He helped the Trojan prince Hector to find and kill Patroclus.Īchilles vowed to take revenge. Thetis asked the divine blacksmith Hephaestus to make a sword and shield that would keep him safe. The plan was working until Apollo, still seething about Agamemnon’s treatment of Chryseis and her father, intervened on the Trojans’ behalf. That way, the Trojans would think that Achilles had returned to battle and would retreat in fear. Eventually, Achilles’ best friend, the soldier Patroclus, was able to wrangle a compromise: Achilles would not fight, but he would let Patroclus use his armor as a disguise. The Greeks lost one battle after another. With the Greeks’ greatest warrior off the battlefield, the tide began to turn in favor of the Trojans. He gathered his belonging and refused to come out of his tent. Then, he announced that he would no longer fight on Agamemnon’s behalf. However, he demanded a replacement concubine in exchange: Achilles’ wife, the Trojan princess Breseis.Īchilles did as his commander asked and relinquished his bride. As his ranks thinned, Agamemnon finally agreed to allow Chryseis to return to her father. Chryseis’ father, a priest of the god Apollo, tried to buy his daughter’s freedom, but Agamemnon mocked his entreaties and refused to release the girl.Įnraged, Apollo punished the Greek armies by sending a plague to kill the soldiers one by one. In a battle that took place before the poem begins, Agamemnon had taken as a concubine a young Trojan woman named Chryseis. Homer’s story focuses on a different conflict, however: the internecine quarrel between his hero and Agamemnon, the leader of the Achaean armies and Menelaus’ brother. He has met with great success–in fact, he is undefeated in battle–but the war itself has reached a stalemate. Achilles, the poem’s protagonist, has led one battle after another. When the Iliad begins, the Trojan War has been going on for nine years. At Aphrodite’s urging, Paris went to Sparta, won Helen’s heart and took her (along with all of Menelaus’ money) back to Troy.Ģ008 Proposition 8 is passed in California, banning same-sex marriage Achilles: The Illiad Unfortunately, the wife in question–Helen, the daughter of Zeus–was already married to someone else: Menelaus, the king of Sparta. Aphrodite’s was the most alluring: She promised to give the young prince the most beautiful wife in the world.
Each of the goddesses offered Paris a bribe in exchange for his vote. At Achilles’ parents’ wedding banquet, Zeus invited the prince of Troy, a young man named Paris, to judge a beauty contest between the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.
He did this by meddling in their political and emotional affairs. Achilles: The Trojan WarĪccording to legend, the Trojan War began when the god-king Zeus decided to reduce Earth’s mortal population by arranging a war between the Greeks (Homer calls them the Achaeans) and the Trojans.
He was also deeply loyal and would sacrifice anything for his friends and family. Homer painted a more nuanced picture: In addition to these qualities, his Achilles was vengeful and quick to anger and could be petulant when he did not get his way. They only knew that Achilles was a great hero, that he had superhuman strength and courage and that he was supremely handsome. When Homer wrote the Iliad in about 720 BCE, however, readers and listeners would not have known any of this. To be a great warrior was Achilles’ fate, however, and he soon left Skyros and joined the Greek army. When she heard about this, Thetis disguised him as a girl and sent him to live on the Aegean island of Skyros. When he was 9 years old, a seer predicted that Achilles would die heroically in battle against the Trojans.
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