Myrmidons- Greek RaceRace

Origins on Aegina

Aeacus, son of Zeus and the nymph Aegina, ruled the island that bore his mother's name. When Hera unleashed a plague upon Aegina in vengeance for Zeus's affair, the pestilence swept through the population with terrible thoroughness. Ovid describes the progression: first the animals sickened, then the air itself turned foul, and finally the people collapsed in the fields and at their hearths, their bodies left unburied as no one remained healthy enough to tend the dead. Aeacus watched his kingdom empty around him.

Alone among the dying, Aeacus climbed to the sanctuary of Zeus and stretched his hands toward the sky. As he prayed for his father to restore his people or else take his life too, thunder cracked from a clear sky, and Aeacus took it as a sign. Near the temple stood an oak sacred to Zeus, and along its trunk marched a vast column of ants carrying grain in their jaws. Marveling at their number, he cried out: "Give me as many citizens as these ants, and fill my empty walls." The oak trembled, its branches stirring without wind. That night Aeacus dreamed he saw the ants dropping from the tree, growing larger as they struck the earth, straightening their many legs into human limbs, losing their dark color. He woke to the sound of voices. His son Telamon called him outside, where ranks of men stood in the morning light, filing in to salute their king. They were the Myrmidons, named for the ants they had been.

Warriors at Troy

Achilles led the Myrmidons to Troy in fifty black ships from Phthia and the surrounding Thessalian coast. When he withdrew from battle after his quarrel with Agamemnon over Briseis, the Myrmidons withdrew with him. For much of the war's tenth year they sat idle by their ships while other Greeks fought and bled.

Patroclus could no longer bear it. He begged Achilles to let him lead the Myrmidons back into the fighting, and Achilles relented, lending Patroclus his own armor. Before they advanced, Achilles prayed to Zeus for Patroclus's safe return. The Myrmidons surged into battle, and the Trojans, believing Achilles himself had returned, broke and fled from the ships. Patroclus pressed the rout too far. Apollo struck him senseless on the plain, Euphorbus speared him, and Hector delivered the killing blow.