|
Achilles
When the Greeks declared war on the city of Troy, Thetis sent Achilles away to the court of Lycomedes, where he was disguised as a woman. The ruse failed when Odysseus, searching for Achilles, presented a cache of gifts for the ladies of the court and noticed that one in particular ignored the fine clothes and jewelry in favor of a sword and some armor; that maid was of course the disguised Achilles. Against his mother's wishes, Achilles joined the war effort, taking with him his father's horses Xanthos and Balios, two immortal steeds who had the power of speech and were the offspring of the wind god Zephyros and the Harpie Podarge (or Celaeno). He also took his young armor-bearer and eromenos, Patroclus, whom he loved passionately. When a plague beset the Greek camp, the Greek general Agamemnon was informed by an oracle that the plague had been sent by Apollo, and would not relent until he had returned the captive maiden Chryseis to her father. Agamemnon returned the young woman as instructed, but then took Achilles' own captive, Briseis. When the other generals supported Agamemnon's claim to Briseis, Achilles retreated to his tent and refused to come out for battle, even as he was being taunted by the Trojan prince Hector. Determined to defend the honor of the man he loved, Patroclus donned Achilles' armor and met Hector on the battlefield. Hector slew the boy and stripped Achilles' armor from the corpse as war booty. Given new armor by his mother, Achilles in a vengeful rage killed Hector, and then tied Hector's naked body to his horse and dragged it around the walls of Troy, an event recorded both in the Iliad and in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. His thirst for revenge sated, Achilles allowed King Priam of Troy to claim Hector's body and give it proper burial. This episode of the Iliad shows not only the passionate devotion that existed between the men of ancient Greece and the young men they took as lovers, but also the manner in which they saw women as little more than property. Contradictory as it may seem, the ancient Hellenes were not as progressive in their views of women as they were in their view of same-sex love between men. The Trojan prince Troilus, Hector's young brother, was killed by Achilles in the temple of Apollo after he refused the warrior's offer to spare his life in exchange for becoming his eromenos, replacing the dead Patroclus. Achilles also battled and slew Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, when an army of the warrior women came to the assistance of the besieged city of Troy. Even as he killed her, Achilles was enthralled by both her beauty and her courage. In some versions of the story, Penthesilea managed to mortally wound Achilles, and it was only after his mother petitioned Zeus that he restored Achilles to life, but with the warning that he would not save Achilles a second time. Achilles later fought and killed Memnon, the handsome Ethiopian prince and son of the dawn goddess Eos, when he also came to King Priam's aid. Achilles died when Hector's brother Paris shot him in his vulnerable heel with a poisoned arrow. This was accomplished through a ploy suggested to Paris by Apollo. Achilles was invited to come to the same temple in which he had killed Troilus, under the ruse that Priam would give him the hand of his daughter Polyxena if he would persuade the Greeks to negotiate a peace with the Trojans and go home. As he entered the temple under a flag of truce, unarmed and without armor, Paris fired his arrow at the warrior. The arrow in fact was guided into his heel by Apollo, as revenge for Achilles' defilement of his temple by slaying Troilus on its altar. Achilles was survived by Neoptolemus, his son from an affair with Lycomedes' daughter, Deidamea, who joined the war to avenge his father's death. It was Neoptolemus who slew King Priam of Troy, and Hector's son Astyanax when the Greeks finally captured the city. He later sacrificed Priam's daughter Polyxena to the ghost of his father in retaliation for her serving as the bait in the trap which killed Achilles. Also called Pyrrhus, Neoptolemus later became the king of Epirus (now Albania), taking Hector's widow Andromache as his wife. Because his mother Olympias claimed descent from Neoptolemus, Alexander the Great in turn claimed descent through her from Achilles. Shield
of Achilles by W.H. Auden Auden, W.H. - The Shield of Achilles
|
||||||||||
