Achilles A Greek hero. Son of Peleus, king of Phthia of Thessaly, and Thetis, a sea nymph and daughter of Neseus. Achilles is the central character of Homer’s Iliad and Statius’s Achilleid. Other sources include Apollodorus’s Library Homer’s Odyssey ,
Hyginus’s Fabulae , and Ovid’s Metamorphoses . Achilles’ childhood and early career, including his education by the centaur Chiron on Mt. Pelion and his battle with the Amazons during which he kills their queen, Penthesileia, are described in the Epic Cycle. Because of a prophecy that he would die an early death in battle, Thetis tried to make him invulnerable by dipping him into the river Styx.
The heel by which she held him was, however, unprotected: Achilles was to die from an arrow shot into that heel by Paris. Another of Thetis’s
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