Achilles.

From: João Simões Lopes Filho

I would include Akhiles (son of a sea-nymph). .

 

Joao SL

Rio 

Achilles does indeed seem to have some motifs associated with the 'child of the waters'.  He stands before the water and importunes his divine parent, and receives a 'garment' from her (in this case, a wonderful set of new armor).  And yes, he is presented as the greatest of the heros. Theseus gets a garment too. In the Odyssey, whenever Odysseus takes a bath, the goddess or her representative is almost always present, and Odysseus gets a garment.

 

What's interesting here is how Achilles is presented arms by first when he's hiding in women's dress and Odysseus tricks him into taking up arms, and then again from his mother at Troy.

 

One story has it that Achilles is dipped in the Styx, excepting for his heel. Robert Graves prefers to tell us the alternate version, where she 'burns away' all his mortal parts, but his father saves him from a fate his brothers had suffered.  Graves tells us that there were probably several Achilles, and that it might have been a title as much as a name: 'lip-less', i.e., the oracular skull of a dead hero.

 

Achilles is religiously conservative, a representative of the matriarchal religion. Compare this to Odysseus, the most 'patriarchal' of the heros at Troy (Penelope moved to HIS home). Agamemmnon and Menelaus are midway, they being kings because of their wives but otherwise every inch the warmongering patriarch.

 

Patroclus, and later Achilles, though, receive a funeral that echoes the kurgans of the Steppe. Achilles is a composite character.

 

Mark.