Introduction
Achilles was the son of the mortal Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis, raised partly by the centaur Chiron. Thetis is said to have dipped him as an infant in the river Styx to render him invulnerable, holding him by the heel, which alone remained vulnerable.
Family
- Father: Peleus
Wrath and Return
The Iliad opens with Achilles's furious withdrawal from the fighting after Agamemnon seizes a captive woman awarded to him, an act of wounded honor that costs the Achaeans dearly on the battlefield. He returns to the war only after his beloved companion Patroclus, wearing Achilles's own armor, is killed by Hector. Achilles's rejoining the war is swift and terrible: he kills Hector in single combat and drags his body around Troy's walls, only relenting when Priam comes in person to beg for its return.
Death
Achilles was killed before Troy's fall, struck in his one vulnerable heel by an arrow from Paris, guided by Apollo — the origin of the phrase "Achilles' heel" for a single fatal weakness.
As with all figures of Greek heroic legend, sources diverge on many particulars; the account above follows the most widely transmitted classical tradition.