The Mirror of the Gods: Classical Mythology in Renaissance Art

Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis; greatest of the Greek heroes in the Trojan War; central character of Homer’s Iliad.

His name may be of Mycenaean Greek origin, meaning ‘a grief to the army’. If so, the destructive Wrath of Achilles, which forms the subject of the Iliad, must have been central to his mythical existence from the first. He was the recipient of hero-cults in various places, but these no doubt result from his prominence in the epic, and do nothing to explain his origins.

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