How did the Achilles tendon get its name?
Achilles was the son of the human Peleus and the Nereid (sea goddess) Thetis. He was the mightiest of the Greeks who fought in the Trojan War, and was the hero of Homer’s Iliad.
Thetis attempted unsuccessfully to make Achilles immortal. She held the young Achilles by the heel and dipped him in the river Styx; everything the sacred waters touched became invulnerable, but the heel remained dry and therefore unprotected.
When Achilles was a boy, it was prophesized that the city of Troy could not be taken without his help. Thetis knew that if her son went to Troy, he would die an early death, so she sent him to the court of Lycomedes disguised as a young girl. Achilles’ disguise was finally recognized by Odysseus, who placed arms and armor amidst a display of women’s finery and seized upon Achilles when he was the only “maiden” to be fascinated by the swords and shields.
Then Achilles, along with his close friend Patroclus, accompanied Odysseus to Troy. At Troy, Achilles distinguished himself as an undefeatable warrior. Among other exploits, he captured the town of Lyrnessos, where he took the woman Briseis as a war-prize. Later Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, was forced by an oracle of Apollo to give up his own war-prize, the woman Chryseis. He then took Briseis away from Achilles as compensation for his loss. This action sparked the central plot of the Iliad, for Achilles became enraged and refused to fight for the Greeks any further. The war went badly, and the Greeks offered handsome reparations to their greatest warrior. Achilles still refused to fight, but he agreed to allow his friend Patroclus to fight in his place wearing his armor. The next day Patroclus was killed and stripped of the armor by the Trojan hero Hector, who mistook him for Achilles.
Achilles was overwhelmed both with grief for his friend and rage at Hector. His mother obtained magnificent new armor for him, and he returned to the fighting and killed Hector. He desecrated the body, dragging it behind his chariot before the walls of Troy and refused to allow it to receive funeral rites. When Priam, the king of Troy and Hector’s father, came secretly into the Greek camp to plead for the body Achilles finally relented. In one of the most moving scenes of the Iliad, he received Priam graciously and allowed him to retrieve the body.
After the death of Hector, Achilles’ continued fighting heroically, killing many of the Trojans and their allies. Finally Priam’s son Paris, aided by the God Apollo, wounded Achilles in his only vulnerable spot (the heel) with an arrow and Achilles soon died of the wound.
Now the heel tendon is named for the only mortal spot on the body of the most famous Greek hero of the Trojan War, and the term “Achilles Heel” is used to identify the “weak spot” in individuals, as well as those of organizations or structures.
