How Did Achilles Die? The Truth About Achilles' Heel and the Greatest Greek Hero

Q: Where does the "Achilles' heel" story come from?

According to Statius's Achilleid and earlier sources that no longer survive, Thetis tried to make her baby immortal by dipping him in the river Styx. The water covered everything except the part she held: his heel. Another version says she anointed him with ambrosia and laid him in a fire to burn away his mortal parts, until Peleus interrupted her. Here is the surprising part. None of the sources before Statius mention that Achilles was invulnerable. In the Iliad , he is actually wounded: a warrior named Asteropaios, who could throw a spear with each hand, grazes Achilles's elbow and draws blood. The early poems that describe his death show no sign of the heel weakness either, and later vase paintings of his death show arrows hitting his torso. Even so, the later story won.

Paris shot Achilles near the end of the Trojan War, but the famous heel story came much later. His life, his rage in the Iliad, and how he died.

Achilles was killed near the end of the Trojan War by the Trojan prince Paris, who shot him with an arrow; Homer's Iliad does not show his death, but other ancient sources agree on who killed him. The famous detail that the arrow struck his heel, his only weak spot, comes from later legend, starting with the Roman poet Statius's unfinished epic Achilleid in the first century AD. So the answer has two layers: who killed Achilles is old and widely agreed, while the heel is a later and very successful addition.

Who was Achilles?

Achilles was the greatest of all the Greek warriors in the Trojan War and the central character of the Iliad. His mother was the sea nymph Thetis and his father was Peleus, king of Phthia and a famous Argonaut. He grew up in Phthia with his childhood companion Patroclus, was educated by the wise centaur Chiron, and in the Iliad he commands a people called the Myrmidons.

His parents' marriage was itself shaped by a prophecy. Zeus and Poseidon had both wanted Thetis, until Prometheus warned Zeus that she would bear a son greater than his father. The gods backed away and married her to a mortal, Peleus. Achilles, in other words, was born from a decision to keep a too-powerful son out of the hands of the gods.

Where does the "Achilles' heel" story come from?

According to Statius's Achilleid and earlier sources that no longer survive, Thetis tried to make her baby immortal by dipping him in the river Styx. The water covered everything except the part she held: his heel. Another version says she anointed him with ambrosia and laid him in a fire to burn away his mortal parts, until Peleus interrupted her.

Here is the surprising part. None of the sources before Statius mention that Achilles was invulnerable. In the Iliad, he is actually wounded: a warrior named Asteropaios, who could throw a spear with each hand, grazes Achilles's elbow and draws blood. The early poems that describe his death show no sign of the heel weakness either, and later vase paintings of his death show arrows hitting his torso.

Even so, the later story won. "Achilles' heel" now means a weak point that can bring down someone or something otherwise strong, and the Achilles tendon at the back of the ankle is named after the same legend.

A choice between glory and a long life

Thetis foretold that her son had two possible fates: to win glory and die young, or to live a long but quiet life without fame. Achilles chose glory and went to Troy. Some later sources add that Thetis first tried to hide him from the war by dressing him as a girl at the court of King Lycomedes on Skyros. Odysseus came disguised as a pedlar, placed a shield and spear among women's goods, and exposed Achilles when he grabbed the spear.

He arrived at Troy with 50 ships, each carrying 50 Myrmidons. That is the hero who enters the Iliad: unbeatable in battle and fully aware that the war will cost him his life.

The wrath of Achilles

The Iliad covers only a few weeks of a ten-year war, and its central theme is Achilles's anger. It begins when Agamemnon, the commander of the Greeks, is forced to give back a captive woman, Chryseis, and takes Achilles's captive, Briseis, to replace her. Dishonoured, Achilles refuses to fight. When Agamemnon later offers to return Briseis with many gifts, Achilles turns everything down.

Without him, the Trojans, led by Hector, push the Greeks back to their ships. Patroclus then goes into battle wearing Achilles's armour and drives the Trojans back, but Hector kills him. This is the turning point of the poem. Achilles's anger moves from Agamemnon to Hector.

The duel with Hector

Thetis has the smith god Hephaestus make new armour for her son, including the Shield of Achilles, which the poem describes in great detail. Achilles returns to battle in a rage so great that he even fights the river god Scamander, who is angry that the river is choked with bodies.

Finally he chases Hector three times around the walls of Troy. The goddess Athena, disguised as Hector's brother, tricks Hector into standing and fighting. Hector asks only that his body be treated with respect after his death; Achilles refuses, kills him, and drags the corpse behind his chariot.

The poem does not end in triumph, though. Hector's father, King Priam, comes secretly to Achilles's tent to beg for his son's body. Achilles gives way and promises a truce for the funeral, and the Iliad ends with Hector's burial, not with the fall of Troy. Many readers see the loss of Patroclus as what finally brings Achilles back to his own humanity and lets him show mercy to Priam.

How Achilles died at Troy

As Hector dies, he predicts that Paris and Apollo will kill Achilles at the Scaean Gates of Troy. Later stories fill in the rest. In one version, Achilles falls in love with the Trojan princess Polyxena, and while her marriage to him is being arranged, Paris hides and shoots him with a divine arrow. Achilles's bones were mixed with those of Patroclus and placed in a golden vase from his mother, and a great mound was raised on the Hellespont.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus meets Achilles's ghost in the underworld. Greeted as blessed in life and in death, Achilles answers that he would rather be a slave to the worst of masters than king of all the dead. It is a startling line from the man who chose glory over a long life, and it is one reason the character still feels so human.

Achilles after Homer

His legend outlived Troy. Alexander the Great saw himself as a new Achilles and carried the Iliad with him, and Achilles's tomb in the region of Troy was honoured in antiquity by visitors including Alexander and the Roman emperor Caracalla. Today he is better known through a single word, his heel, but the Iliad shows a more complicated hero: proud, grieving, furious, and in the end capable of pity.

Learn with Achilles: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
Achilles' heel	a weak point in someone strong	Spelling is my Achilles' heel.
to sulk in one's tent	to refuse to help because you feel insulted	He's sulking in his tent after the meeting.
to go down fighting	to keep trying until the end	Even if we lose, we'll go down fighting.
a hollow victory	a win that brings no real joy	Beating his rival was a hollow victory.
to swallow one's pride	to accept something humbling	She swallowed her pride and asked for help.

Try this: Write three English sentences about your own Achilles' heel and how you deal with it, using "Achilles' heel" and "to swallow one's pride".