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Artemis
Achilles is the best of the Greek warriors at Troy. He is of the people that Odysseus fought alongside. Odysseus meets Achilles at the gate to the underworld, where Achilles tells Odysseus that he wishes that he had lived a quiet and humble life. Odysseus does not live this way, but Telemachus—who chooses to be very different from his father—does.
Achilles Quotes in Circe
The Circe quotes below are all either spoken by Achilles or refer to Achilles. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 16
Quotes
The scars themselves I offered to wipe away. [Odysseus] shook his head. “How would I know myself?”
I was secretly glad. They suited him. Enduring Odysseus, he was, and the name was stitched into his skin. Whoever saw him must salute and say: There is a man who has seen the world. There is a captain with stories to tell.
I might have told him, in those hours, stories of my own […] His face would be intent as he listened, his relentless mind examining, weighing and cataloguing […] He would gather my weaknesses up and set them with the rest of his collection, alongside Achilles’ and Ajax’s. He kept them on his person as other men keep their knives.
I looked down at my body […] and tried to imagine it written over with its history: my palm with its lightning streak, my hand missing its fingers, the thousand cuts from my witch-work, the gristled furrows of my father’s fire […] And those were only the things that had left marks.
There would be no salutes. What had Aeëtes called an ugly nymph? A stain upon the face of the world.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Circe LitChart as a printable PDF.
Achilles Quotes in Circe
The Circe quotes below are all either spoken by Achilles or refer to Achilles. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 16
Quotes
The scars themselves I offered to wipe away. [Odysseus] shook his head. “How would I know myself?”
I was secretly glad. They suited him. Enduring Odysseus, he was, and the name was stitched into his skin. Whoever saw him must salute and say: There is a man who has seen the world. There is a captain with stories to tell.
I might have told him, in those hours, stories of my own […] His face would be intent as he listened, his relentless mind examining, weighing and cataloguing […] He would gather my weaknesses up and set them with the rest of his collection, alongside Achilles’ and Ajax’s. He kept them on his person as other men keep their knives.
I looked down at my body […] and tried to imagine it written over with its history: my palm with its lightning streak, my hand missing its fingers, the thousand cuts from my witch-work, the gristled furrows of my father’s fire […] And those were only the things that had left marks.
There would be no salutes. What had Aeëtes called an ugly nymph? A stain upon the face of the world.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
