Metamorphoses 12: Invulnerability

The Iliad doesn’t tell the whole story of the Trojan War. It tells the story of “The Wrath of Achilles” nine years into that war, and ends when Achilles’ wrath has run its course, not with the fall of the city or even the death of Achilles but with the death of his enemy Hector. When Ovid takes on the Trojan War, his emphasis is — predictably — very different. He avoids following in the footsteps of Homer and pays more attention instead to the stories classical Greek tragedians told about Troy: Iphigeneia, Ajax, the Trojan Women enslaved after the war, and Hecuba’s revenge. In Book 12, his sequence of metamorphoses with tragic endings centers around another theme: invulnerability, characters who cannot be wounded with swords or spears. Achilles was said to be invulnerable himself in some versions of the myth, with the famous exception of his heel, but Ovid doesn’t mention that. Instead, Achilles himself encounters two invulnerable warriors, but like him, they turn out to be mortal in the end. <a href="https://medium.com/@joannakenty/metamorphoses-12-invulnerability-c90a9a9c8807">Visit Now</a>