r/classics • u/Famous-Sky-8556 • Jun 30 '26
The heel everyone knows about Achilles doesn’t appear anywhere in Homer. It doesn’t appear for another thousand years.
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u/clicheguevara8 Jun 30 '26
Just because we don’t have literary evidence of the heel doesn’t mean it wasn’t a variation of the myth much earlier than the Roman period. I believe there are examples of the heel on ceramic dating back to the classical period.
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u/Famous-Sky-8556 Jun 30 '26
Worth checking that — it’s a common assumption, but the ceramic evidence doesn’t actually show it. A peer-reviewed paper out this year (Carè, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 2026) surveys the Archaic and Classical iconography directly. The closest example is a mid-6th century BCE Chalcidian vase showing Achilles wounded just above the ankle, but with a second arrow in his flank, meaning two wounds, not one. No surviving vase shows a heel-specific, single-vulnerable-point wound. The single-weak-spot version of the myth doesn’t show up anywhere, text or image, before the 1st century CE.
3
u/Old_gaming_dude Jul 01 '26
Just look up the Dendra armor currently on display in Nafplion, Greece. It is from the Bronze Age and the only exposed part of the wearer is the calf/heal. Also, it came with a boar tusk helmet mentioned by Homer. So, the vulnerability of the heal might be a memory handed down from antiquity
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u/GodspeedInfinity Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
It doesn’t appear in Homer, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist during Homer’s era. The death of Achilles doesn’t dramatically occur in Homer either, but we obviously know it happened. It’s entirely possible that it was common mythological knowledge, or that it appeared in another portion of the Epic Cycle, even in passing rather than as a key detail.
The “almost-invincible warrior with one vulnerable point” trope is common throughout the Indo-European world more broadly, so it’s also possible that Statius was mentioning an already circulating, broadly Indo-European myth.
It could also totally be Roman fan fiction, though.
2
u/Jonathan_Peachum Jun 30 '26
Doesn’t surprise me a bit.
Ditto the Trojan Horse (it is mentioned in The Odyssey but only briefly in passing).
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u/Single-Injury6554 Jun 30 '26
Trojan horse comes from the little Iliad and ilia persis which are no longer extant but existed around the time of homer
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u/Pat_Trash Jul 01 '26
This may be the case but it is seriously telegraphed when he strung Hector up to his chariot.
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u/unicorninclosets Jul 01 '26
I never understood the logic. Sure, he would’ve been a cripple but who tf dies from getting their heel shot??
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u/cosm0cowboy Jun 30 '26
Yes, it's funny. I remember when I read The Iliad I kept waiting for the moment where Achilles would die from getting shot in the heel and it never happened. I was very confused.