The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

“Do you care if they are angry?” Yes. I would be horrified to find Chiron upset with me. Disapproval had always burrowed deep in me; I could not shake it off as Achilles did.

An irritant, but not a crippling shame, as it would have been to another boy. He did not fear ridicule; he had never known it.

“He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.” The words drove breath from me, left me stuttering. “He is not—” “But he is. The best the gods have ever made. And it is time he knew it, and you did too. If you hear nothing else I say, hear that. I do not say it in malice.”

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”

“You make it sound as if I have abandoned my honor,” Achilles says, his voice tart as raw wine. “Is that what you spin? Are you Agamemnon’s spider, catching flies with that tale?”

In post-Homeric versions of the story she tries a number of ways to make Achilles immortal, including dipping him by his ankle in the river Styx and holding him in a fire to burn away his mortality.

Since the Iliad and Odyssey were my primary sources of inspiration, and since their interpretation seemed more realistic, I chose to follow the older tradition.