60 Fun Facts About Achilles

According to the famous legend, which part of Achilles's body was his only vulnerable spot?

The idea appears nowhere before a Roman poet of the 1st century CE; in the Iliad he actually bleeds from a spear graze to the elbow.

Who plays Achilles in the 2004 film Troy?

Pitt tore his own Achilles tendon during filming, which delayed the production for weeks.

Who is Achilles's mother, a sea nymph?

She was one of the Nereids, and both Zeus and Poseidon had wanted to marry her.

Who is Achilles's father, a king in Thessaly and a former Argonaut?

The gods married her off to a mortal because of a prophecy that her son would outdo his father.

Into which river does Achilles's mother dip him as an infant?

She holds him by one heel, leaving that spot dry and mortal.

Which Trojan prince does Achilles kill and drag behind his chariot?

He chased him three times around the walls of Troy first, and later returned the body to Priam.

Who kills Achilles by shooting him with an arrow?

Homer never shows the death; the dying Trojan champion merely prophesies that Paris and Apollo will do it at the Scaean Gates.

Who is Achilles's beloved childhood companion, killed while wearing Achilles's armour?

His death is what finally drags Achilles back into the fighting.

Which centaur, the most righteous of his kind, educated the young Achilles?

He was reckoned the most righteous of the centaurs and also taught the boy medicine.

Achilles commands which tribe of warriors at Troy?

He brought 50 ships with 50 of them apiece and split them under five captains.

What is the central theme of the Iliad, named in the poem's very first word?

The Greek word is menis, and the whole poem covers only a few weeks of a ten-year war.

The Iliad's quarrel begins when the Greek commander seizes which captive woman from Achilles?

He takes her to replace his own captive, whom he had to give back to end a plague.

Achilles withdraws from battle after being dishonoured by which commander of the Greek forces?

He then asks his mother to have Zeus help the Trojans, just so the Greeks will miss him.

Which god forges Achilles's new armour, including his famous shield?

The shield's decoration is described at such length that it became its own genre of poem.

Achilles fights which river god, who is angry that his waters are choked with corpses?

The river tries to drown him and is only stopped by Hera and the fire god.

How many times does Achilles chase his opponent around the walls of Troy before the final duel?

Athena then tricks the Trojan into standing and fighting.

Athena disguises herself as which brother of Hector to trick him into facing Achilles?

Once he realises the trick, he charges anyway, wanting to go down fighting.

Which Trojan king comes to Achilles's tent at night to beg for his son's body?

Achilles relents and grants a truce for the funeral, which is where the Iliad ends.

Which god escorts the Trojan king safely to Achilles's tent?

Homer calls him Argeiphontes, the slayer of Argus.

Which Amazon queen does Achilles kill in battle, only to grieve over her afterwards?

Her story comes from the lost Aethiopis, not the Iliad; she was a daughter of Ares.

Which king of Ethiopia, son of the dawn goddess Eos, does Achilles kill?

His grieving mother refused to let the sun rise until Zeus talked her round.

Which son of Nestor brings Achilles news of Patroclus's death and becomes his closest friend?

His bones were later buried beside those of Achilles on the Hellespont.

On which island is Achilles hidden, dressed as a girl, at the court of King Lycomedes?

He gives himself away by grabbing a spear from a pedlar's tray of women's goods.

Which Greek hero unmasks the disguised Achilles by hiding a shield and spear among women's wares?

In another version he simply has a trumpet sounded and watches who reaches for a weapon.

Under what girl's name, meaning 'the red-haired one', is Achilles said to have hidden?

His son was also called Pyrrhus, possibly after the alias.

What is the name of Achilles's son, who fights at Troy after his father's death?

The Molossian kings of Epirus, and through them a famous Macedonian conqueror, claimed descent from him.

Achilles's son is born to which daughter of Lycomedes?

Handel and Cavalli both wrote operas named after her.

Which Roman poet's unfinished Achilleid is the earliest source for the vulnerable heel?

The Epic Cycle poems that describe his death never mention it, and vase paintings show arrows in his torso.

Achilles's mother foretold that he could either die young with glory or live long in what?

He chose glory, and knew when he sailed for Troy that he would not come home.

Zeus and Poseidon stopped courting Achilles's mother because of a prophecy her son would be what?

Prometheus passed on the warning, so the gods married her to a mortal instead.

In one infancy myth, Achilles's mother anoints him with what before trying to burn away his mortal parts?

His father interrupts her, and she storms off in a rage, abandoning them both.

In some accounts Achilles's original name, before his tutor renamed him, was what?

'Pyrisous', 'saved from the fire', is another of his early names.

Achilles's spear, which no other man could wield, was named after which mountain?

It was a gift from his tutor; a spear claimed to be it was still on show in Lycia in the 2nd century CE.

Achilles's homeland, where he was raised, is which region of Thessaly?

Homer places the original 'Hellenes' there, as a small tribe under Achilles's command.

According to the Iliad, Achilles sailed to Troy with how many ships?

Each carried 50 men, and the whole force was split among five captains.

Which king of Mysia was wounded by Achilles and could only be healed by scrapings from the same spear?

An oracle told him 'he that wounded shall heal', and he guided the Greeks to Troy in exchange.

Which young son of Priam did Achilles kill in the sanctuary of Apollo Thymbraios?

A prophecy tied the boy's life to Troy's survival, and the sacrilege was said to have doomed Achilles in return.

In one version of his death, Achilles is ambushed while marrying which Trojan princess?

Her brother hides in the bushes and shoots him because the marriage would have meant giving up Helen.

What does the maddened Ajax slaughter, believing them to be his comrades?

When Athena lifts the madness he kills himself in shame, and his ghost still snubs the winner in the underworld.

In the Odyssey, the shade of Achilles says he would rather be what than king of all the dead?

It is Homer's bleakest verdict on the glory Achilles chose.

Vase paintings show Achilles and Ajax so absorbed in what that they nearly miss a Trojan attack?

The scene of the two heroes over a game of petteia is never mentioned in any surviving text.

Achilles's afterlife home Leuke is identified with which Ukrainian landmark?

A temple there was found in 1823 and destroyed by lighthouse building soon after; the island made headlines again in 2022.

According to Apollodorus, whom did Achilles marry in the Elysian Fields after his death?

The sorceress from Colchis makes an odd match for the hero, but the tradition is ancient.

Which conqueror saw himself as a new Achilles, carried the Iliad and visited the hero's tomb near Troy?

He could claim descent from Achilles through his mother Olympias, a princess of Epirus.

Which Roman emperor held games around Achilles's burial mound in 216 CE, imitating Alexander?

He was on his way to a war with Parthia at the time.

Zeno of Elea's paradox pits 'swift-footed' Achilles in a footrace against what?

Zeno argued he could never overtake it, and therefore that motion itself was an illusion.

In Dante's Inferno, Achilles is found in the circle punishing which sin?

Roman and medieval writers dwelt on his erotic career rather than his heroism.

In which Shakespeare play does a lazy Achilles have his men murder his unarmed Trojan rival?

Shakespeare's Achilles is a former hero gone soft in his tent with his lover.

Who wrote The Song of Achilles (2011), a novel about Achilles and his companion?

Her later novel Circe retold the Odyssey from the witch's point of view.

The Song of Achilles won which literary award in 2012?

The prize for fiction by women is now called the Women's Prize.

'Temporary Like Achilles' is a song on which 1966 Bob Dylan double album?

It sits on side three of rock's first major double album.

Pat Barker's 2018 novel The Silence of the Girls retells the Iliad mainly through whose eyes?

It gives a voice to the captive whose seizure starts the whole quarrel.

The 2004 film Troy built its city of Troy at Fort Ricasoli on which Mediterranean island?

The outer walls were shot separately in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, after the Iraq War forced a move from Morocco.

Achilles's name is often analysed as combining 'laos' (people) with a word meaning what?

That gives roughly 'he whose people have distress', an ironic twist on the hero of kleos, or glory in war.

According to Statius, by which body part did Thetis hold the infant Achilles in the Styx?

The Achilleid of the first century CE is the earliest surviving source for the vulnerable heel; the tendon is named after the legend.

In the Iliad, how many Myrmidons does each of Achilles's five leaders command?

The five were Menesthius, Eudorus, Peisander, Phoenix and Alcimedon.

Which slave woman must Agamemnon return to her father, prompting him to seize Briseis instead?

The seer Calchas declares she must go back; Agamemnon then demands Achilles's prize as compensation, sparking the wrath.

Which Greek colony on the Black Sea kept a cult of Achilles as 'Pontarches', lord of the sea?

Dedications there run from the sixth century BCE into the third century CE, ranking him with Apollo and Poseidon.

Which Empress had the Achilleion, a palace themed on Achilles, built on Corfu in 1890?

Elisabeth of Bavaria, better known as Sisi, filled the summer palace with paintings and statues of the Trojan War.

London's 1822 Wellington Monument in Hyde Park depicts the Duke as which figure?

It commemorates Wellesley's victories in the Peninsular War and the final campaigns against Napoleon.