• List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction
• 1. The Funerary Landscape: A Reflection of the World of the Living
• 2. The Literary Form: Tears of Simonides ...and of Pindar
• 3. Phrasikleia, forever a maiden. Kroisos, whom raging Ares destroyed.
• 4. How to Deprive the Year of its Spring
• 5. Immortal Remembrance of Friends
• 6. Wives and their Masters
• 7. Powerful Enemies: Childbirth, the Sea
• 8. Rewards for Piety... Next to Persephone Conclusions Notes Index of Inscriptions and Table of Concordances Index Bibliography.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Taking a wide selection of Greek funerary epigrams from the 6th to 4th centuries BC, this volume considers their historical and chronological contexts to draw out information about the society that created them. Using both Hansen's corpus of epigrams and wider examples, it gives priority to those cases where the whole monument ensemble is preserved, both text and image, enabling a much better understanding of the significance of the texts. A thematic structure within a broader chronological framework provides a valuable lens on the epigrams, allowing readers to compare particular types across the time period. After introducing the funerary landscape in which the selected epigrams fit, Gonzalez briefly considers the literary form of epigrams as a foil for the rest of the book. The remaining chapters focus on epitaphs of individuals in the most significant stages of life, where gender differences are most marked: themes include untimely death, women and wives, friendship, piety and non-kin love. All epigrams are offered in Greek, followed by an English translation. The analysis focuses on the literary aspects of the epigrams, as well as on the information they provide about both society and religion of ancient Greece.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Series foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of illustrations
• Why Achilles?
• 1. Introducing Achilles
• A Mythological "Biography"?
• Who is Achilles?
• Evidence for Achilles
• The Best of the Achaeans, Apollo's Antagonist
• The Scope of this Book
• Brief overview of each chapter
• Key Themes
• 2. The Origins of The Trojan War, The Origin of Achilles
• Introduction
• The Origins of the Trojan War: Achilles and Helen
• The Birth and Childhood of Achilles
• Achilles' Teachers
• Overview
• 3. A Men's World: Achilles' Emotions
• Introduction
• Emotions and scenarios of action
• Achilles' anger as the Iliad's leitmotif
• Achilles and Ajax. A shame culture
• The Myrmidons
• Overview
• 4. Achilles' Sacrificial Victims
• Introduction
• Ambush, Pursuit and Sacrifice of Troilus
• Young Trojans on the Pyre of Patroclus
• The Hawk Chasing a Dove: The Death of Hector
• A Last Sacrifice in Honour of Achilles: Polyxena
• Overview
• 5. Gender And Sexuality
• Introduction
• Achilles on Skyros: Becoming a Man in Ancient Greece
• Achilles and Patroclus in Love?
• Tears of Heroes
• Sexual Violence on the Trojan Stage
• Overview
• 6. The Fury Subdued: To Forget, To Forgive
• Introduction
• Agamemnon's guilt
• Kissing Achilles' Hands
• Achilles with no Shadows
• Overview
• 7. The Death And Cult Of Achilles
• Introduction
• The Tradition of Achilles' Death in the Epic. Echoes of the "Homeric Question"
• Achilles' Heel, Achilles' Ankle: the Death of the Hero
• Achilles in the Underworld. The Island of Leuke
• The Cults of Achilles. Archaeological and Literary Evidence
• Overview
• 8. Philosophical, Political and Ethical Debates
• Introduction
• Achilles and the tortoise
• Not life but a good life. Achilles as model for Socrates
• Healing anger
• Justice and revenge
• More hateful than the gates of Hades is the man who hides one thing in his heart and says another
• Overview
• 9. Achilles In Modern Literature In English
• Introduction
• When there was peace, before the coming of the sons of the Achaians (Il. 22.156)
• Never More Shall a Second Grief thus Reach my Heart (Il. 23.45-46)
• And laid his manslaughtering hands over the chest of his dear friend (Il. 23.18)
• And kissed the hands that had killed so many of his sons (Il.
• 24. 478-479)
• Overview
• Further reading
• Bibliography
• Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Achilles is the quintessential Greek hero, but that does not mean that he is a conventional hero. His uniqueness is dictated by his birth, as the son of a sea goddess, and his education at the hands of a centaur. The hero's exceptional nature also forms part of the tension that both unites and opposes him to Apollo. Achilles presents the different episodes in the life of this hero conventionally, in chronological order, based primarily on the Greek sources: birth, education, deeds in Troy, death and subsequent destiny as a figure of worship. On the other hand, this study employs the hero Achilles to reflect on various issues, all of them crucial for historians of the Greek world: what it meant to be and become a man in ancient Greece, what a hero's arete consisted of, how the Greeks represented the concepts of friendship and camaraderie, what moved them to revenge or reconciliation, what hopes they harboured as they faced their fate, how they imagined something as difficult to conceive of as a human sacrifice, and how they developed their ideas about the afterlife and hero cult.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)