How Did Achilles Build Kleos

Achilles was the leader of the Myrmidons he was also the son of Peleus and the Nereid Thetis. He was the greatest fighter in all of the Achaean armies. One of the main parts of being a hero is having arete and kleos. Arete are the virtues of strength, beauty, and intellect. Kleos is personal glory. He places gaining kleos above all else and in striving for kleos he single handedly turning the tides of the war and therefore saving Greece. He has legendary strength and ability he is the only one who can lift his spear and was the greatest fighter. He is considered to be godlike so he is incredibly beautiful. His mother is a god so he has godlike strength and prowess in battle. He is also loved by the gods because Zeus made the Achaeans be nearly destroyed for Achilles.

Kleos means personal glory he earned this glory on the numerous attacks he led against the outlying Trojan cities and then when he pushed the Trojans back to their walls and killed the stallion breaking Hector. Achilles’ mother Thetis told Achilles that Achilles could either continue to fight and die in battle gloriously or, return to Achaea and live to be an old man but be forgotten “Mother tells me, the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet, that two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies” (Homer, 265). He valued kleos so high that he continued to fight even after this warning. He valued kleos so much that he was willing to cause his father a lot of grief when he died to get his kleos. He thought about the grief he would be causing his father when he and king Priam were talking “these words stirred within Achilles a deep desire to grieve for his own father.”(Homer, 605). He was grieving for his father because he felt pity for his father for having to grieve for