Что ты, Ксанф, пророчишь мне смерть? Не твоя то забота!

Знаю я сам хорошо, что судьбой суждено мне погибнуть

Здесь, далеко от отца и от матери. Но не сойду я

С боя, доколе войны не вкусят троянцы досыта!

Так говорит он, мрачный и гневный, своему вещему коню. В пылу боя, когда Ликаон просит у него пощады, он опять вспоминает о своем собственном жребии, и мы не знаем, убивает ли он Ликаона в пылу боевой страсти или это есть его послушание судьбе. Он говорит (XXI, 106-113):

Милый, умри же и ты! С чего тебе так огорчаться?

Жизни лишился Патрокл, – а ведь был тебя много он лучше!

Do you not see how great and beautiful I myself am?

A noble son of my father, born of an immortal goddess,

Death, however, with a mighty fate, awaits me too.

Morning will come, or evening, or noon, and in a bloody battle

Some Trojan warrior will tear out my soul too,

Or by striking with a spear, or by striking with an arrow from the bowstring.

Achilles has secret knowledge, a secret vision of his fate. He is not just a blind destroyer. His consciousness is fate itself, conscious of itself in man. Impersonal spontaneity is framed here as an intimate personal experience.

Fourthly, this "love of fate" (as the Stoics would later say) was transformed by Achilles into a whole philosophy of life. In his reply to the request of Priam (Illus, XXIV, 518-551), he creates a whole construction about the happiness and misfortune of human life and expresses a strongly pessimistic view of man: "The gods have assigned such a fate to the unfortunate mortals to spend their lives in sorrows. Only they themselves are without sorrow" (525 ff.). And this is not just a theory. Achilles, this beast and the wild hurricane of war, understands that Priam and his murdered son Hector and he, Achilles, and his murdered friend Patroclus are essentially one and the same, and he knows the futility of all human lamentation: "Well, calm down and sit down in an armchair," he says (522 ff.). "No matter how sad it may be, let us leave our sorrows to rest hidden in the heart!" And so we see how Achilles is transformed in the scene with Priam. He asks Priam not to stir up his soul with new requests, fearing that he will lose his temper and violate his friendliness to Priam and the covenant of Zeus (570). On the other hand, in order not to offend the old king with the appearance of Hector and again not to arouse in himself an angry reaction to the possible indignation of Priam, he orders to secretly put Hector's corpse in order, wash, anoint, dress and put on a beautiful chariot (580-590). And after that, he generously treats Priam, and they both marvel at their mutual beauty and God-like nature for a long time (599-633). And all this was not at all because he had forgotten about his deceased friend in a moment of sudden surge of sentimentality. No, he remembers him very well and even turns to him with a prayer not to be angry and with a promise to please him in the future (592-595). Moreover, fearing that someone would not see Priam and raise a fuss about the arrival of the enemy in the Greek camp, Achilles put Priam to spend the night not in the house, but in the courtyard, with great honors. And finally, he even asks how many days the mourning and burial of Hector will last in Troy, so as not to attack the Trojans during this time. And in the future, the Trojans, without any fear, within the prescribed 11 days, go outside the city walls for the burial of the hero, believing the noble word of Achilles. All this generally shows that Achilles really has an experience of universal human fate and with all intimacy feels the general equality of people before it.

Fifthly, it must be said frankly that this deep and complex image of Achilles in the end breathes a certain sadness, a certain sadness, that special ancient noble sorrow that rested on the entire centuries-old perception of the world of antiquity. The voluptuousness of battle, the tenderest friendship and love, devotion to the will of fate, absolute personal fearlessness before the face of the empty and tormenting eternity of Hades, and, finally, the intimate feeling of humanity and humanity – all this is merged in Achilles into one vital impulse, into one social instinct, into one inseparable and monolithic sense of well-being. Achilles is a complex nature, in the truly ancient sense, in the truly Homeric sense, a complex and rich nature.

Sixthly, finally, they often forgot to put forward a mythological basis in Achilles, humanizing him too much and reducing him to the image of an ordinary, albeit incredibly strong man. If we succeed in combining in our conception all that has been said above about Achilles with the mythical character of his image, we shall have a truly Homeric, truly epic character, distinguished by all those fundamental qualities of the epic which have been pointed out as the principles of epic poetry in general.

The ancient naivety of scientists saw in Achilles either a Thessalian water demon (Müllenhof, Roscher, Usener), or lightning (E. G. Meyer). There is enough mythology in the image of Achilles himself, even if such abstract metaphysical violence is not performed on him. First of all, he is the son of the goddess, the sea princess, the Nereid Thetis, and Thetis herself plays a particularly mysterious role in Greek mythology, since, according to predestination, if Zeus had married her, her son would have overthrown Zeus himself by him. As you know, Zeus avoided this marriage only thanks to Prometheus' warning. Further, Achilles' father is close to the centaur Chiron, who is Achilles' tutor. The mother, in order to temper her son and make him immortal, bathes him in the underground river Styx; And his body is indeed made invulnerable, except for the famous heels. The sight of Achilles himself is so terrible and demonic that when Achilles appears over the ditch without any weapon and begins to scream, all the Trojans fighting around the corpse of Patroclus instantly flee in panic (Fig., XVIII, 203-234). Both the old weapons of Achilles (XVI, 70), and especially the new ones, prepared not by human hands, but by the god Hephaestus himself, cause panic terror among the enemies (XIX, 12-23). Achilles fights with the elements of nature (XXI). Pallas Athena herself dresses his powerful shoulders in the aegis, and (XVIII, 205 ff.)

Over her head, the goddess of goddesses thickened the golden

The cloud, around himself, lit a dazzling flame

so that (214) "the light from the head of Achilles reached the ether." Achilles converses with the gods, and the gods take care of him. When in a fit of anger he draws his sword against Agamemnon, he is restrained by Athena (I, 188-200), and when he does not eat or drink for a long time, indulging in grief and tears for Patroclus, Zeus sends Athena to strengthen him with nectar and ambrosia (XIX, 338-354).