Sing the rage of Peleus's son, Achilles

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Achilles is probably the most famous hero of ancient Greek legend and is the central warrior in Homer’s Iliad. According to Greek tradition, Achilles was the son of the mortal king Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis, making him a figure who straddled the human and divine worlds. Renowned for his unmatched strength, courage, and martial skill, Achilles was considered the greatest Greek fighter during the Trojan War. Although it’s later Roman legends that introduced the story of Achilles’s weak heel (The Iliad doesn’t even mention it), the idea of one’s ‘Achilles heel’ being one’s biggest vulnerability is ubiquitous today.

In Homer’s story, we find Achilles withdrawn from battle as a result of a bitter dispute with the Greek King Agamemnon (Agamemnon insults Achilles by taking his war prize, the Trojan princess Briseis, captive). His pride wounded, he refuses to fight, a decision that brings devastating losses to the Greek army. Only after his best friend Patroclus is killed by the Trojan prince Hector does Achilles return to combat.

Consumed by grief and rage, Achilles defeats Hector in single combat and initially dishonours his body by dragging it behind his chariot. However, in one of the poem's most moving scenes, King Priam courageously enters Achilles's camp to beg for his son's body. Moved by Priam's sorrow and reminded of his own father, Achilles relents, revealing his capacity for compassion despite his overwhelming anger.

Traditionally, Achilles has been remembered as the ideal heroic warrior, embodying extraordinary excellence, courage, and the pursuit of lasting glory. At the same time, Homer presents him as a deeply human figure whose greatest struggles are internal rather than physical. His emotions shape the story of The Iliad as much as his victories in battle.

Achilles is a central Western figure; indeed, he stands at the very beginning of the Western tradition (Homer’s epics are the fountainhead of Western literature). His story has influenced literature, philosophy, art, and political thought for over two thousand years, becoming a model against which later heroes have been measured. One of the central lessons of The Iliad is that even the greatest individuals are vulnerable to destructive passions, but they are also capable of empathy and reconciliation. Through Achilles, Homer suggests that true greatness lies not only in strength or fame but also in magnanimity, even amid conflict and loss.

Creativity in authority – Dr. Deni Kasa, a scholar of John Milton said that in reading Milton’s collected works, it’s clear that Milton felt that creativity had to be rooted in an authoritative text. It was no good spinning out a story that contained no truth and was bound by no anchor. J.R.R. Tolkien would likely agree, as would C.S. Lewis, who famously wrote that only a native speaker of a language could hope to add anything to its development. To build on Lewis’s example, take Pablo Picasso, who long before he painted his famous abstractions had to train himself to paint in a far more constrained style. Only when he mastered the art of traditional painting was he able to bend the rules and create something new. His creativity was rooted in authority.

Q ~ Creativity today is typically construed as colouring outside the lines (if there are any lines); often, freeing one’s impulses is viewed as the only creative activity. The result is a lot of art that is vulgar, destructive, and ugly. What do you think? Should creativity be boundless?

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