Achilles
uh-KILL-eez
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe best of the Achaeans, and the one who is told what his choice costs before he makes it.
His mother gives him two fates: stay at Troy and die young with glory that never dies, or go home and live long with the glory lost. He says it plainly in the ninth book, and then chooses the first anyway after Patroclus is killed.
The Spartan version of the same bargain is shorter and has no choice in it. The mother hands over the shield and says come back with this or on it.
Sources
- Hom. Il. 9.410-416
- Hom. Il. 18.94-126
- Hom. Il. 22
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Discussed in the papers
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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