the Trojans. The book also describes Achilles' Shield, which Hephaestus forges for him at the request of Thetis and which shows a wedding, a court of law, a siege, the farming, and a dance.

In Book XIX, Achilles' wrath against Agamemnon ends as a public decision. The new armor rings out, the Myrmidons draw back in fear, and Achilles feels his wrath rise in him even more. Before the army, he says that the quarrel over a girl cost so many Achaeans, and he brings his anger to an end, but in the next sentence he already sends the Achaeans to war. He accepts Agamemnon's explanation, which blames Zeus, Moira, and Ate, and he ascribes the blindness to Zeus, who wanted the death of many. He refuses to eat while Patroclus's body lies in the tent, and Zeus has Athena instill nectar and ambrosia in him. He measures his grief by saying that not even his father's death would be worse.

As he puts on the armor, his eyes shine like fire, and he rages against the Trojans: the wrath is not over, it has changed its target. The horse Xanthus, to whom Hera gives voice, tells him that today they will save him, but that the day of ruin is near. Achilles answers that he already knows and that he will not stop until he has sated the Trojans with war.

In Book XX, Achilles wants only Hector. Aeneas, to whom Apollo gives courage in the breast, faces him, and the new shield stops the spear, because there is gold between its layers. Poseidon takes Aeneas out of the fight, and Achilles concludes that he was indeed dear to the gods. When at last he sees Hector, he recognizes in him the man who killed his honored companion. He strikes the air three times, because Apollo hides Hector in a mist, and calls him a dog.

In Book XXI, before the suppliant Lycaon, son of Priam, whom he himself had captured and sold, he says that before Patroclus it was dearer to him to spare the Trojans, and that now no one escapes. He adds that he too will die at dawn, in the evening, or at midday. The river Scamander, choked with corpses, attacks him, and Achilles complains that his mother deceived him by saying he would perish under the wall, by Apollo's arrows, and that he would rather have been killed by Hector. Poseidon and Athena, in the form of men, calm him and promise him glory. Then he chases a false Agenor, who is Apollo, to the edge of the Scamander.

In Book XXII, Achilles pursues Hector three times around the city, and when Zeus weighs the Keres it becomes clear that Hector's day sinks. Achilles refuses the pact that Hector proposes, to return the body to the vanquished, saying that there are no faithful oaths between lions and men, nor a concordant spirit between wolves and lambs. He looks at the armor Hector wears, the armor that had been Patroclus's, to see where the flesh yields, and wounds the throat, without cutting the windpipe, so that Hector can still speak. Hector pleads for the body, and Achilles denies that any ransom exists that could buy it, even if Priam weighed his body in gold.

When he hears Hector's prophecy, that Paris and Apollo will destroy him at the Scaean Gates, he answers that he will receive his Ker when Zeus wishes. Achilles interrupts his plan to storm the city, because Patroclus lies unburied, and he pierces the tendons of Hector's feet, ties them to the chariot, and drags him away.

In Book XXIII, Achilles fulfills what he promised the dead: he leads the lament by driving his chariot around the body, stretches Hector face down beside the bier, and refuses to wash himself before the pyre. Patroclus's ghost appears to him, asks for burial, for his hand, and for a common urn for the bones of the two. Achilles tries to embrace him, and the image flees like smoke. He cuts the lock of hair that his father had promised to a river, gives it to the dead man, and kills twelve sons of Trojans on the pyre. The gods protect Hector's body from the dogs and the sun. At the games, the Achilles who lost a prize in Book I is the judge: he grants, he corrects, he makes the fight between Ajax and Odysseus a draw, and gives Agamemnon the prize for the spear without dispute.

In Book XXIV, Achilles does not sleep, and every day he drags the body three times around the tomb of Patroclus. Apollo accuses him before the gods of having lost pity and respect. Thetis conveys Zeus's message, and Achilles answers that whoever brings the ransom may take the body away, if the Olympian sends it willingly. When Priam enters the tent, kisses his hands, and asks him to remember his father, Achilles feels the wish to weep for his own, and the two weep, each for his own dead. He raises the old man and recounts the two jars of Zeus, the one of evils and the one of goods, and what fell to Peleus, who had only one son, of short life.

Achilles warns Priam that his safety has a limit, orders the body washed out of his father's sight, for fear of becoming enraged, and lifts the dead man onto the bier himself. He promises Patroclus a share of the ransom, recalls Niobe, grants the old man the days of truce he asks for the funeral, and sleeps with Briseis beside him. The poem ends with Hector's funeral, before Achilles dies.

Themes Embodied

Achilles embodies Honor and Reputation in its most radical form: the wrath is born from the prize, the public sign of worth, and it is because of it that a man withdraws from the war and lets his companions die. He embodies Fate and Free Will, because from the first book he knows that he will live briefly, chooses glory over a long life, and in the end knows that Hector's death brings his own. Death defines him twice: the death he receives from Thetis as a sentence, and the one he dispenses with his spear, sparing no one, after Patroclus. He embodies Loss and Grief in Book XVIII, in the ghost of Book XXIII, and in the weeping of Priam, and Compassion and Charity in Book XXIV, when the father of his enemy asks him to remember his own father. War is what he does and what consumes him.

Achilles' wrath is not born of love for Briseis; it is born of the loss of the public sign of worth, and what he asks is that the whole army measure the size of his loss. This reading explains the withdrawal and leaves standing the question of Book I: how far does the right of a wronged man extend when the compensation costs the lives of his companions? The second half of the poem answers it by another route, that of the loss no one repairs: Patroclus dies in Achilles' armor, after hearing a limit from him, and the text attributes the death at once to Patroclus's error and to the spirit that Zeus loosens in him. Two readings coexist for the change in the last book. It may be the order of Zeus, which Achilles says he has already accepted, or the movement of the heart before an old man who reminds him of his father. The text sustains both, and that is why the poem ends without saying that the wrath is over.

Relationships

• Agamemnon: the king who takes his prize, and with whom, in Book XIX, he is reconciled without asking for forgiveness, and to whom he grants the prize for the spear in Book XXIII.
• Patroclus: the companion he sends into battle in his own armor, whose death transforms the wrath, and to whom he promises vengeance and a common urn.
• Thetis: the mother who announces his short life, carries his plea to Zeus, and brings the new armor.
• Hector: the man who kills Patroclus, whom he pursues, kills, and drags, and whose body he returns at the end.
• Priam: the old king who kisses his hands and asks for his son's body, and with whom Achilles shares a meal and a night of truce.
• Zeus: the god who fulfills Thetis's request and honors Achilles at the cost of many Achaeans.
• Athena: the goddess who seizes him by the hair in Book I and kindles the flame on his head in Book XVIII.
• Odysseus: the speaker of the embassy, to whom Achilles answers without circumlocution.
• Ajax: the other great warrior of the Achaeans, who in the embassy asks him to respect the roof under which the visitors are, and who, according to Idomeneus in Book XIII, loses only to Achilles in the race.
• Nestor: the counselor who accuses Achilles of having no pity for the Danaans and proposes his armor to Patroclus.
• Apollo: the god who saves Hector from the blow in Book XX and who, in Book XXIV, accuses Achilles of having lost pity.
• Briseis: the captive taken from him in Book I and returned in Book XIX, with the oath that Agamemnon never touched her.