I’m partial to Robert Graves’s handling of the Greek myths. I was warned many years ago that his work was imaginative, rather than scholarly. But I continue to read him. He often finds what to my mind is the shortest, simplest explanation to a puzzle.
If you search for clues to the meaning of Achilles’s name, you’ll find all kinds of heroic possibilities. Graves points out that the -chilles part of the name is literally lips. The Greeks used the prefix a- to mean without or lacking. So lipless.
The world is full of false etymologies, and I’m not enough of a scholar to make any claim. I’d just say that the name fits. Homer depicts Achilles as a great man — but also a humorless one.
I think American literature is richer for having characters like Shoeless Joe Jackson around. I like characters who are lacking something. I’d read a story about a character named Lipless Joe, wouldn’t you?
• Source and note: Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: 2; Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 288. The word for lip is χειλον. If I were a scholar, I’d put a circumflex over the iota.
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