ACHILIES, the hero of Homer's Iliad, was the son of king Peleus and Thetis, a sea goddess, belonging to a line descended from Jove. Of his life before the Trojan war, and of his death after the fall of Troy, the poets after Homer first profess to give accounts. We are told that he was dipped in the river Styx by his mother, and was thus made invul nerable, except in the heel, by which he was held during the process; hence " the heel of A." became a proverbial phrase to denote any vulnerable point in a man's character. It had been prophesied at his birth that his life would be short; and, therefore, when the seer Calchas announced that without A. Troy could not be taken, his mother, to keep him from the-dangers of the expedition, concealed him at the court of king Lycomedes, among whose daughters the boy lived disguised as a girl. But Ulysses discovered him by a stratagem. He offered to the young ladies a number of articles, some of feminine attire and others of arms; and the young warrior was betrayed by his choice. A., in the Greek campaign against Troy, appeared with fifty vessels manned by his followers, the Myrmidons; but remained sullen and inactive during a great part of the contest. When the city of Lyrnessus was taken, he had seized and carried away the beautiful Briseis. A pestilence in the Greek camp being ascribed to the anger of Apollo, whose priest had been robbed of his daughter, Chryseis, by Agamemnon, Agamemnon was compelled by the army to send back to her father. On this, he took away Briseis from A., whichgreatly offended the latter. With this incident the Iliad begins. Neither the
splendid offers made by Agamemnon, nor the disasters of the Greeks, could afterwards move A. to take any part iu the contest, until his friend Patroclus was slain by Hector. The hero then buckled on his armor, which had been made for him by Vulcan, and of which the shield is described at great length by Homer. The fortunes of the field were now suddenly changed in favor of the Greeks; and the vengeance of A. was not satiated until he had slain a great number of the Trojan heroes and lastly, hector, whose body he fastened to his chariot, and dragged into the Grecian camp. Ile then buried his friend Patroclus with great funereal honors. King Priam, the father of Hector, came by night to the tent of A., and prayed that the body of his son might be given back to the 'I rojans. A. consented; and with the burial of Hector the Iliad closes. We are told that soon after the fall of Hector, A. made a contract of marriage with Polyxena, the daughter of i the Trojan king, but was slain by her brother Paris, in the temple of Apollo, where the marriage should have been celebrated. According to other accounts, he was slain by Apollo, who assumed the likeness of Paris as a disguise. His ashes were placed in an urn, with those of his friend Patroclus, and were buried on the promontory of Sigeum, where, after the fall of Troy, the princess Polyxena, who had been made a prisoner, was offered as a propitiatory sacrifice.