The great hero of the Iliad and the Trojan war, the son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons in Thessaly, and grandson of Aeacus.
Achilles was raised on the slopes of Mount Pelion by the wise centaur Cheiron, who taught him how to hunt animals through native cunning and, so it appears, to eat uncooked prey, setting the tone for the later life of this brave, impatient, relentless, but bloodthirsty hero.
Having set out from Aulis, the Greek fleet, in route to Troy, first landed, mistakenly, in Mysia, where Achilles wounded Telephus, the Mysian king and son of Heracles and Auge, in battle.
Achilles' quarrel with Agamemnon, the Greek commander-in-chief, caused him to withdraw from the struggle at Troy.
The Trojans prevailed and Achilles allowed his dearest friend, Patroclus, to lead the Myrmidons back into battle. Patroclus was subsequently killed by Hector, the oldest son of Priam, king of Troy.
Achilles then returned, routed the Trojans and slew Hector. In his rage, Achilles dishonored Hector's body, dragging his corpse behind his chariot three times around the walls of the besieged city. According to later poems, Achilles was killed by Paris, the least valorous of the Trojans, at the Scaean gates.
As the legend goes, Achilles was invulnerable but for one spot, his heel, the exact place where Paris mortally wounded him with a arrow, some say guided by the divine intervention of Apollo. The tale is that Thetis, his mother and a sea nymph, took him by the heel and dipped him into the river Styx to make him invulnerable, but the heel in her hand remained dry.
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