Which heel achilles shot in

When Achilles was a baby, his mother Thetis stuck him in a special flame to make him invulnerable. It was karma — he deserved to die, considering all the pain and suffering that he had caused. I also remember that I was confused by the whole invulnerability aspect of the story.

In a different part of the legend, his mother Thetis helps him obtain a special armor to protect his body. If nearly all of his body was already invulnerable, why would he need such a special armor? But then again, these were Greek gods and goddesses and they may have had different ways of approaching problems.

Perhaps the special armor was extra insurance, just like people whose personal auto insurance covers rental cars but they still get suckered into buying additional rental car insurance at the airport. Later on, I found out the Schwab had combined multiple Achilles legends. It was long after Homer that the heel story became an integral part of the Achilles legend. In one version, Thetis did not place Achilles in a flame but instead dipped him in the magical River Styx.

She held him by the heel of his foot, which is why he remained vulnerable in that one area. I am not sure that I would have held my son by the heel of all places, while dipping him into a magical river. Then again, I am not a Greek god. It also begs the question why Thetis did not dip him in a second time to make sure that the previously dry heel now also became invulnerable.

The idea that even strong, arrogant entities remain vulnerable is very comforting. Especially when describing cancer, the metaphor seems very apt. One can easily envision a growing tumor as an Achilles — aggressive and apparently invincible. The problem with using this metaphor is that Achilles only had one single vulnerable heel.

Most researchers who work with cancer cells know that there are many different mechanisms by which cancer growth can be slowed down. There is no single vulnerable pathway that can stop all cancer progression.

Therefore, when researchers use this expression, they probably just like to convey the image of the powerful Achilles being brought to his knees by a single arrow. In fact, the athlete will sometimes swear that someone hit them on the back of the leg or stepped on the back of their heel even though no contact truly occurred. After injury, the athlete will report being unable to bear weight on the affected side. Bruising and swelling can occur.

A physician can often palpate and feel the defect in the tendon to confirm the diagnosis. Also on examination, when the calf is squeezed the foot will go down or plantarflex in a normal foot but may not move at all if the tendon is ruptured.

MRI and ultrasound have both been used to confirm the diagnosis. The epic poem which covered this part of the war the Cypria does not survive, so its events are known in much less detail. In art, a popular scene was that of Achilles playing a board game with the hero Ajax. The image suggests that the Greek heroes spent many long hours whiling away the time during the siege of Troy. Achilles is initially angry because the leader of the Greek forces, King Agamemnon, takes a captive woman named Briseis from him.

By taking away the prize of honour that has been allocated to Achilles in recognition of his fighting prowess, Agamemnon dishonours him. Achilles withdraws from battle and refuses to fight. When the Trojans make gains in the battle, Agamemnon agrees to send an embassy to Achilles to try to persuade him to re-join the fighting by offering him a wealth of gifts. Patroclus is killed in the bloody fighting by the Trojan prince Hector, who mistakes him for Achilles, and the real Achilles is utterly distraught.

The two sides meet in battle and Hector waits outside the city gates, ready to fight Achilles. Achilles, with his lust for revenge still not satisfied, deliberately mistreats the body of Hector, tying him to his chariot and dragging him behind in the dirt as he drives back to the Greek camp.

Their emotional encounter is powerfully depicted on this silver cup, which shows Priam coming to Achilles and kissing his hands. I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before — I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son. The two men weep together and share a meal. After the death of Hector, the Trojans, with their best fighter dead, call on their allies to help them defeat the Greeks.

The Ethiopian King Memnon brings his army to support the Trojans, but is killed by Achilles in battle. Achilles also faces the Amazons — the tribe of female warriors — and fights their leader, Queen Penthesilea. At the moment Achilles kills her with his spear, their eyes meet and he falls in love with her, too late. Achilles is killed by an arrow, shot by the Trojan prince Paris. In most versions of the story, the god Apollo is said to have guided the arrow into his vulnerable spot, his heel.

In one version of the myth Achilles is scaling the walls of Troy and about to sack the city when he is shot. In other accounts he is marrying the Trojan princess Polyxena and supposedly negotiating an end to the war when Paris fires the shot that kills him. After his death, Achilles is cremated, and his ashes are mixed with those of his dear friend Patroclus.

The Odyssey describes a huge tomb of Achilles on the beach at Troy, and Odysseus meets Achilles during his visit to the underworld, among a group of dead heroes. For the ancient Greeks he was an archetypal hero who embodied the human condition. Despite his greatness he was still mortal and fated to die. A hero cult for Achilles developed in several areas across Greece where he was venerated and worshipped like a god.

For the Romans, Achilles was on the one hand a model of military prowess but also, for poets such as Horace and Catullus, an archetype of brutality. By the medieval period, Achilles provided a model of how not to behave.

Changes to the narrative in the markedly pro-Trojan versions of the myth that were dominant at this time made Achilles into a cowardly scoundrel who destroyed himself through his lustful passions. In the Renaissance, when there was a renewal of interest in the classical world accompanying the reintroduction of Greek texts into western Europe, Achilles regained interest as a more complex character.

By the early 19th century, the period of Romanticism, he was the perfect hero, embodying a life given over to emotion, and beauty doomed to ruin. A neoclassical sculpture of the period, The Wounded Achilles , shows the perfection of his body even in his dying moments. Achilles has also served as a heroic justification for the sacrifice of soldiers as well as a symbol of the destruction and brutality of war.