Achilles

Achilles, the son of Peleus (Pelides), and grandson of AEacus (AEacides). His mother, Thetis, a daughter of the sea-god, Nereas, dipped her son in the Styx, which rendered his body invulnerable, except the heel by which he was held (Achilles Tendon). He was educated by the Centaur, Chiron, and became king of the myrmidons of Phthiotis in Thessaly. To escape the fate predicted for him in the Trojan expedition, he assumed a girl's dress, and hid himself at the court of Lycomedes of Scyros when tbe other warriors were setting forth (Hor. Od. I, viii. 13). Ulysses, however, by an artful stratagem, penetrated his disguise, and he joined the invading host. Early in the war he was compelled to give up to Agamemnon the captive maid Briseis, and the quarrel that thereupon ensued protracted the siege of Troy, and provided a theme for Homer's Iliad, of which Achilles may be regarded as the hero. He sulked in his tent till his friend Patroclus was slain. Then the desire for vengeance prevailed; he buckled on the new armour made for him by Vulcan, and Hector speedily fell before his spear. The epithet most frequently applied to him by Homer is podokys, "swift-footed." Homer refers to the death of Achilles, but we learn from legendary sources only that he was shot in the heel by Paris whilst celebrating his nuptials with Polyxena, daughter of Priam. Telamonian Ajax and Ulysses contended for his armour, which the Greeks awarded to the latter. His son was named Pyrrhus, or Neoptolemus.