59 Fun Facts About Achilles

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

His heel is a later addition to the story: Homer's Achilles has no weak spot at all, and in the Iliad an enemy spear grazes his arm and draws blood like any other man's.

Who plays Achilles in the 2004 film Troy?

Brad Pitt injured his own Achilles tendon landing a leap in a fight scene, and the film's final duel had to be finished months later, once he had healed.

Who is Achilles's mother, a sea nymph?

Thetis did not marry willingly: her mortal suitor had to keep hold of her while she turned herself into fire, water and wild beasts, and only then did she give in.

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

Peleus reached Thessaly as an exile, driven out of Aegina over the killing of his half-brother; he then killed his new host by accident with a spear meant for the Calydonian boar.

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

The Styx was the river the gods swore their oaths by: in Hesiod, a god who broke one lay in a trance for a year and was shut out of their feasts for nine more.

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

Hector's body was dragged for days, yet Homer says it stayed unmarked: Aphrodite anointed it with oil of roses and another god shaded it with a cloud.

In most versions of the myth, who shoots the arrow that kills Achilles?

Paris is only foretold as the killer in the Iliad: Homer never shows the death, and a dying Trojan champion warns Achilles that Paris and a god will bring him down at the Scaean Gates.

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

Patroclus borrowed the armour only to scare the Trojans away from the Greek ships, but he ignored the order to turn back and pressed on to the walls of Troy, where he was cut down.

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

Chiron the healer could not heal himself: wounded by a poisoned arrow, the immortal centaur was in such pain that he is said to have given up his immortality in order to die.

Achilles commands which tribe of warriors at Troy?

Myrmidons was read by the Greeks as 'ant-people', and one myth explains why: Zeus is said to have made the first of them from ants to refill an island emptied by plague.

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

His wrath, menis in Greek, opens the poem, and the Iliad follows it for only a few weeks of the ten-year war: it ends with a funeral, before the wooden horse or the fall of Troy.

Which goddess, left off the guest list at the wedding of Achilles's parents, threw a golden apple among the guests?

Eris, the spirit of strife, meant the apple 'for the fairest'; three goddesses each claimed it, and their quarrel is the mythical spark of the Trojan War.

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

Agamemnon soon paid for the insult: Achilles had his mother ask Zeus to favour the Trojans until the Greeks learned what they had lost.

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

Hephaestus was repaying a debt: in the Iliad he says Achilles's mother sheltered him for nine years after he was thrown out of Olympus for being lame.

Achilles fights which river god of the Trojan plain, furious that his waters are choked with corpses?

Scamander rose in flood and came close to drowning him; Hera sent the fire god to scorch the banks and boil the water until the river begged for mercy.

The Greek commander lured which of his daughters to Aulis with a false promise of marriage to Achilles?

Iphigenia was wanted as a sacrifice so that the windbound Greek fleet could sail for Troy; in many tellings Artemis snatches her from the altar and leaves a deer in her place.

In the Iliad, which goddess takes the form of Deiphobus to trick his brother into facing Achilles?

Athena, in his brother's shape, promised to stand and fight beside him, then vanished; he called for a second spear, found nobody there and knew the gods had tricked him.

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

Priam kissed the hands that had killed so many of his sons; Achilles, reminded of his own ageing father, wept with him and agreed to hold off the fighting for the funeral.

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

Hermes met the old king on the plain in the shape of a young nobleman, put the camp's sentries to sleep and drew back the bolts of the gate himself.

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

Memnon brought a great army to Troy's aid late in the war; after Achilles cut him down, his mother's tears moved Zeus to make him immortal.

Antilochus, who ran to tell Achilles that his companion was dead, was the son of which aged Greek king?

Nestor outlived him: Antilochus is said to have died at Troy shielding his father in battle, and Homer has his bones laid in the same tomb as those of Achilles.

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

Skyros was his mother's idea: a seer had declared that Troy could not be taken without Achilles, and she knew that if he went to the war he would not come back.

Which Greek hero tricks Achilles into dropping his disguise as a girl?

Odysseus knew the game: he had feigned madness to dodge the same war and been caught out himself, so he set a trap that only a born warrior would walk into.

In the Iliad, which instrument is Achilles playing when the Greek envoys reach his tent?

A lyre he had taken as plunder from a sacked city: the envoys find the army's fiercest fighter singing of heroes' deeds while his friend listens in silence.

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

Neoptolemus was fetched to Troy as a youth because a seer said the city could not fall without him, and he was said to be the one man who showed no fear inside the wooden horse.

Which composer's last opera, staged in London, is named for Achilles's lover Deidamia?

Handel saw Deidamia close after three performances, gave up Italian opera for good and turned to English oratorios; he wrote Messiah later that same year.

The cruiser HMS Achilles, which helped corner the Graf Spee in 1939, sailed with which country's naval division?

New Zealand provided most of her crew; the ship was later sold to India, yet came back to play herself in the 1956 film The Battle of the River Plate.

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

Obscurity tempts him once: in the Iliad he threatens to sail home to a long, quiet life, then stays to avenge his friend, knowing it will cost him an early death.

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

Greater than his father was a risk Zeus knew well, having overthrown his own father to take the throne, so the sea nymph was married off to a mortal instead.

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

Ambrosia by day and fire by night was her plan, until her husband saw the baby in the flames and cried out; she abandoned them both and went back to the sea.

588 Achilles, found in 1906, was the first asteroid discovered sharing the orbit of which planet?

Jupiter's fellow travellers became known as Trojans: after Achilles, astronomers named them for heroes of the Trojan War, and in 2021 NASA launched the Lucy probe to visit them.

Achilles's great spear, which no other Greek could wield, was cut from which kind of tree?

Ash from Mount Pelion: a centaur cut the shaft as a wedding gift for his father, and when a friend borrowed the rest of his armour in the Iliad, the spear alone stayed behind.

Achilles's homeland is which region of Thessaly?

Phthia is where Homer places the first 'Hellenes'; Thucydides noted that the name belonged to Achilles's own followers before it spread to every Greek.

Which band opened its 1976 album Presence with 'Achilles Last Stand'?

Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant sang it from a wheelchair: he had been badly hurt in a car crash in Greece the summer before, and the title is a wry nod to his own injury.

Telephus, the king Achilles wounded and then cured with rust from the same spear, was a son of which hero?

Heracles's son had been told by an oracle that only his wounder could heal him; once cured, Telephus repaid the Greeks by showing their fleet the way to Troy.

In Disney's Hercules (1997), which character says he once trained Achilles?

Phil, the satyr voiced by Danny DeVito, is short for Philoctetes; in the myths Philoctetes was no goat-legged trainer of heroes but a Greek archer who fought at Troy.

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

Polyxena paid for it in the end: in the best-known telling, the voice of Achilles called from his tomb for a share of the spoils once Troy fell, and the Greeks sacrificed her on his grave.

Denied the armour of Achilles, the maddened Ajax slaughters what, believing them to be his comrades?

Sheep and cattle died in place of the Greek chiefs; when his wits returned he killed himself in shame, and in the Odyssey his ghost still refuses to speak to the man who won the armour.

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

A slave to the worst master would at least be alive, he tells his living visitor; yet he strides off delighted once he hears how well his son fought at Troy.

A famous vase by Exekias shows Achilles and Ajax, armed for battle, absorbed in what?

A board game, with the score painted in beside them: Achilles calls out 'four' and Ajax 'three', in a scene that no surviving poem or play mentions.

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

Snake Island was Leuke, the 'White Island', where Greek sailors kept a temple to Achilles; in 2022 its small Ukrainian garrison made headlines by radioing a defiant refusal to a Russian warship.

One ancient tradition has Achilles marry which sorceress in the afterlife?

Medea, who in Euripides' play kills her own children to punish Jason, ends up in this tradition as the bride of Achilles in the paradise reserved for heroes.

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

Alexander the Great ran a race round the tomb naked with his companions and hung garlands on it, calling Achilles lucky to have had so great a herald of his fame.

The ruins of Troy, and a mound long shown to visitors as Achilles's tomb, lie in which modern country?

Turkey's north-west corner holds both, beside the Dardanelles; Heinrich Schliemann began digging the hill of Hisarlik there in the 1870s, sure that Homer's city had been real.

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

A tortoise given a head start: Zeno argued that whenever Achilles reached the spot where it had been, it would have crept a little further on, so he could never catch it.

In Dante's Inferno, Achilles is punished alongside Cleopatra and Helen of Troy for which sin?

Lust, because medieval readers knew Achilles as a lover: Dante says he 'fought with love at the last', recalling the tale that he died lured by his passion for a Trojan princess.

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

Troilus and Cressida turns Homer upside down: Achilles skips the fair duel, has his soldiers cut down his disarmed rival, then tells them to shout that Achilles did it.

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

Madeline Miller spent ten years writing it while teaching Latin and Greek, and her debut then beat a shortlist of famous names to the 2012 Orange Prize.

A decade after publication, The Song of Achilles saw sales soar again thanks to tearful reader videos on which app?

TikTok's 'BookTok' readers filmed themselves sobbing as they finished the book in 2021, and publishers, seeing old titles climb the charts again, soon began watching the app closely.

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

Blonde on Blonde was finished in Nashville after months of stalled sessions in New York, and this song salvaged parts of an abandoned New York number called 'Medicine Sunday'.

Pat Barker's novel The Silence of the Girls retells the Iliad through the eyes of which captive?

Briseis had watched Achilles kill her husband and sack her city before she became his prize; Barker's 2018 novel has her narrate the war as its enslaved women lived it.

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

Malta's Fort Ricasoli, a 17th-century harbour fortress, held the city set; much of the rest was shot in Mexico after the looming Iraq War ruled out Morocco.

Which stock epithet does Homer attach to Achilles throughout the Iliad?

Swift-footed, even when he is sitting still: Homer's fixed epithets were ready-made phrases that fitted the metre, so Achilles stays 'swift-footed' while sulking in his tent.

The Achilles tendon, the largest tendon in the human body, anchors which muscles?

The calf muscles pull on it with every step, and it takes huge loads whenever you run or jump; yet it is named after the single weak spot of an otherwise invulnerable hero.

Which Victorian poet has Ulysses hope to 'see the great Achilles, whom we knew'?

Tennyson wrote 'Ulysses' in 1833, soon after his close friend Arthur Hallam died young; he said the poem came from the feeling of that loss and the need to go on.

The Iliad opens with a plague sent on the Greeks by which god, whose priest wants his daughter back?

Apollo's arrows fall on the camp for nine days until Chryseis is sent home; the commander then takes Achilles's own prize in her place, and the quarrel of the poem begins.

In Troy (2004), the companion whose death sends Achilles back to war is presented as his what?

Cousin, and a young protege in Achilles's care: Homer has it the other way round, making the companion the elder of the two, told by his own father to give Achilles wise advice.

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

Elisabeth of Austria, the restless 'Sisi', built it as a refuge the year after her only son died at Mayerling, and set a statue of the dying Achilles at the heart of its gardens.

London's Hyde Park statue of Achilles, cast from captured cannon in 1822, is a monument to which commander?

The Duke of Wellington's towering nude was paid for by the women of Britain, and the caricaturist George Cruikshank promptly mocked their gift in print as 'the ladies' fancy-man'.