The fact that Achilles was not Greek is demonstrated by the very fact that his name and other names (such as theonyms, hydronyms, people names and so on) from de same period of time are not of Greek origin. I will use for this purpose linguistic proofs on the etymology of the personal name Achilles, and the etymology of the Balios form, the name of one of the two divine horses of the great ancient hero. Then I will discuss the causes that led to his decision to be buried on the island of Leukos, away from his native country.
Achilles is the son of Peleus and the nymph Tethis. Peleus was the king of the Myrmidons who, following a plague epidemic, during the reign of Peleus’ father, Aeacus, migrated from Aegina Island to today’s Thessaly.
According to many ancient sources, the ethnonym Myrmidon comes from Greek myrmix ‘ant’, a word of Indo-European origin, namely from PIE * momro-, * momri– ‘ant’ (Walde, 1, 531) with cognates in Sanskrit, Indo-Aryan, Latin, Armenian, Slavic and Germanic languages, practically in almost all Indo-European languages. Although the word existed in ancient Greek, it has cognates in Latin (formica) and Romanian (furnică), with its initial transition to f, through the process of dissimilation of the two nasals. In ancient Greek there are dialectal forms that present the same dissimilation process: byrmax, bormax ‘ant’, forms which probably appeared under the influence of the Pelasgian language. Therefore, a similar form must have existed in Pelasgian, the old Indo-European language of Balkan region, and the mother language of Thraco-Dacian and Illyrian.
Some scholars have tried to find a Greek etymology of the name Achilles, namely from achos ‘anguish, pain’ and laos ‘people, nation’. The meaning of the name would be ‘annoyed people’ or more precisely, being the name of a person ‘the one whose people are distressed’ a rather absurd hypothesis which most researchers have given up. A more appropriate etymology that it would be a compound word from PIE *ak’- ‘sharp’ and PIE *ped– ‘foot’, therefore an *ak’-pedios > *akh–pedios> *akhiddios where dd became ll, when he was borrowed from the Pelasgian into Greek. In conclusion, everything turned into *Achillios > Achilleos > Achilles. I have to mention that the evolution of dd to ll is possible, since both d and l have the same articulation point, namely the dental alveoli.
Robert Beekes (EDG, 183) points out that Greek lexical elements with double consonants, such as ll, ss, etc. are loanwords from the pre-Greek substrate, therefore from Pelasgian language. This hypothesis is justified also by the expression ‘Achilles, the quick foot’, added by Homer, since the name of Achilles did not mean anything to the speakers of the Greek language. Therefore, Achilles translates as ‘the swift leg’, revealing an anthroponym of Pelasgian origin.
In addition, it is known that one of Achilles’ stallions was called Balios, and the other Xanthus who had been given by Poseidon to Peleus as a wedding gift to his marriage to Tethis, Achilles’ future mother. Later, at the outbreak of the Trojan War, the two divine stewards were given by Peleus to his son Achilles. If the name of Achilles is not so etymologically transparent, regarding the horse name Balios one can see at the first glance it is of Indo-European origin, but its phonological evolution shows clearly a Pelasgian evolution, not a Greek one. This name derives from PIE *bhel– ‘white’. Balios. In other words, it derives from this Proto-Indo-European root which exhibits a Pelasgian phonological evolution. The same evolution one can find in Thraco-Dacian as well as in Romanian, as in Romanian words such as băl, bălan, bălaș etc. The term balan is found also at Prokopios of Caesarea in Wars of Justinian, describing the horse of Belisarius due to the fact it was white-headed, stating that such a horse is called balan by the barbarians and by the Greeks falios, where the barbarians were the Thraco-Illyrians who were by far the most numerous people in the Byzantine Empire as well as in the Byzantine army. Therefore, the same Proto-Indo-European sound yields f in Greek, but b in Pelasgian, Thraco-Dacian and Romanian. In other words, Greek falios had a different evolution. The Emperor Justinian was a Thracian as well as the general Belisarius, the commander of Byzantine army. Returning to Achilles’ horse name, if it would be of Greek origin it would have been Falios, not Balios. In modern Romanian balan means ’white hair animal or a blond person’. Cognates with similar forms and very close meanings one can find in Albanian and Aromanian languages. In conclusion, the name of Achilles’ stallion shows non-Greek evolution as in the case of name Achilles as we have seen above. From these examples, one can see the genetic development from Pelasgian language to present-day Romanian spanning over 3000 years. On the other hand, many ancient authors show that Achilles was buried in Leukos Island at the mouth of the Danube river. The Romans called it Alba, and today we call it the Serpents’ Island. It is known that neither Greeks, nor Romans have ever controlled this island. So why did this king of Thessaly want to be buried at such a great distance and not in his native kingdom? The only explanation is that Achilles must have had some strong links here. Indeed, his mother Tethis appears to have come from this region. In addition, on this island there was a powerful religious center of the Pelasgian world, since the ruins of Apollo’s many temples (Pelasgian or Thracian) survived to these days, but they are below sea level. Modern scientists, including N. Densuşianu, argueis that the island of Leukos is the current Snakes’ Island. Densuşianu citing from the Romanian ballads that speak of a “White Monastery” (Mânăstirea Albă).From the linguistic data presented above, it is obvious that Achilles was not a Greek, but a Pelasgian. The fact explains why he was buried on the island of Leukos, at the mouth of the Danube, although he was born in Thessaly. In 1823, the Russians found on the top of this stone island, in the shape of a mound, the traces of an ancient temple. They took all the remains from there to build a lighthouse. Today no one knows where they are hiding these remains. Instead, the Pelasgian temple still under the sea level, seem to have not been investigated so far. Their investigation is the challenging task of the young generation of Romanian archaeologists.
Selective Bibliography
Beekes, R. – Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2010
Densușianu, N. – Dacia preistorică, Editura Meridiane, București, 1986
Vinereanu, M. – Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, Editura Alcor-Edimpex, București, 2008.
Prokopios of Caesarea – Wars of Justinian, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis/Cambridge, 2014.
Walde, A. – Lateinisches etymologisches Woerterbuch, Carl Winter Universitaet Verlag, Heildelberg, 1965.
