Achilles Wounded, Reclining

At the height of the Trojan War, an arrow guided by Apollo struck Achilles in his one vulnerable spot — the heel by which his mother had held him as a child. This sculpture portrays the rarely seen private side of the hero, the moment of mortal vulnerability in a body built for invincibility. From this image came the phrase "Achilles' heel" — and a meditation, three thousand years old, on the limits even the greatest among us cannot escape.