Regarding the question of Achilles and armor:
As someone else put it in a Giant in the Playground discussion when Achilles' invulnerability was mentioned:
"Yeah but that's all noncanon fanfic of the HEEU (Homeric Epic Extended Universe)"
And as I responded:
"And it's BAD fan fiction as it blatantly contradicts the primary source where even when enraged by Patroclus's death and the abuse of his corpse and wanting to kill the Trojans he had to WAIT while new armor was forged by the god of smiths himself because he needed armor and a shield to be effective and Hector had captured his original armor (Patroclus had been wearing it when he was killed).
Why is an invulnerable half-divine warrior who's supposedly immune to weapons supposed to absolutely positively need armor so badly that he'll wait even when in an Epic rage?
Hint: It has to do with the word invulnerable in that description not being present in the primary source."
The Achilles who's invulnerable except for a heel exists in epics written later and now lost, where all we have is fragments and secondary summaries, the Achilles in the Illiad who gets armor from Hephaestus doesn't seem to have that characteristic.
As someone else put it in a Giant in the Playground discussion when Achilles' invulnerability was mentioned:
"Yeah but that's all noncanon fanfic of the HEEU (Homeric Epic Extended Universe)"
And as I responded:
"And it's BAD fan fiction as it blatantly contradicts the primary source where even when enraged by Patroclus's death and the abuse of his corpse and wanting to kill the Trojans he had to WAIT while new armor was forged by the god of smiths himself because he needed armor and a shield to be effective and Hector had captured his original armor (Patroclus had been wearing it when he was killed).
Why is an invulnerable half-divine warrior who's supposedly immune to weapons supposed to absolutely positively need armor so badly that he'll wait even when in an Epic rage?
Hint: It has to do with the word invulnerable in that description not being present in the primary source."
The Achilles who's invulnerable except for a heel exists in epics written later and now lost, where all we have is fragments and secondary summaries, the Achilles in the Illiad who gets armor from Hephaestus doesn't seem to have that characteristic.
Statistics: Posted by Doug Lampert — 24 Mar 2025 21:21