Achilles

Achilles son of Peleus is a central character of the epic of The Iliad. He is a duel protagonist with the hero Odysseus for the side of Greece in the Trojan War, and the enemy of Troy's side in the conflict for it's duo protagonists Hector and Paris.
== Birth and Personal Life ==
Achilles was the son of Peleus -king of Phthia and Thetis - the Nereid (minor-water-goddesses). Achilles was not born with any powers despite being a demi-god, and to protect her son, Thetis bathed Achilles in the River Styx - a river of the underworld, of unbreakable oaths. Thetis used the river as a base to perform a ritual to make Achilles immune from harm. She held him by his ankle during the rite so he would not be swept up in Styx's unforgiving tide. Thetis could not stay with Peleus as he was a king and she was a goddess so she permitted Achilles to live with his father instead of her, but she frequently visited her son in dreams and visions. Thetis also appeared to Peleus from time to time, but was mostly concerned with her son of the two.
At a young age, Thetis convinced Peleus to send Achilles to the centaur - Chiron - a trainer of heroes. Most centaurs were considered wild and barbaric, but Chiron rejected his people's culture to embrace the Greek ideal of study, and became so fascinated and spiritually enlightened by the pursuit of knowledge he was hailed as one the greatest teachers of classical Greece and through several generations. Though Achilles learned of literature, poetry, math and astronomy - he had no passion for them; What Achilles did take to however were martial skills, like archery, sprinting, stealth and hand-to-hand combat. Chiron would identify that Achilles in-fact did have an in-born power his mother seemed unaware of, and when he went into a rage he could break solid stone and other acts of super-human strength. Chiron noted that Achilles seemed to have an unchecked rage and warned him and his father his temper was in need of control when he sent him back to Phthia. 
Though he was a prince, Achilles took to combat so well, he worked as a mercenary through-out Greece. He was so unbeatable it was highly speculated as to whether his skills were just so unmatched he had never been injured, or if the story of his mother was true and he was truly invulnerable.
==The Trojan War==
Achilles competed with many other Greek Princes and heroes for the hand of Helen - a daughter of Zeus and the princess of Sparta Lede. Helen was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world and so many sought to court her. The competition was so fierce that heroes and princes finally agreed that once she married every other suiter would be required to ensure whoever won her hand was to be protected by all the rest so there would be no grudges held from the rejected and the chosen could live in peace with fair Helen - all agreed. By the end Helen had taken the hand of Menelaus and the two would rule Sparta has husband and wife. Achilles like all the other Greeks honored the agreement and pledged to come to protect the union if ever in danger.
On Olympus, the goddess Eris set her golden apple - the apple of discord, up as a prize on Olympus to the fairest of the goddesses. The three goddesses who fell for the ploy were Hera goddess of marriage and wife of Zeus, Athena goddess of wisdom and warfare and Aphrodite goddess of beauty and lust. Eris had done this to get revenge on the gods for not inviting her to a party, and Zeus saw the three growing increasingly aggressive in assertion of their right to the apple as the fairest one of all. To elevate the issue, Zeus choose an impartial third party mortal to award the apple to one of the three and sent Hermes - messenger of the gods, to one prince Paris of Troy to explain to him the conundrum and simply award it to whoever he found the most beautiful of the goddesses. Paris was more than happy to see three beautiful goddesses in a beauty contest. However with each one he soon found it was less about beauty than bribery , each of the goddesses offered him a reward for choosing them. Hera offered Paris great fortune and power if he choose her, Athena offered Paris wisdom and unmatched marital skills, Aphrodite offered Paris the love of the most beautiful women on earth if her choose her. Paris instantly choose Aphrodite and awarded her the apple. Paris had heard of Helen of Sparta and wanted her as his love. Aphrodite told Paris to simply visit Sparta and see Helen and she would do the rest. When Paris went to visit Sparta both he and Helen fell in love at first sight. Helen expressed his adoration of Paris in private but that the love could never be as she was married to Menelaus. Paris had her love but not her, so, he kidnapped her. Though Helen did not wish to leave her husband she was put up little resistance as she was enamored with Paris.
When Menelaus spread word of what happened, all the great heroes, princes and by now, many kings, came to retrieve her. Paris had fled to his home-city of Troy - a city with many mighty walls hailed as unbreakable. Paris's father Priam was outraged at first but saw his son was in love with Helen and she with him, and so he maintained sanctuary with them within his walls. Paris's brother, and main general of Troy, Hector however was heavily opposed to the idea as he knew Troy would face repercussions for kidnapping a Spartan queen just for his younger brother's love life. Hector was proven far more right than he feared as every other Greek City-State arrived on the shores of Troy to retrieve Helen, including Achilles. 
Agamemnon was the main one to organize the Greek side of the offensive; In addition were Ajax the Lesser and Ajax the Greater two great brothers who worked as a team, Odysseus king of Ithaca - a great grandson of the hero Perseus and one of the only Greek heroes more feared for his cunning than martial prowess, and Menelaus himself, there to retrieve his beloved wife. Achilles had come with his long time partner Patroclus (it is implied if not stated that Patroclus and Achilles were lovers, though not mere sexual partners but emotionally dependent on one another). Achilles first raid was on a shrine to Apollo that stood on the shores of Troy, though Greek custom was that non of the priests could be harmed, their gold, and supplies were not taboo to raid. As he was raiding the temple Achilles met Briseis a pious queen of one of Troy's neighboring cities who had been helping at the temple. Achilles proposed to Briseis right there at the raid of the temple and stayed his hand in the raid to propose to her. Briseis accepted and a brief marriage ceremony was performed to Hera. However though Achilles had stayed his men in the raid, Agamemnon had not. Agamemnon went to the temple to see what was keeping Achilles and his men and walked in on the marriage ceremony. Agamemnon was also struck by Briseis's beauty and simply declared her spoils of war and took her away for himself. It was considered horrendous to steal another man's wife, or take a temple-goer as a prisoner of war, and Agamemnon was loathed by his men for the act, but Achilles especially. Achilles demanded his wife back, but Agamemnon refused in an attempt to assert his authority of Achilles as one of the Greeks lead under him. 
In protest of the affair with Briseis, Achilles did not fight. Agamemnon pointed out that by his oath he had to be there with the Greeks to get back Helen, so Achilles did not flee, he simply stayed in his tent and refused to fight until such time as either the war was over, or Briseis was returned to him. Every other Greek hero beseeched Achilles to reconsider as he was the only demi-god among them. but Achilles refused. Each Greek hero/general went to Agamemnon to try to pressure him into freeing Briseis but Agamemnon was a devout egotist and would not budge from his assertion that Briseis was his for the taking. And so the war went on without Achilles. Patroclus would go check on the fallen frequently and eventually the priest of Hades asked Patroclus to put pressure on Achilles to actually help his allies otherwise the casualties would never stop, empathetic to the plight of his fellow Greeks, Patroclus agreed to try to appeal to Achilles. Patroclus returned to Achilles to appeal to his empathy for his fellow Greeks, but Achilles still refused, he would not enable Agamemnon's lack of responsibly or lose of his new wife to stand and was set to actually sail away if the farce went on much longer. Patroclus did manage to convince Achilles however that if Troy drove the Greeks back they would almost certainly burn their ships so Achilles would be stranded; Pragmatism winning out over sympathy, Achilles agreed that could be an issue. Patroclus insisted that even if Achilles didn't kill a single Trojan just seeing him on the battlefield would be a great moral boost to the Greeks, Achilles had to agree, but had an idea from the notion. Achilles would lend Patroclus his armor, and Patroclus could go out in his stead, lead a charge and get the armies to follow behind him a great leading charge. Patroclus agreed to do so and started to dawn Achilles armor. Before he left Achilles insisted Patroclus not put himself in any real danger and that he meant the world to him, Patroclus agreed and left to pose as Achilles in the battle.
Patroclus lead the charge as planned, none of the Greeks noticed it was Patroclus and not Achilles, as Achilles was so removed from the battle that the mere visage of him through his armor on Patroclus was enough to renew heart and hope in the Greeks. Though Patroclus's charge lead to a turn around in the war, Patroclus found himself face-to-face with Hector, and was slain. At first Hector thought he had slain the great Achilles and removed his helmet as a trophy, however the moment he did, the Greeks recognized it was not Achilles, but Patroclus. The Greeks all charged with all they had to protect Patroclus's body and soon enough Hector, disappointed he had not truly killed the great Achilles left. When the Greeks returned to camp to inform Achilles of Patroclus's death something happened to Achilles, something Chiron had warned over those many years ago, he snapped. Achilles went into an unchecked blood rage and nearly left without any armor to single-handedly murder everything between him and Hector to avenge Patroclus. Thetis appeared to Achilles and warned him he would die if he fought, Achilles believed his mother but refused to stay, insisting Patroclus was worth dying for. Achilles was held back by his mother's warning long enough to though to put have new armor forged and putting it on.
Once he entered the battlefield though, Achilles was like a force of nature, he killed every last Trojan to get in his way, to the point some Trojans would specifically drop their weapons and move to the side so as to not be labeled combatants and thus be spared. Achilles killed so many Trojans and threw their corpses in river Scamander, that river-spirit Scamander grew angry and the very river came alive to fight him. Hector knew Troy would lose more and more men, and so agreed to go out and fight Achilles in a duel. Paris and Priam tried to get Hector not to go, but Hector made the point that unlike Paris, he didn't let others die needlessly for him and went out to face Achilles. Achilles told his men to stand back as well and engaged Hector in combat. Hector was a mighty warrior but in his rage and with Styx's blessing, Achilles was unbeatable, he killed Hector. In a rage over Patroclus's death, Achilles stripped Hector's body naked and tied it to the back of his chariot and road it up and down the walls of Troy in open mockery of Troy's best warrior. Eventually an old man came to visit Achilles one night. he asked Achilles the source of his rage, and Achilles told him. the old man then shared his own sorrows, that his son had left Troy to do battle and been slain, and he could not even give his son his last rites as his corpse was being violated, tied to the back of a chariot and dragged around for days in mockery; The old man was king Priam. Achilles's heart had been touched and agreed to let Priam have Hector's body to give it his last rites. After Hector's body was returned, Achilles still fought, but his heart was not in the fight anymore, Briseis was not going to be returned to him, he had lost Patroclus and he had no investment in the war. He recalled his mother's vision, that he would die in the conflict, but at that point was seeking death in battle. Sure enough, the Iliad ends with Paris, in spite for his brother's death taking aim with his bow and arrow and killing Achilles, shooting him through the heel, the one part of him not baptized in Styx and thus not invulnerable.
== Gallery ==
File:Abduction of Briseis .jpg|Agamemnon abducts Briseis from Achilles' tent
File:Achilles mourns Patroclus.jpg|Achilles mourns the death of Patroclus
File:Achilles Troy.jpg|Achilles from the movie "Troy"
File:Achilles Disney.jpg|Achilles from Disney's "Hercules"
File:Achilles Hades.jpg|Achilles from the game "Hades"
== Trivia ==
* It is heavily debated by scholars if Achilles and Patroclus are boyfriends - as nothing explicit is mentioned in The Iliad but the constant re-enforcement of their relationship. That they loved each other is not debated, only whether it is a platonic love or romantic one.
* Some accounts have Patroclus as Achilles cousin, this does not discount the notion of the two as lovers though, as in ancient Greece sexual relations were only considered incestuous if done with the immediate nuclear family.
* Achilles and Odysseus vied for the armor Achilles used, Achilles won the armor and would clutch at it whenever Odysseus was around.
*Achilles was noted to be not merely handsome but beautiful - specifically because he had been in so many battles but never once gotten so much as a scratch.
*The Iliad is credited to an author named Homer. Homer's identity is hotly debated, however, Homer notes he did not come-up with the ideas of The Iliad - he merely wrote it down. The tale of the Iliad was a bard-tale memorized and recited verbatim by Greek authors, playwrights and children for over 200 years since the supposed inciting incident - to the point it was preserved almost word for word between the generation. "Homer" was merely the first to write it down to preserve the verses.
*Archeological evidence indicates there really was a Trojan War and the remains of Troy are located on the north-western edge of Greece. However no preserved evidence has been yet been found of any participants in the battle, save an Ithacan king who came to fight the Trojans - presumably Odysseus or the person The Iliad calls "Odysseus".
*Though Achilles spared Briseis's temple - culturally speaking, he would have had to anyway, or at least the people within - even in war, Greeks were expected not to harm priests/priestess unless said priests tried to fight them, nor to tear down statues to the gods. Achilles would have still been able to destroy the actual walls or raid the riches of the temple and may have stayed his hand in this regard specifically for Briseis.
*Briseis mourns both Patroclus's death along with Achilles and Achilles himself after his death. Indicating she genuinely loved him too, and was far more than a mere battle prize as Agamemnon had cynically taunted while abducting her.
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