in fabulous history, one of the greatest heroes of ancient Greece, was the son of Peleus and Thetis. He was a native of Phthia, in Thessaly; and, according to the poets, his mother fed him by day with ambrosia, and by night covered him with celestial fire. She dipped him also in the waters of the river Styx, by which his whole body became invulnerable, except that part of his heel by which she held him; and afterwards intrusted him to the care of the centaur Chiron, who, to give him the strength necessary for martial toil, fed him with honey, and the marrow of lions and wild boars, &c. To prevent his going to the siege of Troy, she disguised him in female apparel, and hid him among the maidens at the court of king Lycomedes; but Ulysses discovering him, persuaded him to follow the Greeks. Achilles distinguished himself by a number of heroic actions at the siege. Being disguised, however, with Agamemnon for the loss of Briseis, he retired from the camp. But returning to avenge the death of his friend Patroclus, he slew Hector, fastened his corpse to his chariot, and dragged it round the walls of Troy. At last Paris, the brother of Hector, wounded him in the heel with an arrow, while he was in the temple treating about his marriage with Philoxena, daughter to king Priam. Of this wound he died, and was interred on the promontory of Sigeum; and after Troy was taken, the Greeks sacrificed Philoxena on his tomb. It is said, that Alexander, seeing this tomb, honoured it by placing a crown upon it; at the same time crying out, that "Achilles was happy in having, during his life, such a friend as Patroclus; and, after his death, a poet..." ACHILLES "poet like Homer." Achilles is supposed to have died 1183 years before the Christian era.