It was after Hector had fallen in front of the gate (chapter 50), but the war did not end with that. Achilles knew he was next.
His mother had told him long before (chapter 52), that if he killed Hector his own death would follow straight after. He knew it and went on standing in front of that gate.
What He Left as He Died
Hector left one sentence with his last breath. “You too will not live long. In front of the Scaean gate, at the hands of Paris and Apollo.”
Achilles did not step back. “I will take my fate when Zeus decides it.” He was a man who had gone aboard already knowing the price.
Only, knowing and bearing are different things, and night after night he called out the name of Patroclus. And in the morning he put his armour on again.
The Fights That Followed
Reinforcements kept arriving for Troy, and first came Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons. Achilles brought her down.
And then he lifted her helmet and looked at her face, and he is said to have stood there a long time. The winner froze in the place where he had won.
Next came Memnon, the son of the goddess of the dawn. When even he had fallen, only the walls of Troy were left.
In Front of the Scaean Gate
Achilles pushed all the way to the gate, and wherever he passed the Trojans gave ground. He came close enough to lay a hand on the gate.
Up on the wall one man raised a bow. It was Paris. He was not known for his archery.
Apollo is said to have been standing beside him, and that the god steered the arrow. The bowstring sang.
The Handspan the Water Missed
The arrow went into his heel. It was the place his mother’s hand had covered when she held the baby and dipped him in the river (chapter 52).
The strongest man went down over that handspan, and for ten years no spear had stopped him. It was one arrow from a man who was not even a famous archer.
He fell in front of the gate, the place Hector had named for him. The one who said it and the one who heard it both already knew.
The Fight Over the Body
When he fell, soldiers from both sides poured in at once, and Troy wanted to drag the body into the city. Greece could not give that up.
Ajax got the body onto his back, and Odysseus held off the pursuit, swinging his spear. The two of them brought him back to the camp together.
That day they were on the same side, one carrying him by strength and one holding the line with words. This is what divides them later (chapter 58).
Seventeen Days of Mourning
His mother came up out of the sea, and the goddesses of the sea gathered round her and wept. The soldiers tried to run for the ships at that sound.
The camp mourned for seventeen days, wood was piled up and the singing went on. His bones were put into one jar.
There were already other ashes in that jar, and they belonged to Patroclus (chapter 49). He had asked for it himself in advance.
The Man He Met in the Land of the Dead
Long after, Odysseus comes to the edge of the land of the dead, and there he meets Achilles. A shadow walking out in front the way he did when alive.
Odysseus offered him some comfort. “Even here you are king over the dead, are you not.” Achilles cut the words off.
“Do not soothe me with talk like that.” “I would rather be a hired hand in a house without a patch of land. Better that than ruling over all the dead.”
Today, the Word Unbeatable
People called him unbeatable. And what the story kept longest is not the unbeatable part. It is a handspan at the heel.
We still call a fatal weakness an Achilles tendon, and the name of the strongest man survives as a word for a weak point. You can see there what the story decided to remember.
And look again at where that handspan was, which is where his mother’s hand was holding him. The most loved place on him became his weakest.