Authors: Elizabeth Cook
MNEMOSYNE
Mother, by Zeus, of the nine Muses; her meaning is Memory.
MUSES
Goddesses of the arts; daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. There are nine of them: Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, Calliope and Urania.
MYRMIDONS
The people of Phthia ruled by Peleus. They are said to have originated as ants.
NEOPTOLEMUS
Son of Achilles and Deidamia. He is also known as Pyrrhus (red-head).
NESTOR
King of Pylos; the oldest and wisest of the Greek chiefs.
NIOBE
A woman of Phrygia whose twelve children were killed by Apollo and Artemis.
ODYSSEUS
Son of Laertes, king of Ithaka, and husband of Penelope. The most strategic of the Greek leaders.
OLYMPUS
The highest mountain on the Greek mainland; the gods live at its summit.
ORPHEUS
A Thracian musician and singer of extraordinary power; one of the Argonauts.
PARIS
A Trojan prince, son of Priam and Hecuba. His abduction of Helen is the cause of the Trojan war.
PATROCLUS
Achilles' cousin and best beloved.
PEDASUS
The mortal horse among Achilles' team of three.
PELEUS
King of the Myrmidons; father of Achilles.
PELION
A mountain in Magnesia on the Greek mainland; home of Chiron the centaur.
PENELOPE
Wife of Odysseus.
PENTHISELEIA
Queen and Commander in Chief of the Amazons.
PHAEDRA
Wife of Theseus whose passionate, unmet love for her step-son Hippolytus led to his death and her suicide.
PHEIDIPPOS
A Greek; one of those in the wooden horse.
PHILOCTETES
A Greek commander whose snake-bitten foot stinks so much that his fellows abandon him on the island of Lemnos till the need for Heracles' bow (which Philoctetes has and without which Troy will not fall) leads Odysseus to send Neoptolemus to fetch it and, in the event, Philoctetes.
PHOENIX
A Greek; deputed by Peleus to act as father-figure and tutor to Achilles during the Trojan expedition.
PHTHIA
On the Greek mainland, to the east of Mount Othrys; home of King Peleus and birthplace of Achilles.
POLYDEUCES
Brother of Helen and Castor.
POLYXENA
Daughter of Priam and Hecuba.
POSEIDON
God of earthquakes and the sea; a brother of Zeus.
PRIAM
King of Troy, husband of Hecuba.
PYRRHA
The name that Achilles assumes when he is disguised as a girl at Skiros.
SCAMANDER
The chief river of the Trojan plain.
SIRENS
Sea nymphs whose irresistibly charming song leads sailors to shipwreck.
SKIROS
The island to which Thetis takes Achilles disguised as a girl.
SPARTA
On the southern Greek mainland; home of Helen and Menelaus.
SPERCHEUS
A swift-flowing river in Thessaly.
STYX
One of the rivers of Hell.
THESEUS
King of Athens.
THETIS
A sea nymph; mother of Achilles.
TIRESIAS
An infallible prophet who has lived as both man and woman.
TROY
The capital of Troas; a walled city near Mount Ida on the north-west coast of Asia Minor; ruled by King Priam and at war with Greece since the abduction of Helen by Priam's son Paris.
ZEUS
King of the gods.
Praise for
Achilles
“Unfailingly modern: swift, cinematic, sexually explicit, and ravishingly beautiful.”
â
The Atlantic Monthly
“[A] dazzling, graphic vision ⦠gives splendid new life to this ancient tale.”
â
The Miami Herald
“Inspired ⦠In language more chaste and essential than prose fiction normally employs, Cook points up the primal quality of Achilles' story, so that we see its tragedy ⦠as utterly universal.”
â
Booklist
(starred review)
“Brilliantly conceived ⦠The genre of retelling of classical epics will surely be reinvigorated by this ⦠exceptional interpretation.”
â
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“A brief, passionate, and marvelously poetic account.”
â
The Hartford Courant
“This book is a tiny treasure.⦠If, as they say, every generation demands its own translation of Homer, Cook brings us here a Homer for the MTV generation.⦠Cook is a master of the rapid, the dynamic, the intensely compressed, of arresting images layered one upon the other.”
âGeraldine Brooks,
Slate.com
“A brilliantly focused work ⦠seductive in its use of language. Rewriting Homer's epic allows Cook to concentrate on the most compelling elements of the story, illustrating them with a poet's touch; she creates elegant, minimal, perfect images.⦠highly resonant.”
â
Las Vegas Mercury
“This welcome retelling of Achilles' careerâsavage yet sensitive, headstrong yet doomedâimpels him to his death, but Elizabeth Cook's vivid narrative, together with John Keats waiting in the wings, restores the Homeric hero to his rightful, impassioned life.”
âRobert Fagles, translator of Homer's
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
“Elizabeth Cook has met the challenge of retelling the Achilles story with thrilling audacity and has given us a novel of great beauty and originality. A heroic book, radiant with intelligence and passion.”
âSigrid Nunez, author of
For Rouenna
“Ms. Cook's
Achilles
shimmers between poetry and prose, myth and memory, and age-old story and a startlingly modern imagination. It is uncanny in th best sense of the word.”
âEmily Barton, author of
The Testament of Yves Gundron
ACHILLES
. Copyright © 2001 by Elizabeth Cook. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Picador
®
is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by St. Martin's Press under license from Pan Books Limited.
ISBN 0-312-28884-0 (hc)
ISBN 0-312-31110-9 (pbk)
First published in Great Britain by Methuen Publishing Ltd
eISBN 9781466840379
First eBook edition: February 2013