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Achilles
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Achilles in Greek mythology

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  • Maybe find Raven's Achilles' heel Sneak up, get a drop, slip a mickey, pull a fast one.   (source)
  • Achilles and the what?   (source)
  • Her Achilles' heel.   (source)
  • We don't have some great weakness, an Achilles' heel.   (source)
  • USAID concrete, Rockefeller funds, and a Greek contractor named Achilles had built a new one.   (source)
  • Who does he think he is — Achilles?   (source)
  • It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.   (source)
  • Sex is John Kennedy's Achilles' heel.   (source)
  • Achilles' heel, not aching heel, you bloody stupid fool.   (source)
  • No Achilles' heel.   (source)
  • But my mouth soon became my Achilles' heel.   (source)
  • So let's assume that you do and put on the finest show since Achilles slew Hector and I pass you.   (source)
  • We spent the first ten minutes discussing the Iliad, and whether or not the text actually states that Achilles had been dipped in the River Styx.   (source)
  • That's my Achilles' heel, and don't you forget it.   (source)
  • Americans were all farmers and shopkeepers at heart; Ta-Kumsaw lived a story like Achilles or Odysseus, Caesar or Hannibal, David or the Maccabees.   (source)
  • That some Elephants have not only written whole sentences, as Æilan ocularly testifieth, but have also spoken, as Oppianus delivereth, and Christophorus à Costa particularly relateth (although it sound like that of Achilles' Horse in Homer), we do not conceive impossible.   (source)
  • As for the book, it was Simon's copy of the Iliad, and I had been reading how the fair Briseis was dragged around from tent to tent and Achilles racked up his spear and hung away his mail.   (source)
  • Dick got up to Zurich on less Achilles' heels than would be required to equip a centipede, but with plenty—the illusions of eternal strength and health, and of the essential goodness of people; illusions of a nation, the lies of generations of frontier mothers who had to croon falsely, that there were no wolves outside the cabin door.   (source)
  • He must have been to her the perfect man; heroic; handsome; magnanimous; "the great Achilles, whom we knew" — it seems natural to quote Tennyson—and also genial, lovable, simple, and also her husband; and her children's father.   (source)
  • Something less unpleasingly oracular he tried to extract; but the old sea-Chiron, thinking perhaps that for the nonce he had sufficiently instructed his young Achilles, pursed his lips, gathered all his wrinkles together and would commit himself to nothing further.   (source)
  • All those allusions to honor, reputation, and the flame of love, all the metaphors about birds, Achilles and the jewels of Ceylon were fatiguing.   (source)
  • Then he proposed to me in broad daylight this morning, in front of that dreadful statue of Achilles.   (source)
  • Achilles appears in the Iliad, by Homer.   (source)
  • ANOTHER: If none can furnish to my gaster wherewith to make a pint of chyle, I shall retire to my tent—like Achilles!   (source)
  • I have read two books of the Iliad, besides being pretty familiar with passages such as the speech of Phoenix in the ninth book, the fight of Hector and Ajax in the fourteenth, the appearance of Achilles unarmed and his heavenly armour in the eighteenth, and the funeral games in the twenty-third.   (source)
  • Speaking generally, the carriage-makers of Rome built for the games almost solely, sacrificing safety to beauty, and durability to grace; while the chariots of Achilles and "the king of men," designed for war and all its extreme tests, still ruled the tastes of those who met and struggled for the crowns Isthmian and Olympic.   (source)
  • Erect upon the rock, angry and threatening, Otto Liedenbrock was a rather grotesque fierce parody upon the fierce Achilles defying the lightning.   (source)
  • "You can't do it here, it's not the place," cried Achilles, rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.   (source)
  • There is a well known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in this, that Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise.   (source)
  • why did Achilles and Hector hew each other up with vast blows of their lances?   (source)
  • The drilling-lessons were always protracted by episodes of warlike narrative, much more interesting to Tom than Philip's stories out of the Iliad; for there were no cannon in the Iliad, and besides, Tom had felt some disgust on learning that Hector and Achilles might possibly never have existed.   (source)
  • Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendon of Achilles, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of injuring some important region that he did not know.   (source)
  • "You are laughing at me, and want to try me!" said d'Artagnan, whom anger began to take by the hair, as Minerva takes Achilles, in the ILLIAD.   (source)
  • Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus.   (source)
  • Example: The selfishness of Achilles, as remarked by the poet Homer, occasioned a thousand woes to the Greeks—   (source)
  • As to nerves, Mr Merdle is of a cool temperament, and not a sensitive man: is about as invulnerable, I should say, as Achilles.   (source)
  • THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.   (source)
  • Aurora[117] forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, he is old, Achilles[118] is not quite invulnerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis held him.   (source)
  • "The assembly seated, rising o'er the rest,
    Achilles thus the king of men addressed."   (source)
  • To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles.   (source)
  • This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable.   (source)
  • Had Achilles any thought of death and danger?   (source)
  • Hermes said you bear the curse of Achilles.   (source)
  • Marcus looked up just as the massive marble statue of Achilles came crashing down on top of him.   (source)
  • Each one of us seemed to have an Achilles' heel—and the instructors excelled at finding it.   (source)
  • Now there was a wine that would clash with the stew as Achilles clashed with Hector.   (source)
  • I hadn't witnessed such a tense greeting since Patroclus met Achilles's war prize, Briseis.   (source)
  • Achilles' grief at the loss of his beloved friend is truly heartbreaking.   (source)
  • "Percy Jackson," he said, "because you have taken on the curse of Achilles, I must spare you."   (source)
  • A huge marble statue of the warrior Achilles looked down on him.   (source)
  • It is the story of a single, rather lengthy action: the wrath of Achilles.   (source)
  • I've got the curse of Achilles now I'll all invincible and stuff?'   (source)
  • Poor Achilles had lost his head, which was now rolling slowly in the street.   (source)
  • The need to maintain one's dignity: Achilles.   (source)
  • It sounded eerily close to what Achilles had told me.   (source)
  • If Achilles did it or Odysseus went there, so does Aeneas.   (source)
  • Then I remembered Chiron had taught Achilles.   (source)
  • Assuming you live:' "Curse of Achilles," Hudson snorted.   (source)
  • Then I leaned in close and whispered: "My Achilles spot."   (source)
  • He had bathed in the River Styx and taken on the powers of the greatest mortal hero, Achilles.   (source)
  • Does anyone else know about this Achilles' heel?   (source)
  • From all the stories and rumors, my little brother thinks you're Achilles reborn!   (source)
  • And I realize that even Mr. Fowlson has his Achilles' heel.   (source)
  • As for you, Percy Jackson, it's true you bear the mark of Achilles.   (source)
  • I've got ...I guess you'd call it an Achilles' heel.   (source)
  • The mark of Achilles is a Greek blessing.   (source)
  • We fought for King Priam in the Trojan War, but Achilles killed our queen, Penthesilea.   (source)
  • I remembered Achilles falling on the plains of Troy, cut down by an unworthy archer because of my wrath.   (source)
  • It occurred to me that I'd seen that keen look in Chiron's eyes before—when he'd assessed Achilles's sword technique and Ajax's skill with a spear.   (source)
  • Luckily, the answer to this conundrum was provided by the philosopher Zeno in the fifth century B.C. Achilles, a man of action and urgency, trained to measure his exertions to the tenth of a second, should be able to quickly dispense with a twenty-yard dash.   (source)
  • Achilles Agonistes   (source)
  • With Hector and Achilles.   (source)
  • Achilles becomes angry with his leader, Agamemnon, withdraws his support from the Greeks, only rejoining the battle when the consequences of his action have destroyed his best friend, Patroclus.   (source)
  • Agamemnon, forced by divine order and by public sentiment to return his concubine to her father, retaliates against the person who most publicly sided against him, Achilles, by taking his concubine, Briseis.   (source)
  • The big duels—between Hector and Ajax, between Diomedes and Paris, between Hector and Patroclus, between Hector and Achilles—are genuinely exciting and suspenseful, their outcomes sources of grand celebration and dismay.   (source)
  • Indeed, the very setup of the epic, in which Achilles throws a fit and withdraws from the war because his sex slave has been taken from him, does not engage our sympathies as it would have those of the ancient Greek audience.   (source)
  • Achilles did.   (source)
  • You bear the curse of Achilles.   (source)
  • What about Achilles?   (source)
  • "Achilles," I said.   (source)
  • I remember Achilles.   (source)
  • Percy felt like an arrow had slipped through a chink in his armor—as if he still had the blessing of Achilles, and someone had found his weak spot.   (source)
  • You'll lose the mark of Achilles.   (source)
  • "It's Achilles'," I say.   (source)
  • "Achilles," Stheno said cheerfully.   (source)
  • In Achilles' Tent It had been a half hour since Mick had stumbled through the gate as it had focused, fallen flat in the low gravity of Luna.   (source)
  • This great mad figure with his broad shoulders and very clean cut mouth, and the deep voice and the powerful face—and the very blue eyes—this mad man would recite poetry to us; "The Burial of Sir John Moore", I remember; and he always brings to mind some tormented bull; and also Achilles—Achilles on his pressed bed lolling roars out a deep applause.   (source)
  • She told the girl I had been practically a relative to her, she had loved me as much as Arthur, and received me in her own house like kin—all joy and happy reunion, she was, embracing me by the shoulders to say how fine and handsome I had become, but then my complexion had always been the envy of girls (as if I had been Achilles among the maidens, in the office and poolroom).   (source)
  • When they reached the Achilles Statue she turned round.   (source)
  • One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the river Styx until he became intolerable.   (source)
  • They both, Svidrigailov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes without speaking.   (source)
  • In the meanwhile, he looked upon Athos as an Achilles, Porthos as an Ajax, and Aramis as a Joseph.   (source)
  • "Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew.   (source)
  • Were not Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant maids?   (source)
  • Achilles did not declare himself until they gave him the sword.   (source)
  • With the same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth, of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield; and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer.   (source)
  • But my endeavours on this head were by no means uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of that unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at.   (source)
  • Henchard himself was mentally and physically unfit for grubbing subtleties from soiled paper; he had in a modern sense received the education of Achilles, and found penmanship a tantalizing art.   (source)
  • Some priest who could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read his verse in the Testament in his native parish far away; and now I must translate to him, while he holds the book, Achilles' reproof to Patroclus for his sad countenance.   (source)
  • The poets related that stone walls, and iron swords, and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector[122] dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax fell.   (source)
  • At last it struck Achilles as irregular for a man not drunk to be standing three steps from him, staring and not saying a word.   (source)
  • By the time Achilles has covered the distance that separated him from the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of that distance ahead of him: when Achilles has covered that tenth, the tortoise has covered another one hundredth, and so on forever.   (source)
  • This low abject brood, That fix their seats in mediocrity, Become your servile minds; but we advance Such virtues only as admit excess, Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, All-seeing prudence, magnanimity That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue For which antiquity hath left no name, But patterns only, such as Hercules, Achilles, Theseus.   (source)
  • At the great closed gates of the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them, wrapped in a grey soldier's coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his head.   (source)
  • The arch and the Achilles statue were up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a hundred changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely noted.   (source)
  • The absurd answer (that Achilles could never overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that motion was arbitrarily divided into discontinuous elements, whereas the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was continuous.   (source)
  • Achilles raised his eyebrows.   (source)
  • And the carriage drove on, taking the road down Piccadilly, where Apsley House and St. George's Hospital wore red jackets still; where there were oil-lamps; where Achilles was not yet born; nor the Pimlico arch raised; nor the hideous equestrian monster which pervades it and the neighbourhood; and so they drove down by Brompton to a certain chapel near the Fulham Road there.   (source)
  • There are some splendid tailors' shops in the High Street of Southampton, in the fine plate-glass windows of which hang gorgeous waistcoats of all sorts, of silk and velvet, and gold and crimson, and pictures of the last new fashions, in which those wonderful gentlemen with quizzing glasses, and holding on to little boys with the exceeding large eyes and curly hair, ogle ladies in riding habits prancing by the Statue of Achilles at Apsley House.   (source)
  • Some translate "wrath" to connote its archaic severity, and Robert Graves carried this logic to the end in titling his translation "The Wrath of Achilles."   (source)
  • Most mythological dictionaries and classical reference works today follow the convention of transliterating the Greek proper names into the Latin alphabet ("Akhilleus" becomes "Achilles,")   (source)
  • (*) Philopoemen, "the last of the Greeks," born 252 B.C., died 183 B.C. But to exercise the intellect the prince should read histories, and study there the actions of illustrious men, to see how they have borne themselves in war, to examine the causes of their victories and defeat, so as to avoid the latter and imitate the former; and above all do as an illustrious man did, who took as an exemplar one who had been praised and famous before him, and whose achievements and deeds he always kept in his mind, as it is said Alexander the Great imitated Achilles, Caesar Alexander, Scipio Cyrus.   (source)
  • Hence when Homer chose to sing the "Anger of Achilles," his theme had a symbolic resonance that songs of Thebes or Herakles did not: the first Greek epic written down told a story of a great and ultimately successful collective effort to vindicate the honor of Greece against a powerful eastern foe.   (source)
  • The "Anger of Achilles" became The Iliad because it suggests, despite its focus on a single episode in Akhilleus' meteoric life, the utter devastation of the Trojan War and gives it meaning through the eyes of its hero.   (source)
  • The other work is the "Anger of Achilles," which is how the poem titles itself in its first line; this was a long, orally performed song of ancient heroes, one of many that had been sung in Greece and the Near East since time immemorial.   (source)
  • We cannot be sure why, out of all these songs, the "Anger of Achilles" was selected to be written down and handed on to posterity; it appears not to aspire to be the song of Troy, for its story is restricted to a few weeks toward the end of that very long war, and not even the final weeks at that.   (source)
  • The Iliad and the Anger of Achilles The Iliad is both a landmark in the history of literature and a relic of its prehistory, so that to read it today is to encounter two masterpieces of ancient narrative at once.   (source)
  • It is clear from the above that a. main part of Homer's design has been to tell a massive tale, to expand his main theme, throwing up unexpected diversions, obstacles, and side-stories until his account of the "Anger of Achilles" takes on all the weight and scope and dense detail that the word "epic" connotes.   (source)
  • So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.'   (source)
  • And the ghost of Atrides Agamemnon answered, "Son of Peleus, great godlike Achilles!"   (source)
  • The princess
    he was sending on to the son of great Achilles,
    breaker of armies.   (source)
  • But you, Achilles,
    there's not a man in the world more blest than you—
    there never has been, never will be one.   (source)
  • They say the Myrmidons,
    those savage spearmen led by the shining son
    of lionhearted Achilles, traveled home unharmed.   (source)
  • This is Achilles' mother rising from the sea
    with all her immortal sea-nymphs-
    she longs to join her son who died in battle!'   (source)
  • For your death we grieved as we did for Achilles' death—
    we grieved incessantly, true, and none's to blame
    but Zeus, who hated Achaea's fighting spearmen
    so intensely, Zeus sealed your doom.   (source)
  • Would to god
    I'd died there too and met my fate that day the Trojans,
    swarms of them, hurled at me with bronze spears,
    fighting over the corpse of proud Achilles!   (source)
  • You were dear to the gods,
    so even in death your name will never die ...
    Great glory is yours, Achilles,
    for all time, in the eyes of all mankind!   (source)
  • And once the god of fire had burned your corpse to ash,
    at first light we gathered your white bones, Achilles,
    cured them in strong neat wine and seasoned oils.   (source)
  • They had grouped around Achilles' ghost, and now
    the shade of Atreus' son Agamemnon marched toward them—
    fraught with grief and flanked by all his comrades,
    troops of his men-at-arms who died beside him,
    who met their fate in lord Aegisthus' halls.   (source)
  • The voice of his spirit paused, and I was quick to answer:
    'Achilles, son of Peleus, greatest of the Achaeans,
    I had to consult Tiresias, driven here by hopes
    he would help me journey home to rocky Ithaca.   (source)
  • I
    There lies Achilles too.   (source)
  • There they found the ghosts of Peleus' son Achilles,
    Patroclus, fearless Antilochus—and Great Ajax too,
    the first in stature, first in build and bearing
    of all the Argives after Peleus' matchless son.   (source)
  • Your white bones rest in that, my brilliant Achilles,
    mixed with the bones of dead Patroclus, Menoetius' son,
    apart from those of Antilochus, whom you treasured
    more than all other comrades once Patroclus died.   (source)
  • Achilles' ghost was first to greet him: "Agamemnon,
    you were the one, we thought, of all our fighting princes
    Zeus who loves the lightning favored most, all your days,
    because you commanded such a powerful host of men
    on the fields of Troy where we Achaeans suffered."   (source)
  • But now there came the ghosts of Peleus' son Achilles,
    Patroclus, fearless Antilochus—and Great Ajax too,
    the first in stature, first in build and bearing
    of all the Argives after Peleus' matchless son.   (source)
  • Only the ghost of Great Ajax, son of Telamon,
    kept his distance, blazing with anger at me still
    for the victory I had won by the ships that time
    I pressed my claim for the arms of Prince Achilles.   (source)
  • All reached out for the good things that lay at hand
    and when they'd put aside desire for food and drink,
    the Muse inspired the bard
    to sing the famous deeds of fighting heroes-
    the song whose fame had reached the skies those days:
    The Strife Between Odysseus and Achilles, Peleus' Son ...
    how once at the gods' lavish feast the captains clashed
    in a savage war of words, while Agamemnon, lord of armies,
    rejoiced at heart that Achaea's bravest men were battling so.   (source)
  • The most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles.   (source)
  • Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,   (source)
  • Homer with all his wars and warriors--Hector, Achilles, Ajax,   (source)
  • So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same time apologetic to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the bye, his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles.   (source)
  • Here he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would have lived to do had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of the possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when he lived among women.   (source)
  • Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot.   (source)
  •   Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,
      Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,
      That matter of Troy and Achilles' wrath, and AEneas', Odysseus' wanderings,   (source)
  • Hide thy head, Achilles: here comes Hector in arms.   (source)
  • And of Achilles for his quainte spear,
    For he could with it bothe heal and dere*, [* wound]   (source)
  • There Agamemnon, Priam here, he spies, And fierce Achilles, who both kings defies.   (source)
  • This new Achilles, let him take the field, With fated armor, and Vulcanian shield!   (source)
  • Thrice round the Trojan walls Achilles drew The corpse of Hector, whom in fight he slew.   (source)
  • See Helen, for whom so long a time of ill revolved; and see the great Achilles, who at the end fought with love.   (source)
  • Simois nor Xanthus shall be wanting there: A new Achilles shall in arms appear, And he, too, goddess-born.   (source)
  • For by all that is good it is as true as that it is daylight now; and if it be a lie, it must be a lie too that there was a Hector, or Achilles, or Trojan war, or Twelve Peers of France, or Arthur of England, who still lives changed into a raven, and is unceasingly looked for in his kingdom.   (source)
  • She warned him, but it might not avail;
    He wente forth to fighte natheless,
    And was y-slain anon of Achilles.   (source)
  • Thus the poet sweetly sings of Troy— —Captique dolis lachrymisque coacti
    Quos neque Tydides, nec Larissaeus Achilles,
    Non anni domuere decem, non mille Carinae.   (source)
  • Anger and just rebuke, and judgement given,
    That brought into this world a world of woe,
    Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery
    Death's harbinger: Sad task! yet argument
    Not less but more heroick than the wrath
    Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued   (source)
  • He can set forth the craftiness of Ulysses, the piety of AEneas, the valour of Achilles, the misfortunes of Hector, the treachery of Sinon, the friendship of Euryalus, the generosity of Alexander, the boldness of Caesar, the clemency and truth of Trajan, the fidelity of Zopyrus, the wisdom of Cato, and in short all the faculties that serve to make an illustrious man perfect, now uniting them in one individual, again distributing the   (source)
  • Within it they lament for the artifice whereby the dead Deidamia still mourns for Achilles, and there for the Palladium they bear the penalty.   (source)
  • Thus do I hear[1] that the lance of Achilles and of his father was wont to be cause first of a sad and then of a good gift.   (source)
  • In starres many a winter therebeforn
    Was writ the death of Hector, Achilles,
    Of Pompey, Julius, ere they were born;   (source)
  • Deidamia was the wife of Achilles, who slew herself for grief at his desertion and departure for Troy, which had been brought about by the deceit of Ulysses and Diomed.   (source)
  • Shakespeare too had heard of it, and applies it, precisely as Dante does, to one Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear, Is able with the charge to kill and cure.   (source)
  • and well he might require Achilles' car and horses, for his hire: But, met upon the scout, th' Aetolian prince In death bestow'd a juster recompense.   (source)
  • Or young Achilles, by his rival slain?   (source)
  • Then he touched me, and said, "That is Nessus, who died for the beautiful Dejanira, and he himself wrought vengeance for himself; and that one in the middle, who is gazing on his breast, is the great Chiron who nurtured Achilles."   (source)
  • Commanded on Achilles' tomb to die, Not forc'd, like us, to hard captivity, Or in a haughty master's arms to lie.   (source)
  • To whom, with count'nance calm, and soul sedate, Thus Turnus: "Then begin, and try thy fate: My message to the ghost of Priam bear; Tell him a new Achilles sent thee there."   (source)
  • Believe thy fables, and the Trojan town Triumphant stands; the Grecians are o'erthrown; Suppliant at Hector's feet Achilles lies, And Diomede from fierce Aeneas flies.   (source)
  • Then Liger thus: "Thy confidence is vain To scape from hence, as from the Trojan plain: Nor these the steeds which Diomede bestrode, Nor this the chariot where Achilles rode; Nor Venus' veil is here, near Neptune's shield; Thy fatal hour is come, and this the field."   (source)
  • Elsewhere he saw where Troilus defied Achilles, and unequal combat tried; Then, where the boy disarm'd, with loosen'd reins, Was by his horses hurried o'er the plains, Hung by the neck and hair, and dragg'd around: The hostile spear, yet sticking in his wound, With tracks of blood inscrib'd the dusty ground.   (source)
  • He said (his tears a ready passage find), Devouring what he saw so well design'd, And with an empty picture fed his mind: For there he saw the fainting Grecians yield, And here the trembling Trojans quit the field, Pursued by fierce Achilles thro' the plain, On his high chariot driving o'er the slain.   (source)
  • Th' unhappy queen with talk prolong'd the night, And drank large draughts of love with vast delight; Of Priam much enquir'd, of Hector more; Then ask'd what arms the swarthy Memnon wore, What troops he landed on the Trojan shore; The steeds of Diomede varied the discourse, And fierce Achilles, with his matchless force; At length, as fate and her ill stars requir'd, To hear the series of the war desir'd.   (source)
  • Your Trojan troops when proud Achilles press'd, And drove before him headlong on the plain, And dash'd against the walls the trembling train; When floods were fill'd with bodies of the slain; When crimson Xanthus, doubtful of his way, Stood up on ridges to behold the sea; (New heaps came tumbling in, and chok'd his way;) When your Aeneas fought, but fought with odds Of force unequal, and unequal gods; I spread a cloud before the victor's sight, Sustain'd the vanquish'd, and secur'd his flight; Ev'n then secur'd him, when I sought with joy The vow'd destruction of ungrateful Troy.   (source)
  • The Trojans, coop'd within their walls so long, Unbar their gates, and issue in a throng, Like swarming bees, and with delight survey The camp deserted, where the Grecians lay: The quarters of the sev'ral chiefs they show'd; Here Phoenix, here Achilles, made abode; Here join'd the battles; there the navy rode.   (source)
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meaning too rare to warrant focus:

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  • In a mass protest decades ago, thirty-one prisoners cut their Achilles tendons, lest they be sent again to work.   (source)
    achilles = heel cord at the back of lower legs
  • Indeed, Oedipus's feet are damaged from the thong that was put through his Achilles tendons when, as an infant, he was sent away to die in the wilderness.   (source)
  • Examples are: RING THE CHANGES ON, TAKE UP THE CUDGELS FOR, TOE THE LINE, RIDE ROUGHSHOD OVER, STAND SHOULDER TO SHOULDER WITH, PLAY INTO THE HANDS OF, AN AXE TO GRIND, GRIST TO THE MILL, FISHING IN TROUBLED WATERS, ON THE ORDER OF THE DAY, ACHILLES' HEEL, SWAN SONG, HOTBED.   (source)
    achilles = the heel cord at the back of the lower leg
  • One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase-some JACKBOOT, ACHILLES' HEEL, HOTBED, MELTING POT, ACID TEST, VERITABLE INFERNO or other lump of verbal refuse-into the dustbin where it belongs.   (source)
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