Achilles

alternative Achilleus · alternative Akhilles · alternative Akhilleus

1. Greekhuman sciencesA mythical semidivine hero, the son of Peleus by the nereid Thetis, and prince of the Myrmidons, who features in the Iliad as a central character and the foremost warrior of the Achaean (Greek) camp.

   Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel.

   c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]

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   Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing!

   1715, Homer, chapter 1, in Alexander Pope, transl., The Iliad of Homer, volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC

   If once the lamentation is heard, it will ring out again, of the short-lived Achilles, of the leaf-like change and vicissitude of the human race, of the decay of the heroic age.

   1910, Friedrich Nietzsche, chapter 3, in William A. Haussmann, transl., edited by Oscar Levy, The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism (The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche; 1), Edinburgh; London: T. N. Foulis, page 36

   In the last third of the Iliad, Achilles’ beloved companion, Patroklos, and his bitter enemy, Hektor, die wearing Achilles’ armor, their deaths prefiguring Achilles’ own.

   2012, Richard Holway, Becoming Achilles: Child-Sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the Iliad and Beyond, Rowman & Littlefield (Lexington Books), page 153

2. rareA male given name from Ancient Greek.
3. astronomyThe Greek camp Trojan asteroid 588 Achilles.