Achilles on a vase
Achilles, on a
Greek black-figure vase
from around 530 BC

Achilles was the son of Peleus and Thetis: Peleus was a king in Greece, and Thetis was a nymph.
When Achilles was still a little baby, his mother tried to protect him from harm by dipping him into a river that had special magic water. And it worked; he could not be harmed, except for one heel that his mother held him by as she dipped him in the water. Now when someone is very strong but has one weak spot, we call that their "Achilles' heel."
Achilles and Ajax
Ajax carrying the dead Achilles

When he grew up, Achilles heard a prophecy. It was this: he could make a choice to live quietly and without fame or honor, and live a long time and die in bed, or he could choose to be famous in his lifetime and remembered always, but to die young. What would you choose?
Achilles chose to be famous and die young, and you can read about how that happened in Homer's Iliad.

But later when Odysseus met Achilles in the underworld, Achilles was maybe not as happy with his decision.

Overview

Apollo has sent a plague against the Greeks, who had captured Chryseis, the daughter of the priest Chryses, and given her as a prize to Agamemnon. Agamemnon is compelled to restore Chryseis to her father. Out of pride, Agamemnon takes Briseis, whom the Athenians had given to Achilles as a spoil of war. Achilles, the greatest warrior of the age, follows the advice of his mother, Thetis, and withdraws from battle in revenge and the allied Achaean (Greek) armies nearly lose the war.

In counterpoint to Achilles' pride and arrogance stands the Trojan prince Hector, son of King Priam, with a wife and child, who fights to defend his city and his family. The death of Patroclus, Achilles' dearest friend or lover, at the hands of Hector, brings Achilles back to the war for revenge, and he slays Hector. Later Hector's father, King Priam, comes to Achilles alone (however he was aided by Hermes) to ransom his son's body back, and Achilles is moved to pity; the funeral of Hector ends the poem.

Book summaries

• Book 1: Ten years into the war, Achilles and Agamemnon quarrel over a slave girl, Achilles withdraws from the war in anger
• Book 2: Odysseus motivates the Greeks to keep fighting; Catalogue of Ships, Catalogue of Trojans and Allies
• Book 3: Paris challenges Menelaus to single combat
• Book 4: The truce is broken and battle begins
• Book 5: Diomedes has an aristea and wounds Aphrodite and Ares
• Book 6: Glaucus and Diomedes greet during a truce, Hector returns to Troy
• Book 7: Hector battles Ajax
• Book 8: The gods withdraw from the battle
• Book 9: Agamemnon retreats: his overtures to Achilles are spurned
• Book 10: Diomedes and Odysseus go on a spy mission
• Book 11: Paris wounds Diomedes, and Achilles sends Patroclus on a mission
• Book 12: The Greeks retreat to their camp and are besieged by the Trojans
• Book 13: Poseidon motivates the Greeks
• Book 14: Hera helps Poseidon assist the Greeks
• Book 15: Zeus stops Poseidon from interfering
• Book 16: Patroclus borrows Achilles' armour, enters battle, kills Sarpedon and then is killed by Hector
• Book 17: The armies fight over the body and armour of Patroclus
• Book 18: Achilles learns of the death of Patroclus and receives a new suit of armour
• Book 19: Achilles reconciles with Agamemnon and enters battle
• Book 20: The gods join the battle; Achilles tries to kill Aeneas
• Book 21: Achilles fights with the river Scamander and encounters Hector in front of the Trojan gates
• Book 22: Achilles kills Hector and drags his body back to the Greek camp
• Book 23: Funeral games for Patroclus
• Book 24: Achilles lets Priam have Hector's body back, and he is burned on a pyre

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After the Iliad: the end of the war and the returns home

Although certain events subsequent to the funeral of Hector are foreshadowed in the Iliad, and there is a general sense that the Trojans are doomed, a detailed account of the fall of Troy is not set out by Homer. The following account comes from later Greek and Roman poetry and drama.

Achilles fights and kills the Amazon queen Penthesilea and the Aethiopean king Memnon. Very soon he is killed on the battlefield by Paris with a poisoned arrow to his vulnerable heel. (See Achilles' Heel). After his death, Ajax and Odysseus feud over who should keep his armour. They submit their disagreement to an impromptu court and Odysseus is awarded the armour. Ajax subsequently goes mad and slaughters his livestock, believing they are the Trojan commanders. He then kills himself in shame.

The Amazons come to join the battle. Philoctetes, a crippled Greek who had been abandoned by the others along the journey, was recruited by the god Heracles because it was prophesied the war could not be won without his bow.

Odysseus devises a plan to take the city. He has his men build a large, hollow wooden horse, and then he and twenty others hide inside. The Greek ships withdraw out of sight of Troy, apparently admitting defeat, and leave behind the horse, purportedly as an offering to Poseidon for good winds on the return trip. The Trojans take this inside the great walls of Troy, and then feast and celebrate their victory and the war's end. At night, Odysseus and the soldiers creep out of the horse and open the gates to the other Greeks who have sailed back under cover of night. The city is sacked, and in some accounts burned for seven years.

Priam is killed. According to one tradition, Hector's wife Andromache throws their son Astyanax and herself from the ramparts to save them from slavery. According to another, Astyanax was killed by Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, to ensure that Hector's son could not seek vengeance for his father's death against Achilles' son. Andromache became Neoptolemus' concubine, later to marry Helenus, Hector's brother. A Roman tradition held that Aeneas escaped with his family and several hundred people, who after years of migration eventually founded Rome. (This tradition is best known from Virgil's Aeneid).

Odysseus' long journey home is narrated in Homer's Odyssey. Menelaus and Helen returned to Sparta to rule. Agamemnon took home as a slave the priestess Cassandra, who was gifted with prophecy but cursed never to be believed. When he returned home he was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. They in turn were killed by Agamemnon's son, Orestes, and his daughter, Elektra.