Achilles son of which god

However, after Achilles entered the Trojan War, Briseis , the daughter of the Trojan priest of Apollo named Chryses, was given to Achilles as a war prize.

Certainly, that seems to suggest that Achilles had at least a part-time interest in women regardless of whatever his relationship was with Patroclus. One reason for the confusion may arise from Achilles' mother Thetis. Thetis was a nymph and a Nereid who tried many different stratagems to protect her beloved son, most famously dipping him in the river Styx to make him immortal, or at least impervious to battle injuries. To keep him out of the Trojan War, she hid Achilles, dressed as a woman, in the court of King Lycomedes on the island of Skyros.

The king's daughter Deidamia discovered his true gender and had an affair with him. A boy was born from that affair called Neoptolemus. Thetis' precautions were all for naught: Odysseus, after his own mad draft-dodging escapade , discovered the transvestite Achilles by means of a ruse. Odysseus brought trinkets to the court of King Lycomedes and all the young women took appropriate baubles except for Achilles who was drawn to the one masculine item, a sword.

Achilles still would not fight—instead, he sent Patroclus into battle, and when he died in a battle in which Zeus stood by and let him die, Achilles finally put on the armor and was himself killed. Neoptolemus, sometimes called Pyrrhus "flame-colored" because of his red hair, was brought to fight in the last year of the Trojan Wars.

The Trojan seeress Helenus was captured by the Greeks and she was forced to tell them that they would only capture Troy if their warriors included a descendant of Aeacus in the battle. Achilles had already died, shot by a poisoned arrow in the heel, the only place in his body not made impervious by his dip in the Styx.

His son Neoptolemus was sent into battle and, as Helenus foretold, the Greeks were able to capture Troy. The Aeneid reports that Neoptolemus killed Priam and many others in retribution for the death of Achilles. Neoptolemus survived the Trojan War and lived to marry three times. One of his wives was Andromache, the widow of Hector, who had been killed by Achilles. In the Greek playwright Sophocles' play Philoctetes , Neoptolemus is portrayed as a deceitful man who betrays the friendly, hospitable lead character.

Philoctetes was a Greek who was exiled on the island of Lemnos when the rest of the Greeks went on to Troy. He had been injured and stranded as a result of his offending a nymph or perhaps Hera or Apollo—the legend varies in several places and left ill and alone in a cave far from his home. In the play, Philoctetes had been exiled 10 years when Neoptolemus visited him to take him back to Troy. Philoctetes begged him not to take him back to the battle but to take him home.

Neoptolemus promised to do that but instead does take Philoctetes back to Troy, where Philoctetes was one of the men secreted in the Trojan Horse. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. In art, a popular scene was that of Achilles playing a board game with the hero Ajax. The image suggests that the Greek heroes spent many long hours whiling away the time during the siege of Troy. Achilles is initially angry because the leader of the Greek forces, King Agamemnon, takes a captive woman named Briseis from him. By taking away the prize of honour that has been allocated to Achilles in recognition of his fighting prowess, Agamemnon dishonours him.

Achilles withdraws from battle and refuses to fight. When the Trojans make gains in the battle, Agamemnon agrees to send an embassy to Achilles to try to persuade him to re-join the fighting by offering him a wealth of gifts.

Patroclus is killed in the bloody fighting by the Trojan prince Hector, who mistakes him for Achilles, and the real Achilles is utterly distraught. The two sides meet in battle and Hector waits outside the city gates, ready to fight Achilles. Achilles, with his lust for revenge still not satisfied, deliberately mistreats the body of Hector, tying him to his chariot and dragging him behind in the dirt as he drives back to the Greek camp.

Their emotional encounter is powerfully depicted on this silver cup, which shows Priam coming to Achilles and kissing his hands.

I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before — I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son. The two men weep together and share a meal. After the death of Hector, the Trojans, with their best fighter dead, call on their allies to help them defeat the Greeks. The Ethiopian King Memnon brings his army to support the Trojans, but is killed by Achilles in battle. Achilles also faces the Amazons — the tribe of female warriors — and fights their leader, Queen Penthesilea.

At the moment Achilles kills her with his spear, their eyes meet and he falls in love with her, too late. Achilles is killed by an arrow, shot by the Trojan prince Paris. In most versions of the story, the god Apollo is said to have guided the arrow into his vulnerable spot, his heel.

In one version of the myth Achilles is scaling the walls of Troy and about to sack the city when he is shot. In other accounts he is marrying the Trojan princess Polyxena and supposedly negotiating an end to the war when Paris fires the shot that kills him. After his death, Achilles is cremated, and his ashes are mixed with those of his dear friend Patroclus. The Odyssey describes a huge tomb of Achilles on the beach at Troy, and Odysseus meets Achilles during his visit to the underworld, among a group of dead heroes.

For the ancient Greeks he was an archetypal hero who embodied the human condition. Despite his greatness he was still mortal and fated to die.

A hero cult for Achilles developed in several areas across Greece where he was venerated and worshipped like a god. For the Romans, Achilles was on the one hand a model of military prowess but also, for poets such as Horace and Catullus, an archetype of brutality. By the medieval period, Achilles provided a model of how not to behave. Changes to the narrative in the markedly pro-Trojan versions of the myth that were dominant at this time made Achilles into a cowardly scoundrel who destroyed himself through his lustful passions.

In the Renaissance, when there was a renewal of interest in the classical world accompanying the reintroduction of Greek texts into western Europe, Achilles regained interest as a more complex character. By the early 19th century, the period of Romanticism, he was the perfect hero, embodying a life given over to emotion, and beauty doomed to ruin. A neoclassical sculpture of the period, The Wounded Achilles , shows the perfection of his body even in his dying moments.

Achilles has also served as a heroic justification for the sacrifice of soldiers as well as a symbol of the destruction and brutality of war. Achilles may be a killing machine but he is nevertheless deeply human and that is, perhaps, why his story is still compelling after more than 3, years. Buy the book accompanying the exhibition here. Map Data. Terms of Use. Report a map error. Exhibitions and events Who was Achilles?

The Greek hero Achilles is one of the most famous figures in Greek myth and a key character in the Trojan War. British Museum 15 October Achilles was the son of Peleus, a Greek king, and Thetis, a sea nymph or goddess. Terracotta relief showing Peleus and Thetis, c. Thetis tries to resist marriage to Peleus by transforming her body into powerful elements such as fire and wild beasts, here a lion. Why was Achilles raised by a centaur? Achilles instructed by Chiron in the Management of the Javelin.

Print after Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Pastel on paper. Getty Center, Los Angeles. Did Achilles have a male lover? Roman sarcophagus relief, depicting Achilles centre holding a helmet among the daughters of Lycomedes AD —