ACHILLES

legendary Gk. hero; s. of Peleus and Thetis; his quarrel with Agamemnon forms the chief subject of Homer’s Iliad. A. is represented as the typical Gk. hero—handsome, brave, _ compa ionate. After slaying Hector, - and other Trojan chiefs, he himself fell by the hand of Paris, receiving an arrow in the heel. As a babe A. was dipped by his mother in the Styx and thus rendered invulnerable except in heel by which he was held. A.’s heel is used generally to denote one vulnerable spot.