THE INFANT ACHILLES

The saga of Achilles, foremost Greek hero of the Trojan War, was told by the poet Homer in “The Iliad” long before this ancient marble statue was created in tribute to the warrior’s prowess. Some authorities attribute the work to the famed 4th century BCE sculptor Praxiteles.  The sculpture, rendering the lower body of the diapered infant Achilles, was discovered amidst the devastation wrought by a cataclysmic earthquake in the Ionian Sea.  The upper portion of the sculpture was apparently destroyed in the quake.  The story of this remarkable find and the mythological meaning of the infant’s vulnerable heel (targeted here) was reported on page one of the June 31, 1923 edition of The Corinthian Daily Chronicle, reproduced in part above.