Italian sculptor Filippo Albaccini's marble sculpture The Wounded Achilles.
The Achilles heel, which means "fatal weakness, fatal wound", is probably the most familiar Greek mythological allusion Chinese. Achilles was a warrior of the Allied Greeks in the Trojan War. He was quick and warlike, compassionate, and avenged his friend Patrocross at any cost, but eventually died under the arrows of prince Troy. For thousands of years, the story of Achilles blossomed under the brushes of artists and had a profound impact on the literature of later generations. The main reason why he is famous is his heel (heel).
Homer's Iliad is a western literary masterpiece about the Trojan War, detailing the story of Achilles, mentioning the wrath of Achilles, but not his death. In the Iliad, Achilles is injured only in the elbow.
It wasn't until the 1st century AD that the Achilles heel was actually mentioned. The Roman poet Statius told a story in the Achilles Chronicles. Achilles was the child of Thetis, the goddess of the sea, and the mortal hero Pereus. Prophecy was that Achilles would die young. To prevent this from happening, his mother Thetis took the young him to the Styx, grabbed his heels and immersed him in the Styx so that his body would be invulnerable. But the heel that did not touch the styx became the only fatal point on him.
In English, the use of the term "Achilles' heel" dates back more than 300 years. In the 17th century, the poet John Denham, famous for his poem "Cooper's Hillside," wrote this verse: "Then leave, he said, the invulnerable keel, and we will find them weak, like the Achilles heel." ”
The Achilles heel is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and many artists have created around this theme. In 2020, the British Museum hosted an exhibition entitled Troy: Myth and Reality, and one of the highlights was the marble sculpture Wounded Achilles, completed by the Italian sculptor Filippo Albaccini in 1825. The sculpture is usually placed at the Chadsworth Estate in England and presents the image of Achilles after his injury. He was half-lying on the ground, holding the ground with one hand and grasping the arrow that hit his right heel with the other. He was tall and handsome, but he seemed vulnerable. In the past, the sculptures showed the heroism and agility of Greek heroes, but this sculpture reflected the helplessness and vulnerability of heroes.
The palace of Empress Elizabeth of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (i.e. "Princess Sissi") also has a sculpture with the theme of Achilles' Heel. In 1889, Queen Elizabeth was heartbroken to lose her only son, Rudolf, in the Mayerlin Incident. She ordered the construction of the Achilles Palace on the Greek island of Corfu. The palace is themed after Achilles, and in addition to the name of the palace, there are many elements related to the hero. In the center of the palace garden is the sculpture "The Dying Achilles". Achilles sat reclining on the ground, clutching the arrow that had hit him in one hand, looking at the sky as if he were asking his mother for help. The sculpture was written by the German sculptor Ernst Hett.
Queen Elizabeth loved the palace so much that it was used as a refuge for healing. Perhaps, the dying Achilles, like her son Rudolf, was as at the mercy of fate as Achilles, and as a mother, he was as powerless as Thetis, the goddess of the sea.
Above: The sculpture "The Dying Achilles" in the palace of "Princess Sissi". Below: Rubens' Wrath of Achilles.
The Bunigen Museum rotterdam and the Prado National Museum in the Netherlands have held an exhibition, Peter Paul Rubens: The Life of Achilles, which showcases Achilles-themed sketches, oil paintings and tapestry paintings by Rubens. Rubens designed a total of 4 series of tapestry paintings in his lifetime, one of which is about Achilles. He depicted the life of Achilles with 8 paintings and created two sets of oil paintings of different styles for this purpose.
Rubens saw the series of tapestry paintings as a whole, the first of which depicted Thetis immersing Achilles in the Styx. Rubens drew three dogs in a sketch of a tapestry painting, suggesting that this was the underworld. A pair of human sculptures on the marble columns on the left and right sides of the painting are particularly conspicuous, as if they were alive. The sculptural figure's eyes are sparkling with sympathy and seem to be watching the opening of this tragedy. Interestingly, the final tapestry painting removed the pair of sculptures and replaced them with bunches of flowers and melons, presumably to reflect prosperity and exuberant vitality.
The subject of the second tapestry painting is Achilles' education of the half-Horseman Chiron. Chiron was Achilles' great-grandfather, and in the painting he orthodoxally taught Achilles to ride horses. Achilles also received an education in music, hunting, and poetry from his great-grandfather.
The third tapestry painting depicts the discovery of Achilles among the many daughters of Luc Des. Fearing that he would be drafted into the Trojan War, his mother hid him in the House of Luc Medes and lived with his 50 daughters. As a result, Odysseus devised a plan to identify Achilles. Under Rubens' brush, when the alarm sounded, the other girls were stunned, but Achilles looked calm, grabbed his helmet and put it on his head.
In this tapestry painting, Rubens selects other themes related to Achilles: The Wrath of Achilles, The Return of Briceis to Achilles, Thetis receiving Achilles' weapons from Vulcans, the Death of Hector and the Death of Achilles.
Rubens' work is both faithful to the original and a product of his intuition. These works present the heroic side of Achilles' personality, as well as the human side of others. Rubens wrote more than 1,400 works in his lifetime, compared to the small number of works he wrote about Achilles, but he played an important role in the circulation of Achilles stories. Achilles' life shone brightly under Rubens' brush, and Rubens was recorded in history because of these creations, and the fates of the two were intertwined, so that future generations remembered both Rubens and Achilles.
At the beginning of the 12th century, the German-language writer Herbert van Fritzlas wrote the German version of the Song of Troy. In this literary work containing 18458 lines of poetry, Achilles is the protagonist, and Fritzra is full of love for him. In Fritzra's pen, Achilles was not only invincible, but also passionate. For the first time, his work tells the story of Achilles in German. Later generations speculate that the work was directly based on the Trojan Legend of the French poet Benois de Saint-Mure in 1160, because at that time Homer's Iliad was only in Greek and had not yet been translated into Latin and circulated in Europe. However, Fritzla's Song of Troy was not well known in Germany, and the Trojan War by the German poet Herbert Conrad von Würzburg at the end of the 13th century became more famous.
The famous Medieval German narrative poem "The Song of the Nibelungen" has been hailed as the "German Bible", and its creation was inspired by the story of Achilles. People also refer to this epic as the German Iliad. Although the plots of The Song of the Nibelungen and the Iliad are not identical, there are many similarities, such as the plot in which the two works end with the complete destruction of one side, in the Iliad in which the Greeks destroy Troy, and in the Song of the Nibelungen, none of the Burgundians survive; In terms of character settings, there are also similarities between the Greek hero Odysseus and the king's minister Hagen, Achilles and the dragon slayer Siegfried, the ancient Greek Mycenaean king Agamemnon and the Burgundy king Gontel.
Rubens tapestry paintings, from left to right, are "Achilles Found in the Daughters of Luc Mes", "The Death of Achilles", "The Death of Hector".
To prevent Achilles from dying young, his mother Thetis took him to the Styx, grabbed his heels and immersed him in the Styx so that his body would be invulnerable. But the heel that did not touch the styx became the only fatal point on him.
The protagonists of the two works are more similar. Both Achilles and Siegfried were great warriors, descendants of the gods, half-human, half-gods. Achilles' mother was the goddess of the sea and his father was a mortal hero. Siegfried's father was a warrior and his grandfather was a Nibelungen. Both possess powerful weapons, Achilles has a shield made for him by Vulcan, and Siegfried has a Barumk sword forged for him by the Dwarves. Achilles knew horses, while Siegfried knew birds. Achilles received a share of the slave girl Brisseis, but she was snatched away by Agamemnon, reminiscent of Siegfried's helping King Gontel succeed in marrying Brunnhilde. Achilles and Siegfried were powerful figures, but they submitted to Agamemnon and Gontel, respectively. At the same time, Achilles sometimes rebelled against Agamemnon, just as Siegfried would rebel against Gontel. And, both were eventually murdered because they both had a fatal weakness, Achilles' weakness in his heels and Siegfried's weakness in his back. However, Siegfried was a mythical hero of the medieval German nation, and his works clearly had the color of the times, such as the idea of knighthood and loyalty, etc., while Achilles was in the transition period from primitive society to slave society, and the characters were more focused on clan interests and tribal interests.
German classical music master Wilhelm Richard Wagner adapted The Song of the Nibelungen and, after 26 years of composition, completed the opera The Ring of the Nibelungen in 1874. The story of Achilles also gave birth to this unprecedented classic opera.
Achilles was brave and loyal, and he lived and died for battle. He cherished honor and dignity, went on strike because of the insults he had received from Agamemnon, and valued friendship, sparing his life to avenge his friends. And his weakness made him appear closer to human beings, so that the world was full of respect and sympathy for him. Whether it is the well-known Achilles Heel, or the tapestry paintings created by Rubens that present Achilles' life, as well as the "Song of the Nibelungen" and the "Ring of the Nibelungen" that have been handed down to the world, they are all valuable cultural treasures left by Achilles to the world.