Achilles' heel

The classical myth

Although the death of Achilles was predicted by Hector in Homer's Iliad, it does not actually occur in the Iliad, but was described in later Greek and Roman poetry and drama concerning events after the Iliad, later in the Trojan War. In the myths surrounding the war, Achilles was said to have died from a wound to his heel, ankle, or torso, which was the result of an arrow—possibly poisoned—shot by Paris. The Iliad may have purposefully suppressed the myth to emphasise Achilles' human mortality and the stark chasm between gods and heroes.

Some later Hellenistic-era myths record Thetis trying to make her son immortal by anointing him with ambrosia and burning away his mortality in the hearth fire, but Peleus, his father, discovered the treatment and was alarmed to see Thetis holding the baby in the flames, which disrupted the ritual and thus made Thetis leave the treatment incomplete, rendering their son as vulnerable as Sigurd. According to a myth arising later, his mother had dipped the infant Achilles in the river Styx, holding onto him by his heel, and he became invulnerable where the waters touched him –that is, everywhere except the areas of his heel that were covered by her thumb and forefinger. According to recent research, the sources mentioning the myth refers to the talus (the Greek astragalos) as vulnerable point.