Thetis dipped her infant son into the river Styx, hoping to make him immortal. This made Achilles largely invulnerable, but he could still be struck down in the heel, where Thetis had held him while dipping him in the river. Achilles is thus the ideal character with which to explore the
Iliad's central theme of mortality. Achilles' divine aspects make him all the more poignantly aware of his human condition.
The immediate cause of the Trojan War is Helen, the world's most beautiful woman. Christopher Marlowe describes her in his play Dr. Faustus as having the "face that launched a thousand ships." She leaves her husband Menelaus for the Trojan prince Paris after he visits their palace in Argos on the Peloponnese, a peninsula south of the Greek mainland. Menelaus's brother Agamemnon subsequently leads the chieftains of Greece on a rescue and pillage mission across the Aegean Sea to Troy, a city on the western coast of Asia Minor (in modern-day Turkey). What follows is the decade-long Trojan War, featuring men who will become heroes and leaders not only for the Greeks and Trojans, but for readers throughout the ages.
This is a free page. This page contains 183 words. This
article contains 7,145 words (approx. 24 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Iliad - Homer - 750 B.c. Access Pass.
