Description

Achilles’ most notable achievement during the Trojan War was the assassination of the Trojan prince Hector outside the gates of Troy. Although Achilles’ death does not appear in the Iliad, other sources agree that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, who shot him in the heel with an arrow. Later legends (beginning with the unfinished epic Achilles of Statis, written in the 1st century AD) state that Achilles was invulnerable all over his body except for a heel, because when Thetis’s mother put him in the river Styx as an infant , held by one of his heels. If we exclude these legends, the term “Achilles’ heel” has as a point of weakness, especially in someone or something with an otherwise strong constitution. The Achilles tendon got its name from these legends.