In Greek mythology, Achilles (, Akhilleus, ) was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.

He is a character in Greek mythology and is mentioned in Homer's Iliad, and receives full treatment in Roman mythology as the legendary founder of what would become Ancient Rome, most extensively in Virgil's Aeneid.

He is a significant figure in Homer's Iliad and is also mentioned in the Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid.

He plays an important role in Homer's Iliad and in the Epic Cycle, a series of epic poems about the Trojan War.

In Homer's Iliad he is described as of great stature, colossal frame and strongest of all the Achaeans.

The Achaeans (, Akhaioí ) is one of the collective names used for the Greeks in Homer's Iliad ( used 598 times ) and Odyssey.

In Homer's Iliad, the horses of the Myrmidons graze on wild celery that grows in the marshes of Troy, and in Odyssey, there is mention of the meadows of violet and wild celery surrounding the cave of Calypso.

Cerberus featured in many prominent works of Greek and Roman literature, most famously in Virgil's Aeneid, Peisandros of Rhodes ' epic poem the Labours of Hercules, the story of Orpheus in Plato's Symposium, and in Homer's Iliad, which is the only known reference to one of Heracles ' labours which first appeared in a literary source.

The premier examples of its use are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid.

The other Strife is presumably she who appears in Homer's Iliad Book IV ; equated with Enyo as sister of Ares and so presumably daughter of Zeus and Hera:

* Homer's Iliad at Gutenberg ( there are many different translations at Gutenberg )

His work lent weight to the idea that Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid reflect actual historical events.

" Samuel Butler argues, based on literary observations, that a young Sicilian woman wrote the Odyssey ( but not the Iliad ), an idea further pursued by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter and Andrew Dalby in Rediscovering Homer.

From Homer's Odyssey, the Iliad, and some Attic vase paintings, we know that Hephaestus was born of the union of Zeus and Hera.

* 68 – Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide, after quoting Homer's Iliad, thus ending the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and starting the civil year known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

The importance of this can be seen throughout Greek mythology — in particular, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

A report by the Greek writer Dio Chrysostom ( c. 40-c. 120 CE ) about Homer's poetry being sung even in India seems to imply that the Iliad had been translated into Sanskrit.

Minos appears in Greek literature as the king of Knossos as early as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

After the Bible, the next best preserved ancient work is Homer's Iliad, with 650 copies originating about 1, 000 years after the original copy.

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus crawls beneath two shoots of olive that grow from a single stock, and in the Iliad, ( XVII. 53ff ) is a metaphoric description of a lone olive tree in the mountains, by a spring ; the Greeks observed that the olive rarely thrives at a distance from the sea, which in Greece invariably means up mountain slopes.

Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle.

Examples of epic poems are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, the Nibelungenlied, Luís de Camões ' Os Lusíadas, the Cantar de Mio Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata, Valmiki's Ramayana, Ferdowsi's Shahnama, Nizami ( or Nezami )' s Khamse ( Five Books ), and the Epic of King Gesar.

In the seventh century BC, Hesiod, both in his Theogony ( briefly, without naming Pandora outright, line 570 ) and in Works and Days, gives the earliest literary version of the Pandora story ; however, there is an older mention of jars or urns containing blessings and evils bestowed upon mankind in Homer's Iliad:

Homer's Iliad describes Greek and Trojan soldiers offering rewards of wealth to enemies who have defeated them on the battlefield in exchange for mercy, but this is not always accepted.

The two terms may not have originally been distinguished ; though in Homer's poems nectar is usually the drink and ambrosia the food of the gods ; it was with ambrosia Hera " cleansed all defilement from her lovely flesh ", and with ambrosia Athena prepared Penelope in her sleep, so that when she appeared for the final time before her suitors, the effects of years had been stripped away and they were inflamed with passion at the sight of her.

This theory of Homer's influence on Beowulf remained very prevalent in the 1920s, but started to die out in the following decade when a handful of critics stated that the two works were merely “ comparative literature ” although Greek was known in contemporary England.

Even earlier, a kind of primitive haggis is referred to in Homer's Odyssey, in book 20, ( towards the end of the eighth century BC ) when Odysseus is compared to " a man before a great blazing fire turning swiftly this way and that a stomach full of fat and blood, very eager to have it roasted quickly.

According to a legend, when Phidias was asked what inspired him — whether he climbed Mount Olympus to see Zeus, or whether Zeus came down from Olympus so that Pheidias could see him — the artist answered that he portrayed Zeus according to Book One, verses 528 – 530 of Homer's Iliad:

In Homer's " The Odyssey ", when Odysseus is captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus, he tells the Cyclops that his name is Outis ( No-one ).

The mythic theme was an ancient one, for Homer's listeners were expected to know the allusion, when Penelope reveals to the still-disguised Odysseus her anguish of a night:

During the Trojan War ( prior to the actions described in Homer's Iliad ), Agamemnon took Chryses ' daughter Chryseis ( Astynome ) from Moesia as a war prize and when Chryses attempted to ransom her, refused to return her.

In Homer's Iliad, Podarces and Protesilaus were former suitors of Helen, and therefore bound to defend the marriage rights of Menelaus, her husband, when Helen was kidnapped by Paris.

Yet in Homer's Odyssey, Circe tells Odysseus, " One ship alone, one deep-sea craft sailed clear, the Argo, sung by the world, when heading home from Aeetes ' shores.

), the show or film's theme song ( e. g. the final scene of " Homer's Triple Bypass ", from The Simpsons ; when Sam Carter hums the theme from Stargate SG-1 during the episode " Chimera "; the second Collector from Demon Knight ; when Mr. Incredible whistles theme music from The Incredibles ; when all the characters in the film Magnolia begin to sing the background music-" Wise Up " by Aimee Mann ; in Almost Famous, when one character begins to sing the background music-" Tiny Dancer " by Elton John-and all of the other characters around him immediately pick it up and sing along as well ; the moments when Sam Lowry of Brazil hums / listens to / sings the film's self-titled theme song ; when Daryl Van Horne whistles theme music from The Witches of Eastwick ; in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone when Rubeus Hagrid is briefly heard playing the main theme on a recorder ); when Quinton ' Rampage ' Jackson ( as B. A.

Bart is infuriated and claims he is sick of all of Homer's ill treatments, but he taunts him that he can not do anything about them until he is eighteen ( and plans to work Bart like a dog when he's 17 in anticipation for his 18th birthday ).

Judge Harm cites Homer's sociopathic behavior and short temperament as the main reason why Bart should not live with him, evident when he threatened the lives of the whole jury and swears a vicious revenge against Bart after he mistakenly believed that he will win.

There is an interesting section in Homer's Odyssey when the suitors attempt to string Odysseus ' bow and are unable to do so, whereas Odysseus is able to string it without standing up.

Ekphrasis may be encountered as early as the days of Aphthonius ' Progymnasmata, his textbook of style, in Virgil's Aeneid when he describes what Aeneas sees engraved on the doors of Carthage's temple of Juno, or Homer's going to great lengths in the Iliad, Book 18, describing the Shield of Achilles, exactly how Hephaestus made it as well as its completed shape.

However the island is also associated with Malta, and the fact that Sicily is often identified with the episode of the Cyclopes only serves to underscore the shaky footing any geographer is on when trying to identify Homer's locations.

The reference to Phthia is itself a reference to Homer's Iliad ( ix. 363 ), when Achilles, upset at having his war-prize, Briseis, taken by Agamemnon, rejects Agamemnon's conciliatory presents and threatens to set sail in the morning ; he says that with good weather he might arrive on the third day " in fertile Phthia " — his home.

For example, in Homer's Odyssey, we first learn about Odysseus ' journey when he is held captive on Calypso's island.