<P> Another version of Achilles' death is that he fell deeply in love with one of the Trojan princesses, Polyxena . Achilles asks Priam for Polyxena's hand in marriage . Priam is willing because it would mean the end of the war and an alliance with the world's greatest warrior . But while Priam is overseeing the private marriage of Polyxena and Achilles, Paris, who would have to give up Helen if Achilles married his sister, hides in the bushes and shoots Achilles with a divine arrow, killing him . </P> <P> In the Odyssey, Agamemnon informs Achilles of his pompous burial and the erection of his mound at the Hellespont while they are receiving the dead suitors in Hades . He claims they built a massive burial mound on the beach of Ilion that could be seen by anyone approaching from the Ocean . Achilles was cremated and his ashes buried in the same urn as those of Patroclus . Paris was later killed by Philoctetes using the enormous bow of Heracles . </P> <P> In Book 11 of Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus sails to the underworld and converses with the shades . One of these is Achilles, who when greeted as "blessed in life, blessed in death", responds that he would rather be a slave to the worst of masters than be king of all the dead . But Achilles then asks Odysseus of his son's exploits in the Trojan war, and when Odysseus tells of Neoptolemus' heroic actions, Achilles is filled with satisfaction . This leaves the reader with an ambiguous understanding of how Achilles felt about the heroic life . </P> <P> According to some accounts, he had married Medea in life, so that after both their deaths they were united in the Elysian Fields of Hades--as Hera promised Thetis in Apollonius' Argonautica (3rd century BC). </P>

Second only to achilles as a warrior rival to odysseus