r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 9h ago
TIL that Achilles was not invulnerable during the Iliad, as he is described being wounded by another soldier. The River Styx story isn't mentioned until the 1st century AD, where it was mentioned in the unfinished epic poem the Achilleid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles#Birth_and_early_years•
u/UrLocalTroll 9h ago edited 9h ago
He was injured by the demi-god/Etheopian prince Memnon who was probably the second best fighter in the whole war behind Achilles.
Edit: Etheopian King, sorry
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u/Rs90 9h ago edited 8h ago
Sounds like a killer Final Fantasy boss you're absolutely gonna have to watch the cinematic for until you beat em.
PRINCE MEMNON!
Edit- KING MEMNON!
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u/Saint-just04 8h ago
Eh, i mean the whole ethos is stacked. Other than Achilles who was the undisputed best, you still have Diomedes who literally harmed not one, but two gods, forcing them to flee to Olympus… with the help of Athena, but that’s how all battles went except for… my personal number 2 pick: Ajax the greater. Who not only was one of the top dogs, but he was the only one who fought without the aid of the gods.
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u/BrandonLart 8h ago
Diomedes is the weirdest part of the Iliad by far. He feels like a self insert OC because he really doesn’t affect the plot much beyond his crazy rampage. Some historians have pointed to the final part of the Odyssey as one clearly not written by the same guy who wrote the rest, but for my money I’d bet that Diomedes is a later inclusion.
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u/Saint-just04 8h ago
Yeah, it’s really weird. So you’re telling me there’s a human around that can harm two gods (again, let’s ignore the help of Athena since gods helped warriors except Ajax in all battles) and he’s not even the strongest on the battlefield?
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u/zpierson79 6h ago
Diomedes is the hero of another story.
We don’t have the poems, but there was another entire epic cycle of similar age to the Trojan War cycle about his taking of Thebes. (Which he’d already done before the Trojan War.)
He’s the only person in the Illiad who has basically already accomplished a feat of similar renown to the sack of Troy.
When he says he’ll stay and take the city by himself if necessary, he’s taken at his word. He’d done it before.
His father was Athena’s favorite of the previous generation, up until he did something extremely upsetting as he and his mortal enemy were both dying. (Athena was about to raise him as an immortal, but instead she basically said “F that, I’ll help his son instead.”)
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u/EDRadDoc 4h ago
Basically all the heroes of the Iliad had their own Odyssey-equivalent epic, but probably lost (as far as I can tell) because they weren’t as well written/told as Homer’s poems.
Everyone knew the basic stories, but Homer’s were considered something extra.
I wish we had Menelaus’, Diomedes, and other post Troy stories intact. Agamemnon’s story is well told in the Orestes-based epics.
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u/ItIsVerilySo 3h ago
What I'm hearing is that Homer basically wrote the OG Avengers.
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u/Gremlin303 2h ago
Yeah superhero comics are the modern day successor of the Greek myths. They are constantly having crossovers.
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u/Al_Fa_Aurel 1h ago
There's several team-up stories, including the (two?) sieges of Thebes, and the Quest for the golden Fleece. The latter includes Heracles, who, however, is written out roughly 15 minutes into the adventure, going on a side quest.
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u/EmpPaulpatine 7h ago
One thing is that the chapter where Diomedes and Odysseus go on the stealth mission and steal the horses was likely written afterwards. The chapters around it fit right together, and there’s some references to objects in that chapter that aren’t made anywhere else.
Another thing is that a lot of Diomedes poems such as the Epigoni are lost. They presumably would flesh out Diomedes character more, but barring some miracle we likely won’t ever get anything beyond the descriptions we already have.•
u/RickThiCisbih 7h ago
Really? I thought the opposite: the Illiad feels incomplete without Diomedes. Yeah, his martial feats are kind of ridiculous (if you ignore the fact that Athena is doing all the work), but he exemplifies a necessary role in the Illiad: the virtue of humility.
Greek myths are all about how hubris is bad and how defying fate only hastens its arrival. Even an intelligent hero like Odysseus gets arrogant, thinking his cunning makes him above the gods and fate itself, leading to his suffering in the Odyssey.
Diomedes is kind of the “light” side to Odysseus’s “dark” side. He’s also Athena’s favorite, but his wisdom manifests in his steady decision making. He’s one of the few greek heroes who actually acquiesces to fate and follows the arrangement of the gods.
To our modern sensibilities shaped by democracy and whatnot, he’s not as respected because he’s basically the bootlicker of the gods and fate to us. But to the ancient Greeks, he’s the most virtuous hero of them all, because their morals were shaped by a tradition of respecting authority.
Diomedes is kind of like the ancient Greek version of Aragorn. Aragorn’s version of accepting fate is accepting that his role isn’t to carry the ring but instead claim the crown to lead the armies of men. Boromir suffers from the hubris of thinking he can protect his people with the ring’s power and thus succumbs to its corruption. It’s not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.
I’m personally not a huge fan of characters that exemplify the virtues of submitting to authority (whose ass do you think Homer was kissing?), but Diomedes is the perfect window into the morals of the Greeks at the time. The negative role models stand out because there’s a positive role model to contrast with.
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u/BrandonLart 4h ago
I get all that, but for all that Diomedes represents I felt like he actually affected the story very little.
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u/Naronu 2h ago
He’s a guest character, who all the readers/listeners would know about from the now lost Theban cycle. He’s already fought and won one of the greatest wars in Greek mythology coming into the Trojan War.
When he pops off, it’s a callback to something else we’ll sadly never get to read.
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u/Tuor-son-of-Huor- 3h ago
I've read two things that speak to this. The first is that he serves as a foil to Achilles, they are two of the greatest champions of Greek literature but one is driven by ego and the other humility and divinely sanctioned fury.
The other is that the other stories referring to Diomedes simply didn't survive the ages, and so it seems like that this character has almost as many aristeia as the iconic Achilles for no reason instead of what I imagine is meant to be the ancient equivalent of avengers endgame.
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u/tamsui_tosspot 4h ago
Is he the one who eventually started his duels with "First, lemme get this straight, you're not a god, are you?"
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u/Tuor-son-of-Huor- 3h ago
undisputed best
I dispute! Or rather the wisest of the troyans does.
"keep the son of Tydeus from falling on the goodly city of Ilius; for he fights with fury and fills men's souls with terror. I hold him mightiest of them all; for we did not fear even their great champion Achilles, son of a goddess though he be, as we do this man: his rage is beyond all bounds, and there is none who can vie with him in prowess.
He also has much more impressive showings defeating the literal god of war in combat which outside of Hercules is unheard of.
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u/No-Nail-5686 8h ago
Aethiopia (Greek name for areas south of egypt near the upper nile) or Ethiopia (current east african nation).
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u/DoeCommaJohn 7h ago
It's worth noting that Ethiopia does not necessarily mean what we currently think of Ethiopia, and just meant pretty much everything south of Egypt.
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u/BoxSea4289 7h ago
Second best fighter???? Over Diomedes? Ajax? Odysseus?
Come fucking on bro.
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u/EDRadDoc 4h ago
Diomedes was the second greatest fighter in Agamemnon’s coalition — in Homer’s telling of the story.
But in the other epic cycles Trojan allies like Panthelesia — the Amazon Queen — and Memnon were portrayed as the greatest Trojan allied warriors. Basically Hector was the Trojan boss, Panthelesia was the Amazon boss, and Memnon was the Ethiopian boss.
And when Memnon and Achilles fought, Zeus commanded the gods to not interfere — so it would have changed Diomedes prowess, probably.
Memnon and Achilles literally both have Hephaistos-built armor. They were meant to be as close to equal as possible.
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u/OsitoPandito 7h ago
Yeah I always thought Ajax was the second best fighter
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u/EDRadDoc 6h ago
In the Aethiopis, Memnon was literally the final boss before the fall of Troy. He killed Achilles’ charioteer Antilochus — intended to be a parallel with Patrocles’ death before Hector.
His was the last army to arrive, he was described in the same terms as Achilles intentionally, and he wounded Achilles in their one on one combat.
His mother was Eos the goddess of the dawn — all those reference to “rosy fingered dawn” in the Iliad are preparing for the death of her own son.
They both ended up immortal with cults, definitely intended to be as close to equals as any.
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u/BoxSea4289 5h ago
Diomedes also ended up immortal with cults; hes basically the best fighter in the Iliad since Achilles does very little fighting brooding and everything. If Diomedes isn’t 2nd best fighter, hes #1. Blessed by Athena and wounded Ares.
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u/BrandonLart 8h ago
Memnon is genuinely so cool I’ve dreamed of someone trying to recreate or retell his epic.
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u/Truefiction224 5h ago
I always saw Hector as number two forgot about this character awesome comment
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u/Mule_Wagon_777 9h ago
There were nine epics of the Trojan War, only two of which survived, though there are quotes and synopses.
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u/syncsynchalt 9h ago
Yeah. IIRC don’t even have the one that describes the Trojan horse, just references in the other two.
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u/Western-Network-9303 9h ago
Yeah it’s because of Virgil’s notes on the subject that we even know for a fact that it happened in one of the books and isn’t just referenced.
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u/Saint-just04 8h ago
There’s zero chance Virgil had access to source material. Actually the source material for those books were pretty much gone by the time Sophocles was around.
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u/BrandonLart 8h ago
The source material?
You mean the Greek storytellers who created the stories as oral traditions?
Yeah they were dead dead
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u/KlingoftheCastle 4h ago
The source material was memory. There was no written copy of the story for centuries. There’s literally no way to know if the story we know is the same story Homer told (if he was even a single person)
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u/Potential-Diver-3409 4h ago
You think there were books of epic poems lol you might be missing the concept here
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u/guitar_vigilante 9h ago
Achilles isn't even killed in the Illiad either. The poem ends with Hector's funeral after Priam gets him from Achilles.
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u/Saint-just04 8h ago
And it only starts in the 10th (or was it 9th?) year of the war. It’s so much smaller in scope than i expected.
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u/BelowDeck 6h ago
I remember seeing Troy in the theater after reading the Iliad for school and just being aghast that they portrayed the whole war from start to finish, and had it take like two weeks.
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u/BrandonLart 8h ago
I read the Illiad fully expecting him to die at the end. Every page I turned I grew more confused until the story just… ended
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u/SirBananaOrngeCumber 9h ago
You mean there’s a lost Epic dedicated to describing the Greeks horsing around‽‽
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u/Vedertesu 1h ago
IIRC the horse isn't even mentioned in the other two, we know about it from fragments of the original text surviving and other texts mentioning it.
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u/usuallysortadrunk 9h ago
Mam, i knew the part about the goddess dipping him by the ankle in a river as an infant was bullshit!
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u/RodrigoMokepon 9h ago
In fact, as far as I know, the heel was considered a vulnerable spot in ancient Greece. Achilles dies from a poisoned arrow to the heel, Zeus is weakened when the bones from his ankles are stolen, and Hercules was nearly defeated by the Hydra when a crab bit his ankle (and later became the constellation Cancer).
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u/Chicago1871 8h ago
Makes sense. Its still a vulnerable spot for any athlete/warrior
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u/Rit91 4h ago
Yeah really bad when you don't have antibiotics either. Ankle is close to the ground with all sorts of bacteria that can get into a cut ankle, especially since the first thing you would do if your ankle is pierced is fall down.
Kind of like how a stake to the heart would kill anyone, not just vampires.
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u/Prince_Solar 3h ago
To be fair, I'd be pretty weakened if someone stole the bones from my ankles. At the very least I'd be a bit upset!
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u/kwonza 9h ago
I mean motherfucker still had a magic shield and armour made by god of the forge. Although literal goddess of war helping him in his fight against Hector. So he wasn’t invisible just had odds massive stacked in his favour
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u/nanakapow 9h ago
You strike me as someone who'd enjoy the Mahabharata
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u/Creticus 7h ago
Eyes the astras flying around.
Eyes the 12 survivors out of a few million participants.
Sounds about right?
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u/thegoatmenace 8h ago
In the original text it’s more that his armor is invulnerable, not his body. Much is made about how special his armor is. The Trojans sometimes run in terror after seeing it. Patroclus steals it for his fatal duel with Hector. After Achilles dies, there’s a mini civil war between the Greeks over who gets to keep the armor.
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u/ButtonPrince 7h ago edited 4h ago
Common misconception. Patroclus is given the armor by Achilles. Book 16: "I said I would not relent until battle and the cry of war had reached my own ships; nevertheless, now gird my armor around your shoulders, and lead the Myrmidons to battle"
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u/Maitreya72 6h ago
Ajax kills himself after losing the contest for the armor to Odysseus
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u/Retzal 2h ago
Not exactly. Ajax was tricked by the gods to fall into a mad rage after being denied Achilles armor in favour of Odysseus (because he was the only one who didn't pray to the gods before battle) and murdered a flock of sheep, mkstaking them for the Greek commanders who gave the armor to Odysseus, IIRC. When he came back to his senses and saw that he had sullied his blade with the blood of the sheeps he choose to off himself rather than live with that shame.
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u/HylianSoul 8h ago edited 8h ago
Wait until you hear about Bophades.
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u/JingoKizingo 8h ago
Who's Bophades?
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u/RemyMemes 8h ago
Bophades NUTS
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u/Heavy_Weapons_Guy_ 7h ago
Really, what did he do?
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u/No-Detective-2542 7h ago edited 4h ago
Hung out, famous for sacking. Fun fact: Bophades is the Roman name, in the original Greek, he's called Testicles.
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u/Cottons_Bold_move 7h ago
Dammit I really want a Game of Thrones-style HBO show of the Iliad. It's a 10-yr long war and there is plenty of drama it would be perfect. At the very least a mini-series
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u/IllithidWithAMonocle 3h ago
The Iliad is only like 2 weeks of the war: and it has none of the famous stuff people associate with the Trojan war. No death of Achilles, no Trojan horse, etc.
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u/rintzscar 2h ago
I kinda think the death of Hector is one of the most famous things people associate with the Trojan War...
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u/lucky-struck 2h ago
Troy: Fall of a City is a decent attempt at this. They make some creative choices, and its much more focused on the drama than the fighting, but overall its quite well done
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u/OlyScott 9h ago
Maybe someone got him in the heel. I admit that that's a hard spot to attack. It's weird that he's not wearing shoes in the picture.
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u/pants_of_antiquity 8h ago
The Trojans should have raised an army of trained crabs.
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u/FleshPrinnce 9h ago
And it's actually Diomedes who injures not one, but two Olympians, cutting Aphrodite and disembowelling Ares (*with the help of Athena, but he's hardly unique in that)
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u/TheRaineCorporation 5h ago
Ah great, now it'll be harder to hand out the "Hasn't Read The Iliad" award to Reddit larpers who'll have seen this post lol
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u/stoneswe12 8h ago
His death isn't even in the Iliad either. The poem ends with Hector's funeral. Everything about the heel and the river is basically ancient fan fiction that became more famous than the original.
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u/JefftheBaptist 5h ago
Fanfiction isn't the right term. The Illiad and Odyssey are the only surviving works within the larger Epic Cycle. Achilles death is in the Aethiopis.
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u/SpicyVioletx 5h ago edited 5h ago
Hold my ambrosia! I’m gonna reboot the whole franchise with a better origin story
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u/AerieAggravating3999 8h ago
wait so the whole "achilles heel" thing is basically fanfiction that caught on
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u/Unusual-Layer-8965 5h ago
No, Achilles was not invincible. He had a heel.
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u/Then_Idea_9813 4h ago
“We all have heels, in a sense.”
“…woah”
Insert picture of Ashton Kutcher and Sean William Scott from “dude where’s my car”
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u/AceBean27 2h ago
Like our legends today, like Superman, he was expanded upon and added to over the years. And, much like our Superman myth, he got a lot more powerful over how he started out.
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u/New_Imagination2962 6m ago
The heel detail is so culturally dominant that the original version now sounds like the retcon. Mythology really does reward the version with the best branding, not necessarily the earliest source.
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u/The_Truthkeeper 9h ago
Today you learned that most Greek myths are just centuries of fanfiction stacked on top of each other.