Achilles, the greatest of the Achaeans, towers above all the other characters of the Iliad (see King 1987.2-3). He is the handsomest, swiftest, and strongest; his beautiful and powerful youth (only Diomedes and Antilochus are so young) is like that of the gods. But, though the son of the goddess Thetis, he is not himself a god; he is a mortal who can be fatally wounded. Certainly Homer, if he knew it (as he well may have done; see Janko 1992.409), rejected the story that Thetis by dipping the baby Achilles in the river Styx made him invulnerable except in the place on his heel where she held him. Achilles is the “most swift-doomed/short-lived of all men,” okumoros peri panton (1.417, 505; 18.95, 458). These words are used only of him and only by Thetis. As King 1987.5 says, Achilles' knowledge that he is destined to die young at Troy and Thetis' “tender, mournful, and immortal motherhood accentuate the shortness of his life.”
He is not a god, and not a beast either in spite of the fact that he rages like a lion and is blamed for descending to the level of a brute in his vengeance against Hector. But King 1987.28 rightly speaks of the bestial in him as well as the divine. Apparently the poet by showing his nearness to both wanted to define what it means to be human.
Achilles was given (9.412-16) a choice between a long but inglorious life if he remained at home and a short but glorious life if he went to fight at Troy. Being the man he was, he of course chose to win honor and glory, and thus we can understand his deep hurt and anger at being dishonored by Agamemnon. This dishonor threatened to invalidate his choice of lives, the whole meaning of his life. His choice presupposed the horrible reality of death, to which his soul in the Underworld, atOdyssey 11.489-91, refers: I would rather live in dishonor than be king of the dead. Since he had to die, he preferred a short life with honor to a long one without it.
We are sometimes made aware of a gentle side to his nature. He is naturally kind and polite, and always obeys the gods. When a god gives him advice, as Athena does in Book 1 or Thetis in Book 24, he promptly obeys. He shows concern for the feelings of the heralds when in Book 1 they come at Agamemnon's command to take Briseis from him; and in Book 9 he hospitably receives the envoys from Agamemnon. His reception of Priam in Book 24 shows him in a conflict of emotions as he tries to check his grief and anger over the slaying of Patroclus: he has deep sympathy for the old king but insists, even to the point of threatening to kill him, that he accept his hospitality before being given the body of Hector. Moreover, we are told that the centaur Chiron had taught Achilles to play the lyre, which he does in Book 9, and to practice the art of medicine, which he in turn taught Patroclus. Finally, we should mention Achilles' love for Briseis and Patroclus and the Achaeans in general. Briseis is more than a prize of war and a symbol of honor; he loves her like a wife. Patroclus, his charioteer, a somewhat older man (cf. 11.787), is like another self, his dearest friend; he represents his gentler side during the period of his wrath and moves him by tearful exhortation and, finally, by his death to pity the Achaeans. Achilles' concern for the Achaeans is shown in Book 1 when he calls the assembly to find out the cause of the plague. Although he later blames them for siding with Agamemnon, the death of Patroclus causes him to return to the action to be their leader and protector.
Nagy 1979.69-83 has argued for the derivation, proposed by Palmer 1963.79, of the name Achilles from *Achi-laos, which he interprets to mean “he whose army (laos) has grief (achos).” This makes sense when we think of how Achilles gives grief to his own people by withdrawing from battle and later (outside the Iliad) by being killed himself. An alternative interpretation would translate “he who gives grief to the enemy's army,” that is, for instance, by his slaughter of the Trojans during his aristeia.
Homer, however, emphasizes another connection between Achilles and achos. As again Nagy 1979.79-81 points out, the poet uses this word to describe Achilles as a man of griefs. At 18.429-61, when Thetis is summarizing the action of the Iliad in Parts 1 and 2, she says that Achilles was born to achos, first because of his grief (or grievance) against Agamemnon and then because of his grief at the death of Patroclus. Both griefs result in angers, the first in the wrath, the second in the vengeance. Achilles is angry during most of the Iliad, and he is pictured as a young man easily given to anger, but we should not dismiss him as a continuously angry man. We must distinguish his two angers as having arisen out of two very different griefs, and understand that grief often gives rise to anger. One is naturally angered at being dishonored or at having one's best friend killed. Often of course in the Iliad the deaths of their comrades spur men to avenge them.
Homer clearly distinguishes the wrath from the vengeance. They are caused by different griefs; the first, in contrast to the second, is especially supported by Zeus; and they end in different kinds of pity: the first in pity for one's own people, the second in pity for one's enemy. Nevertheless, this summary of differences also makes clear the similarities between the wrath and the vengeance. Menis, menithmos, “wrath,” and menio, “to be wrathful,” are used only of the first god-supported anger, butcholos, “anger,” and choloumai, “to be angry,” are used of both. And eleos, “pity,” and eleeo, oikteiro, “to pity,” are used of both pities.
Thus the vengeance (described in Part 3) creates a climactic parallelism with the wrath (described in Parts 1 and 2). This, as we have already said, is the most overarching structure of the poem. Although the vengeance, unlike the wrath, is not especially supported by Zeus, it brings Achilles into the fulfillment of his chosen destiny and makes him an instrument in the destruction of Troy, to which Zeus has agreed. Moreover, Achilles' grief over the death of Patroclus is a more powerful emotion than his sorrow at the loss of Briseis; and the pity for his enemy, with which the vengeance ends, is a loftier and more difficult emotion to attain than the pity for his fellow Achaeans.
