As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.
Historical person
Achilles was the greatest Greek warrior in Homeric tradition and the central martial figure of the Iliad. The son of the mortal king Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis, he is renowned for his speed, courage and almost unmatched skill in battle.
His quarrel with Agamemnon causes him to withdraw from the fighting at Troy, allowing the Trojans to drive the Greeks back towards their ships. After Hector kills Patroclus, Achilles returns to battle in overwhelming grief and anger, kills Hector and dishonours his body before finally yielding it to the aged King Priam. Although Achilles knows that returning to battle will lead to his own early death, he chooses lasting glory over a long and obscure life. Later Greek tradition places Achilles’ own death before the fall of Troy, usually through a wound inflicted by Paris; the famous vulnerable heel belongs to later versions rather than to Homer’s Iliad.
In Peter Tonkin’s Beware of Greeks, in Aulis, a merchant’s son disabled during a robbery survives as an apprentice rhapsode until Odysseus recruits him for the search for Achilles. In Susan C Wilson’s Helen’s Judgement, the new life she imagines rapidly becomes another confinement as Trojans and Achaeans make her the explanation for a war created by royal ambition. Helen’s account alternates with that of Achilles, whose pursuit of glory binds him to the Greek expedition and to Patroclus even when conflict with Agamemnon removes him from battle. Achilles is treated fictionally in Peter Tonkin’s The Anger of Achilles, Euripides’ The Bacchae and Other Plays, Caroline Alexander’s The Iliad, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, and Euripides’ The Trojan Women and Other Plays.
Periods
Series
The Troy Trilogy is an epic retelling of the Trojan story that combines heroic fantasy, myth and large-scale adventure. Gemmell replaces distant legend with a crowded world of seafarers, traders, kings, raiders and rival families, while retaining the prophecies, passions and larger-than-life figures associated with Troy. Across Lord…
All books in this series
Penguin Classics: Ancient World brings together foundational works of literature, history, philosophy, drama and poetry from the earliest civilisations through classical Greece and Rome. The wider Penguin Classics series began in 1946 with E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey, reflecting its original aim of making important texts…
All books in this series
Oxford World’s Classics is a long-running series from Oxford University Press that publishes authoritative editions of major works of literature, philosophy, politics and religion from across the world. Designed for general readers as well as students, its volumes pair reliable texts or modern translations with scholarly introductions, explanatory…
All books in this series
The Trojan Murders recast Odysseus as an investigator working with a young disabled rhapsode who observes and records the cases. Set during the legendary mobilisation for Troy, the mysteries treat heroic tradition as evidence to be questioned: Achilles must be found, sacrilege at Aulis must be explained and…
All books in this series
The House of Atreus trilogy retells the dynastic violence surrounding Mycenae and the Trojan War through women traditionally judged by male-authored myth. Clytemnestra’s Bind begins with Agamemnon’s seizure of Clytemnestra and follows her attempt to protect her children inside a royal household shaped by inherited bloodshed. Helen’s Judgement…
All books in this series
Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
