IMMORTAL ACHILLES

Abstract

During the early archaic period, there was considerable interest in the heroic past and the acts of mythical ancestors, especially as embodied in epic. In particular, there are a number of archaic myths dealing with attempts to evade death and to gain immortality, mostly unsuccessful. All Greek heroes are descended from gods: having at least one god (or goddess) somewhere in the family tree is a prerequisite for achieving anything worthy of note. And in a few heroes, this sliver of divinity may be turned into full-blown immortality. It is a recurring theme in Greek myth, therefore, that there is a narrow window of possibility for a hero to escape his mortal status and not have to die. Behind such myths lies the fiction that, in a past age, immortality had been attainable; the heroes of the past might not have been immortalized often, but the chance had been there. This was contrasted with the present duller age, in which immortality was out of reach.