Do we like them?

Do we like Achilles?

A character from The Iliad (c. 8th century BC)

Our score: 4 out of 10. A matchless fighter with real loyalty and moments of mercy, but his pride and rage cost a lot of people dearly. We'd back him in a battle, though not on a group project.

Achilles is the son of the sea nymph Thetis and Peleus, king of the Myrmidons. He is the strongest warrior in the Greek army that besieges Troy. The Iliad is set in the ninth year of the war and covers only a few weeks of it. It begins with a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, the Greek commander.

Achilles is brave, quick and fiercely proud. He is also prone to rage and grief, and he is devoted to his mother and his closest companion. Insulted by Agamemnon, he withdraws from the fighting and lets the Greeks struggle without him. That choice is the poem's central problem, and it is why he scores in the middle: he is magnificent but self-absorbed.

When his dearest friend is killed in the fighting, his anger turns into a killing fury aimed at Troy's champion, Hector. Later, though, he shows mercy and shared grief when Hector's father comes to him. Later tradition, not Homer, gives him his famous weak heel and a death by Paris's arrow.