Achilles

Son of the sea-nymph Thetis and the mortal Peleus of Phthia, swiftest and deadliest of the Achaean spear-fighters at Troy. His μῆνις — the wrath that opens the *Iliad* — is the poem's structuring engine: a personal slight from Agamemnon withdraws him from battle until Patroclus's death drives him back, and his slaying of Hector at last makes good the Trojans' worst fear. Already in the *Iliad* he knows from Thetis that he is short-fated; the *Aethiopis* and Apollodorus tell of his death by Paris's arrow guided by Apollo at the Scaean Gate. The Styx-dipping invulnerability with the unprotected heel is post-Homeric — the canonical Greek tradition has him simply mortal and pre-doomed.

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