The Achilleid (/ˌækɪˈliːɪd/; Latin: Achillēis) is an unfinished epic poem by Publius Papinius Statius that was intended to present the life of Achilles from his youth to his death at Troy.

What remains is an account of the hero's early life with the centaur Chiron, and an episode in which his mother, Thetis, disguised him as a girl on the island of Scyros, before he joined the Greek expedition against Troy.

21–24, Statius complains that he lacks the motivation to make progress upon his "Achilles" without the company of his friend C. Vibius Maximus who was travelling in Dalmatia (and to whom poem is addressed).

[2] Statius apparently overcame this self-described writer's block, for in a poem from the posthumously published fifth book of the Silvae he refers to an upcoming recitation of a section from the Achilleid.

[8] The introduction states the goals and scope of the epic, including the intention to cover the entire life of Achilles, not simply up to Hector's death as was done in the Iliad.

The Achilleid opens with a traditional epic invocation of the Muses and Apollo, requesting inspiration for the poet's work and outlining the content of the poem to follow.

[10] As in Vergil's Aeneid and Statius' own Thebaid, the very first words present the poem's primary topic, expanded with a clause joined by the Latin enclitic conjunction -que.

Achilles is finally convinced to follow his mother's advice when he witnesses the daughters of King Lycomedes performing a dance at a festival of Pallas.

Achilles is immediately struck by the outstanding beauty of one of these women, Deidamia, and so agrees to disguise himself as a woman and live among the king's daughters in order to be near her.

[14] Konstan points out that many scholars have interpreted the depiction of Achilles disguised as a girl as symbolizing his maturation from a child living among women to an adult.

Achilles, now convinced to follow the Greek heroes to war, explains for the first time his relationship with Deidamia and their baby son and persuades Lycomedes to allow him to officially marry his daughter.

Ulysses tells the story of the events leading up to the war on which they are about to embark and expresses his indignation at Paris' reckless abduction of Helen and the threat that he feels toward society as a whole as a result.

One branch of this focuses on comparisons between the two poems; many scholars see a drastic difference between the "serious" and "Iliadic" Thebaid and the playful "Ovidian" Achilleid.

Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae emulated Statius' alternative epic tradition, leaving his work seemingly unfinished.

[7] Statius' Achilleid also had a great impact in the realm of opera in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries across Europe.

When a castrato played Achilles, the unveiling of the "girl" forced the observation of a contrast between the fictional character who sheds his false gender identity on Scyros and the singer who cannot.

[7] Some directors such as Giulio Strozzi, Ippolito Bentivoglio, and Carlo Capece, chose to embody the spirit of Carnival: the greatest hero of antiquity puts on a female disguise to pursue his love and sexual desires.

For later writers such as Pietro Metastasio and Paolo Rolli, the myth teaches that gender is essential, in that the masculinity of Achilles is a primal force of nature that cannot be hidden, and it is a crucial component of his heroism.

In the Achilleid, classicist P. J. Heslin argues that Statius upholds the Roman trend of portraying women as "heroic blockers" with the development of Thetis' character.

[20] Thetis's maternal instinct to protect her child from danger fulfills one of the typical roles women play in ancient epic.

Heslin argues that Achilles rapes Deidamia in order to assert his masculinity because dressing and acting like a woman makes him feel belittled.

[21] Heslin illuminates how the expectations for the behavior of Roman women during Statius's life can also be seen in the Achilleid through Thetis's instructions on how Achilles should act on Scyros.

There are only a few manuscripts of the Achilleid: torpor est nostris sine te Camenis, tardius sueto venit ipse Thymbraee rector et primis meus ecce metis haeret Achillles.