Abstract
The speeches of Achilles form a notable component of Graeco-Latin poetry, including epic, and are essential in defining his character and issues important to poets. This discussion not only traces the evolution of the basic themes and emotions in the direct and embedded speeches of Achilles from Homer's Iliad to the poetic and prose texts of late antiquity, including epic, but also identifies the various "swerves" and "mini-swerves" that occur before and during late antiquity in the representation and characterization of Achilles as revealed in his speeches. A diachronic analysis of Achilles' direct and embedded speeches from Homer to late antiquity reveals that major swerves in Achilles' characterization occur in his speeches in the Iphigeneia at Aulis and Hecuba of Euripides, Statius' Achilleid, and Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica, while there is a poetic mini-swerve in Achilles' speeches in Seneca's Troades that becomes a major swerve in the revisionist Achilleid. Notwithstanding an oratio obliqua of Achilles in Philostratus' Vita Apollonii that presents the Achaean hero favorably through his claimed lack of culpability for the death of Polyxena, these swerves in Achilles' direct and embedded speeches ultimately serve to bring into question his Homeric characterization as a hero, even to undermine the nature of the heroic ideal itself.