Source Verification: Achilles
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
Why did Achilles refuse to fight in the Iliad?
Agamemnon, forced to give up his own war prize to end a plague, seized Achilles's prize Briseis instead, a public insult to his honor. Achilles withdrew himself and his soldiers from the fighting in protest, and Homer's whole epic is framed around the consequences of that single decision, named in its opening line as the wrath of Achilles.
Source: Homer, Iliad, Book 1
Why did Achilles finally return to battle?
His closest companion Patroclus borrowed Achilles's armor and led his soldiers into battle to save the Greek ships, but was killed by the Trojan prince Hector. Grief and rage at Patroclus's death, not any change of heart about Agamemnon, is what brings Achilles back into the war, now aimed entirely at killing Hector.
Source: Homer, Iliad, Book 18
What did Achilles do to Hector's body?
After killing Hector in single combat outside the walls of Troy, Achilles tied the body to his chariot by the ankles and dragged it back to the Greek camp, then continued dragging it around Patroclus's tomb for several days. The gods eventually intervene, and King Priam of Troy comes in person to Achilles's tent to beg for his son's body back, a scene the Iliad ends on.
Source: Homer, Iliad, Book 24
Is the Achilles' heel story actually in Homer?
No. Homer's Iliad never mentions Thetis dipping the infant Achilles in the River Styx or any single vulnerable spot; in Homer he is simply the best fighter at Troy, mortal like any other, killed the way an arrow kills a man. The heel story is a later tradition, first clearly attested in the Roman poet Statius, centuries after Homer composed the Iliad.
Source: Statius, Achilleid
How did Achilles actually die?
Homer's Iliad ends before his death, but later epic tradition has Paris shoot him with an arrow guided by the god Apollo. Whether the fatal wound struck the heel specifically, or simply killed him the way an arrow would kill any warrior, depends on which version of the story is being followed; the heel detail belongs to the later tradition, not the earliest one.
Source: Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.580-628
Did Achilles have a choice about dying young?
Homer gives him one directly: his mother Thetis tells him he can choose a long, obscure life at home or a short life with everlasting glory at Troy, and Achilles chooses glory. This choice, made explicit in his own words in the Iliad, is central to how Greek audiences understood heroism as a trade of lifespan for lasting fame.
Source: Homer, Iliad, Book 9
Where Accounts Differ
- invulnerability tradition
- The Styx-dipping invulnerability story is a later addition not found in Homer, first clearly attested in Statius; the Iliad treats Achilles as mortal without qualification.
Sources
- Homer, Iliad, Book 1
- Homer, Iliad, Book 9
- Homer, Iliad, Book 18
- Homer, Iliad, Book 24
- Statius, Achilleid
- Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.580-628
- Pindar, Isthmian Ode 8
- Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam (1994)
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)