Achilles, the Most Ruthless—Though Not the Strongest
Glaucus, His Opposite
According to Homer, Achilles was the son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons—whose very name means “ants,” and whose ferocity made them the fiercest warriors in the Achaean army. His mother was Thetis, one of the Nereids. As a child, Achilles was entrusted first to the tutor Phoenix and later to Chiron, the wise centaur who instructed him in medicine and other arts. It was Thetis who told him, while still young, of his destiny: he could choose a long and obscure life or a short and glorious one. Against his mother’s wishes, Achilles chose glory.
Thetis had already borne six children to Peleus. Each time, believing she could render them immortal, she anointed them with ambrosia and exposed them to fire—killing them all. Her father, Nereus, advised her to try a different method with her last child: to dip him in the Styx, the river that flowed through the Underworld. The infant’s name was Ligyron—“the one who cries and laments.” Thetis was about to repeat her deadly ritual when Peleus intervened, snatched the child from the flames, and drove his wife away. He took the boy to the cave of Chiron, his own former teacher and mentor also to Asclepius and Jason.
“I’ll return for him when he’s ten,” said Peleus brusquely. Chiron, disliking the name Ligyron, renamed him Achilles. The meanings attached to that name are many—“swift-footed,” “thin-lipped,” and others—but let’s stop there.
Of all the heroes, Achilles is the one I find least appealing. He was too fierce, too visceral—never a laugh, never a spark of wit, a man who killed without mercy and without remorse. A cold-blooded killer in pursuit of eternal fame.
When Achilles was nine, the gloomy seer Calchas predicted that Troy could never be taken without his help. Thetis, with Peleus’s reluctant consent (a parent’s heart knows no reason), hid him in the court of Lycomedes, king of Scyros, disguised as a girl among the king’s daughters. Because of his golden hair peeking out from under his headdress, he was called Pyrrha—“the fair-haired.” The chronology wobbles a little here, but the story continues: he managed to get one of the king’s daughters pregnant, to Lycomedes’s understandable outrage.
A lively boy under the anxious eye of his mother—one might think of today’s adolescents, shadowed by overprotective parents who even supply them with condoms. On that note, let me tell an anecdote about my grandfather, also named Nino, born in 1895.
In 1908, at thirteen, he was “sent” to New York to join his older brother. They were nine children, and money was scarce. He was entrusted to a fellow townsman who, once aboard the ship, disappeared with all the money. The boy survived the thirty-five-day crossing by accepting food from fellow passengers. At Ellis Island he was quarantined alone in a room, though at least he was fed. He was still thirteen—and remarkably tough. When he finally met his brother Domenico, a year older, the latter measured him against the door handle and declared him too short to work, adding that he couldn’t feed another mouth—swearing in both languages for emphasis. (See The Boy from Ellis Island, my latest novel.)
My grandfather lived to ninety-nine, but whenever he recalled that humiliation he wept like a child. That memory, more than the disastrous voyage itself, was unbearable. I tell this story to remind certain mothers—starting with Thetis—that boys can fend for themselves, without suffocating supervision.
Back to Achilles. Still dressed as a woman, he remained hidden until a “special merchant” arrived, selling women’s clothes and trinkets. The merchant was none other than Odysseus in disguise, accompanied by Diomedes. Among the fabrics and jewelry, they hid weapons; Achilles, at the sight of them, betrayed himself. His fate was sealed—he would go to Troy, bound by the oath of Tyndareus, which required all Helen’s former suitors to defend her husband if wronged.
Ah, and I almost forgot: Thetis did indeed dip her son in the Styx to make him invulnerable—holding him, of course, by that famous heel.
Achilles sailed with fifty ships and his terrible Myrmidons—fifty men per vessel—but he appears in the Iliad only at the moment of his famous quarrel with Agamemnon over Briseis.
Let’s recap. During the siege, the Greeks raided nearby territories to pass the time and to cut off Troy’s supplies. Hardly gentlemen—they were little better than pirates. Agamemnon captured Chryseis, daughter of a priest of Apollo, and made her his concubine. Achilles seized Briseis, another priestess of Apollo. Chryses, her father, came to plead for his daughter’s release, invoking Apollo’s name. Agamemnon, arrogant and cynical, laughed in his face and drove him away.
The Greeks disapproved of their leader’s conduct, and Apollo, enraged, unleashed plague and death upon the camp. Eventually, Agamemnon had to return Chryseis, but to soothe his bruised pride, he demanded Briseis from Achilles.
Achilles submitted, but refused to fight. From that moment on, he and his Myrmidons withdrew from battle. The Greeks, deprived of their fiercest warrior, were nearly driven back into the sea.
Then came Patroclus—cousin, friend, and perhaps lover of Achilles. He begged to wear Achilles’ armor and lead the Myrmidons into battle. Achilles consented—then regretted it bitterly. Patroclus terrified the Trojans, who thought him Achilles himself, until Hector, the mightiest of the Trojans, met him in single combat. The encounter was brief and fatal. When Hector removed Patroclus’s helmet and saw the truth, he must have known his own end was near.
After Patroclus’s death came a truce for his funeral. Agamemnon sent gifts and returned Briseis, swearing he had never touched her, hoping to placate Achilles—Odysseus, as always, acted as mediator. On Patroclus’s pyre, Achilles sacrificed everything he could, including Trojan prisoners.
He longed to return to battle, but lacked his armor. Thetis appealed to Hephaestus, who forged new, magnificent weapons for her son. Thus armed, Achilles returned to the field, letting out a feral cry that sent terror through the Trojans. He sought Hector—and one imagines that being the focus of Achilles’ rage was no pleasure.
Driven by the aristeia, that Greek word for the unstoppable frenzy of combat, Achilles pursued Hector around the walls of Troy three times before finally striking him dead. What followed was barbaric: he tied Hector’s body by the ankles to his chariot and dragged it in circles for hours—a desecration of the dead and of all warrior honor. I wonder what Thetis thought of that.
His immortal horses, Balius and Xanthus, the dappled and the bay, were forced to perform this “dirty work.” Achilles did not live much longer. Apollo, offended, took revenge. Some say the god himself struck him down; others that he guided Paris’s arrow to the one mortal spot on Achilles’ heel.
Another tale says the Trojans lured him unarmed to the temple of Apollo—between the two camps—on the pretext of meeting Polyxena, Priam’s beautiful daughter, and killed him there. What is certain is that Achilles left the stage. Odysseus and Ajax recovered his body with difficulty.
Thetis, ever meddling, promised Achilles’ arms to the bravest of the Achaeans, causing yet more discord. Some legends claim Achilles became a judge among the dead; others that a great mound was raised for him and Patroclus on the Hellespont.
This hero, for all his strength, was riddled with contradictions. His mother could not decide whether she wanted him to be a warrior or a dancer—she hid him among women to defy fate, dipped him in the Styx yet failed to finish the job, and later begged Hephaestus for new weapons. After his death, she offered those same arms as a prize. Bravo, Thetis!
And Achilles himself? He disguises himself as a girl to avoid war, sulks over Briseis, and refuses to fight out of spite—like a husband who punishes his wife by sleeping on the couch. In short, not my favorite hero.
Finding modern analogies to a man so powerful yet so pitiless is difficult. But perhaps one comes to mind: Michael Gerard Tyson, better known as “Iron Mike.” A former heavyweight boxer, one of the greatest of all time, though not especially tall—only 1.78 meters. What he lacked in height, he made up for in raw muscle and sheer ferocity. With astonishing speed and technique, he blazed through his first nineteen fights, twelve of them won by knockout in the first round. A human war machine.
In 1992, he was convicted of rape and sentenced to six years in prison. During his incarceration, he converted to Islam. Released in 1995, he reclaimed the world heavyweight title by knocking out both reigning champions. He lost to Holyfield, then, in their rematch, infamously bit off part of his ear. His rage in the ring was animal, elemental. He continued to fight erratically until retiring at thirty-nine. Since then, he’s drifted through television and film appearances. I, for one, would not want him as an enemy—or even as a friend.
Glaucus, the Gentle Hero
There are at least four Glauci in Greek mythology.
The first, father of Bellerophon, was torn apart by his own mares for offending Aphrodite.
The second, son of Minos and Pasiphaë, drowned in a jar of honey and was resurrected by Apollo.
Another became a sea deity, born in Boeotia.
But the Glaucus who concerns us here is the grandson of Bellerophon, king and commander of the Lycians—ally of the Trojans and enemy of the Achaeans. He was bound by an ancient bond of xenia, or hospitality, with Diomedes, king of Argos, who in my view was the greatest of the Greek warriors.
When the two met near the wild fig tree in the plain before Troy’s walls, they recognized one another, dismounted, and embraced. Then they exchanged their armor—a gesture of respect that reminds us war is not only savagery and cynicism. Somewhere, even on the battlefield, there survives a glimmer of chivalry, of human decency.
It is an episode that warms the heart—a rare moment of grace amid slaughter. Glaucus was later killed by Ajax the Greater, king of Salamis, but his nobility did not die with him.
Achilles, too, showed flashes of pity—for Priam, for Briseis perhaps—but never with the same quiet dignity. His mercy was fleeting, swallowed by fury.
Glaucus and Achilles never met in battle, yet one hardly needs imagination to know who would have prevailed. The son of Peleus was simply too powerful.
From “Greek Myths and Surrounding” (YCP, 2024) by Nino Salzone alias Cenides
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