According to that myth, when his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx as an infant, she held him by one of his heels, leaving it untouched by the waters and thus his only vulnerable body part.

[1] Achilles' descent from the Nereid Thetis and a similarity of his name with those of river deities such as Acheron and Achelous have led to speculations about his being an old water divinity (see § Worship and heroic cult, below).

[17] In the few fragmentary poems of the Epic Cycle which describe the hero's death (i.e. the Cypria, the Little Iliad by Lesches of Pyrrha, the Aethiopis and Iliupersis by Arctinus of Miletus), there is no trace of any reference to his general invulnerability or his famous weakness at the heel.

[26][27][28] A later Latin account, probably from the 5th century AD, falsely attributed to Dares Phrygius described Achilles as having "... a large chest, a fine mouth, and powerfully formed arms and legs.

"[29] Some post-Homeric sources[30] claim that in order to keep Achilles safe from the war, Thetis (or, in some versions, Peleus) hid the young man dressed as a princess or at least a girl at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros.

Yet Achilles, struck by the beauty of both Troilus and his sister Polyxena, and overcome with lust, directed his sexual attentions on the youth—who, refusing to yield, instead found himself decapitated upon an altar-omphalos of Apollo Thymbraios.

The first two lines of the Iliad read: οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, [...] the accursed rage that brought great suffering to the Achaeans, [...] The Homeric epic only covers a few weeks of the decade-long war, and does not narrate Achilles' death.

Angry at the dishonour of having his plunder and glory taken away (and, as he says later, because he loves Briseis),[43] with the urging of his mother Thetis, Achilles refuses to fight or lead his troops alongside the other Greek forces.

At the same time, burning with rage over Agamemnon's theft, Achilles prays to Thetis to convince Zeus to help the Trojans gain ground in the war, so that he may regain his honour.

As the battle turns against the Greeks, thanks to the influence of Zeus, Nestor declares that the Trojans are winning because Agamemnon has angered Achilles, and urges the king to appease the warrior.

Achilles tells Hector it is hopeless to expect that of him, declaring that, "my rage, my fury would drive me now to hack your flesh away and eat you raw – such agonies you have caused me.

[45] At the onset of his duel with Hector, Achilles is referred to as the brightest star in the sky, which comes on in the autumn, Orion's dog (Sirius); a sign of evil.

In 5th-century BC Athens, the intense bond was often viewed in light of the Greek custom of paiderasteia, which is the relationship between an older male and a younger one, usually a teenager.

[51] Starting with the oldest account, In book 22 of the Iliad, Hector predicts with his last dying breath that Paris and Apollo will slay him at the Scaean Gates leading to Troy (with an arrow to the heel according to Statius).

According to some accounts, he had married Medea in life, so that after both their deaths they were united in the Elysian Fields of Hades—as Hera promised Thetis in Apollonius' Argonautica (3rd century BC).

They competed for it by giving speeches on why they were the bravest after Achilles to their Trojan prisoners, who, after considering both men's presentations, decided Odysseus was more deserving of the armour.

A relic claimed to be Achilles' bronze-headed spear was preserved for centuries in the temple of Athena on the acropolis of Phaselis, Lycia, a port on the Pamphylian Gulf.

The city was visited in 333 BC by Alexander the Great, who envisioned himself as the new Achilles and carried the Iliad with him, but his court biographers do not mention the spear; however, it was shown in the time of Pausanias in the 2nd century CE.

[59] The tomb of Achilles,[61] extant throughout antiquity in the Troad,[62] was venerated by Thessalians, but also by Persian expeditionary forces, as well as by Alexander the Great and the Roman emperor Caracalla.

But they do not worship Hercules, alleging as a reason that he ravaged their country.The spread and intensity of the hero's veneration among the Greeks that had settled on the northern coast of the Pontus Euxinus, today's Black Sea, appears to have been remarkable.

Early dedicatory inscriptions from the Greek colonies on the Black Sea (graffiti and inscribed clay disks, these possibly being votive offerings, from Olbia, the area of Berezan Island and the Tauric Chersonese[70]) attest the existence of a heroic cult of Achilles[71] from the sixth century BC onwards.

[72] Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) in his Natural History mentions a "port of the Achæi" and an "island of Achilles", famous for the tomb of that "man" (portus Achaeorum, insula Achillis, tumulo eius viri clara), situated somewhat nearby Olbia and the Dnieper-Bug Estuary; furthermore, at 125 Roman miles from this island, he places a peninsula "which stretches forth in the shape of a sword" obliquely, called Dromos Achilleos (Ἀχιλλέως δρόμος, Achilléōs drómos, 'the Race-course of Achilles')[73] and considered the place of the hero's exercise or of games instituted by him.

In the following chapter of his book, Pliny refers to the same island as Achillea and introduces two further names for it: Leuce or Macaron (from Greek [νῆσος] μακαρῶν, 'island of the blest').

[75] Ruins of a square temple, measuring 30 meters to a side, possibly that dedicated to Achilles, were discovered by Captain Nikolay Kritsky [ru] in 1823 on Snake Island.

A fifth century BC black-glazed lekythos inscription, found on the island in 1840, reads: "Glaukos, son of Poseidon, dedicated me to Achilles, lord of Leuke."

[63] The heroic cult dedicated to Achilles on Leuce seems to go back to an account from the lost epic Aethiopis according to which, after his untimely death, Thetis had snatched her son from the funeral pyre and removed him to a mythical Λεύκη Νῆσος (Leúkē Nêsos, 'White Island').

They ask permission to slaughter the victims chosen from among the animals that graze freely on the island, and to deposit in exchange the price which they consider fair.

Herodotus, Pliny the Elder and Strabo reported on the existence of a town Achílleion (Ἀχίλλειον), built by settlers from Mytilene in the sixth century BC, close to the hero's presumed burial mound in the Troad.

[87] Nicolae Densuşianu recognized a connection to Achilles in the names of Aquileia and of the northern arm of the Danube delta, called Chilia (presumably from an older Achileii), although his conclusion, that Leuce had sovereign rights over the Black Sea, evokes modern rather than archaic sea-law.

The tragedies relate the deeds of Achilles during the Trojan War, including his defeat of Hector and eventual death when an arrow shot by Paris and guided by Apollo punctures his heel.