Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Hector, dying, had prophesied that Paris and Apollo would kill Achilles at the Scaean Gates. The *Aethiopis* fulfills that word. After Memnon’s fall Achilles drove deep into the Trojan ranks; there Paris struck him with an arrow, Apollo guiding the shot. Apollodorus localizes the wound at the ankle—the vulnerable point in post-Homeric biographic tradition—though Homer himself never narrates the death, only its certainty. A fight broke out over the corpse. Ajax son of Telamon took up Achilles’ body and carried it toward the ships while Odysseus fought off the Trojans. On the shore Thetis came with the Muses and her sisters; they lamented her son. Funeral games followed. Thetis snatched Achilles from the pyre in some cyclic strands toward the White Island (Leuke) or a blessed afterlife; Apollodorus and Proclus agree that she recovered his body for rites and that the contest for his arms came next. So the greatest Achaean dies not in a fair duel of spears but by the archer Paris under Apollo’s hand—the same god who had guided Hector’s earlier successes and who now closes the *Iliad*’s unfinished destiny.