The ENTIRE Story of Achilles Explained

The ENTIRE story of Achilles, explained from the prophecy spoken before his birth to the ghost who changes his mind long after his death. This is the Achilles of Homer and the Greek poets, not the movie version — and not just the heel. We follow one life all the way through: a sea-goddess mother trying to cheat a prophecy, a boy hidden in a dress on Scyros, fifty ships sailing to a war he was never obliged to fight, and a choice no other hero is offered — a long quiet life, or a short one that never stops being remembered. Then the Iliad begins, and the first word of it is wrath. A stolen prize, a nine-day plague, a refusal that costs the Greeks the beach, an embassy he sends away, and the friend who borrows his armour and does not come back. After that, the killing. After the killing, twelve days of dragging a body behind a chariot, and an old king who kneels and kisses the hands that killed his son. We also separate what Homer actually wrote from what came later — because the famous heel, the dip in the Styx and the invulnerable skin are not in the Iliad at all. IN THIS VIDEO • Why Thetis dipped him in fire and ambrosia, not the river • The two fates Achilles was given, and why he picked the short one • What really started the quarrel with Agamemnon • Patroclus, the borrowed armour, and the three hands that killed him • The duel with Hector, the river that fought back, and the pyre • Priam's night in the enemy camp — the greatest scene in the Iliad • What Homer left out, and what the ghost says in the Odyssey So — was Achilles a hero, or the most dangerous man on the beach? Tell us in the comments. #Achilles #GreekMythology #Iliad #TrojanWar #AnimatedHistory CHAPTERS 0:00 The Angriest Man in Greece 1:26 The Prophecy That Made Him 2:48 The Heel Homer Never Wrote 4:03 Hidden on Scyros 5:12 The First Word Is Wrath 6:24 The Prize Taken 7:45 The Price of One Man 9:02 Two Fates, One Choice 10:15 Wearing Another Man's Armour 11:29 The Shield of Achilles 12:47 Hector at the Gate 14:07 Twelve Days of Dragging 15:24 What Homer Left Out 16:09 The Ghost Changes His Mind SOURCES & FURTHER READING • Homer, Iliad — Greek text and translation, Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University) • Homer, Odyssey — Greek text and translation, Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University) • Homer, Iliad, Loeb Classical Library, trans. A. T. Murray rev. William F. Wyatt (Harvard University Press) • Apollodorus, The Library and Epitome — Perseus Digital Library, trans. Sir James George Frazer • Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica — Perseus Digital Library • Pindar, Isthmian 8 and Nemean 3 — Perseus Digital Library • Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound — Perseus Digital Library; Aeschylus, Myrmidons (fragments), Loeb Classical Library, ed. Alan H. Sommerstein • Plato, Symposium — Perseus Digital Library This video is for educational and entertainment purposes. History is told here in a simplified, illustrated form: some details are condensed, and where historians disagree the narration says so. Sources are listed above — use them as a starting point to explore further.