The Death of Achilles

Also called: Achilles’ heel, Aethiopis

A legend handed down over the centuries.

A Greek myth told in the lost epic Aethiopis and in Book 24 of the Odyssey. After killing the Amazon queen Penthesilea and the Ethiopian king Memnon, Achilles was killed by an arrow shot by Paris and guided by Apollo.

This Greek myth is told in the Aethiopis, an epic that continued the Iliad (known only from a summary), and Book 24 of the Odyssey describes his funeral. After Hector’s death the Amazon queen Penthesilea and the Ethiopian king Memnon came to help Troy, and both fell to Achilles. But at the Scaean Gate of Troy Achilles was killed by an arrow of Paris guided by Apollo. Ajax carried off his body while Odysseus held off the enemy, and his mother, the sea goddess Thetis, came with the sea nymphs to mourn him.

The story that his mother dipped the infant Achilles in the underworld river Styx, leaving only the heel by which she held him vulnerable, is not in Homer; it first appears clearly in the Achilleid of the 1st-century Roman poet Statius, and gave us the “Achilles heel”. When Ajax and Odysseus contested Achilles’ armour and Odysseus won, Ajax took his own life (Little Iliad).