Always Achilles is described with the most exaggerated terms, shining like the sun or falling in the most absolute wretchedness. In a moment of sublimity oddly precognizant of gothic writers like E.A. Poe, Achilles refuses to bury his beloved Patrocles' body because "since I'm journeying under the earth after you, I'll postpone your burial...Till that time, you'll lie like this with me..." (book 18, 330-338) Achilles is perfect and heroic in the extremity of his nature. A more archetypal approach would say that he was heroic because, more than any other character, he represented the purity of war. Archtypically, he represents a purity of action and emotion than can drive men to battle, the pure warrior who is at once filled with the strength of emotion and will and yet resigned to perfect destiny,...

Today, if the thoughtful reader were able to extrapolate from the antique to the modern, one might find that Achilles' presents virtues that are still recognizable in our modern venue. His sense of honor to the modern eye may become a sort of rugged individualism, secure in its own moral power. His piety may seem odd and pagan to a world that has lost the sense of fate which ruled the ancient world (and in fact still exists in many modern cultures, as encapsulated in the term in'shallah), but the core issue of faith sustaining the warrior is as relevant today as it ever has been. Achilles' supreme emotional experience is to be even more comprehended as heroic today after the writings and explorations of the romantic era. Thus it is that Achilles, for all his flaws, may be seen as a hero through-out the…