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In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ə-KIL-eez) or Achilleus (Greek: Ἀχιλλεύς, translit. Achilleús) was a hero of the Trojan War who was known as being the greatest of all the Greek warriors. A central character in Homer's Iliad, he was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, king of Phthia and famous Argonaut. Achilles was raised in Phthia along with his childhood companion Patroclus and received his education by the centaur Chiron. In the Iliad, he is presented as the commander of the mythical tribe of the Myrmidons. 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 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. According to that myth, when his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx as an infant, she held him by one of his heels leaving it untouched by the waters and thus his only vulnerable body part. Alluding to these legends, the term "Achilles' heel" has come to mean a point of weakness which can lead to downfall, especially in someone or something with an otherwise strong constitution. The Achilles tendon is named after him following the same legend. Etymology Linear B tablets attest to the personal name Achilleus in the forms a-ki-re-u and a-ki-re-we, the latter being the dative of the former. The name grew more popular, becoming common soon after the seventh century BC 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" 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". 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. 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. Some researchers deem the name a loan word, possibly from a Pre-Greek language. 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 his being an old water divinity (see § Worship and heroic cult, below). 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. Birth and early years Achilles was the son of Thetis—a Nereid and daughter of the Old Man of the Sea—and Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons. Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals for Thetis's hand in marriage 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. 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. 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 (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. 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 Asteropaios, son of Pelagon, challenged Achilles by the river Scamander. He was ambidextrous, and cast a spear from each hand; one grazed Achilles' elbow, "drawing a spurt of blood". In the few fragmentary poems of the Epic Cycle which describe the hero's death (i.e. the Cypria, the Little Iliad by Lesches of Pyrrha, the Aethiopis and Iliupersis 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, who lived on Mount Pelion and was known as the most righteous of the Centaurs, to be reared. In some accounts, Achilles' original name was "Ligyron" and he was later named Achilles by his tutor Chiron. According to Homer, Achilles grew up in Phthia with his childhood companion Patroclus. Homer further writes that Achilles taught Patroclus what he himself had been taught by Chiron, including the medical arts. 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. 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. 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. Physical description In the account of Dares the Phrygian, Achilles was described having "... a large chest, a fine mouth, and powerfully formed arms and legs. His head was covered with long wavy c.... Discover the Achilles Rose popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Achilles Rose books.