So here’s our scenario: Achilles has just killed Hector and dragged the dead body around with his chariot. The gods, famous for their capricious whims, respond by sending Achilles through a rift in the space-time continuum and landing him in Denmark right after Beowulf has killed Grendel. Both warriors are still in the grip of the killing rage and thus not terribly inclined towards cross-cultural understanding. Not surprisingly, a fight breaks out.
Who wins?
Beowulf would win and Led Zeppelin would write a song about it.
First encounter, Achilles wins, no contest. Beowulf won’t know about his one point of vulnerability, and the middle of a battle rage is not the time to try to figure that out. If there’s a rematch, though, Beowulf is good at figuring out ways of working around things like that, and so would probably win, since Achilles relies too much on his invulnerability, and doesn’t have a backup plan for an opponent who knows about his heel.
EDIT: And, as Skald will surely point out, Athena is inscrutable, not capricious. We may not know what her reason was for hurling Achilles across time, but we may rest assured that it was a good one.
Well, ordinarily, Beowulf would be better armed and armoured - pattern-welded wægsweord and iron mail and helm would trump bronze leaf-blade, bronze panoply and a helmet made of boar’s teeth.
But Achilles is magic and his skin is magic and his armour is magic and he farts rainbows :rolleyes:, so Beowulf is shit out of luck here unless the gods remove those advantages.
Achilles wins on land. Beowulf wins if they fight underwater.
So – Beowulf, if he’s prepared?
It seems to me that Beowulf has well-established superhuman capabilities: super strength, resistance to attack, and ability to hold his breath for a really long time. So I’m not fully convinced that even Achilles’ divinely ordained protections would hold perfectly against him.
In one scene of the Iliad a dude named Diomedes (I think it was Diomedes) picks up a rock, throws it at some dude’s head, and knocks his eyeballs out. Homer describes the rock as being a very large one that “men, weak as they are today,” would be unable to lift let alone throw. So if we’re going by all the myth then the Greek heroes of the Golden Age were bigger, faster, and stronger than we mortal men.
Do we know that Beowulf is good at figuring things out? What’s our evidence?
I think his main benefit is that he’ll survive and just keep trying, and so will eventually stumble onto the solution. Well, assuming they don’t just become best friend first.
Naah, he’s just at the absolute top end of what (the skalds would consider) peak human - Captain Geat-ica, if you would. Nothing magical is implied AFAIK, unlike Achilles. And even Superman can’t beat magic outright…
Is Achilles even that good a fighter? I mean, with his invulnerability, he doesn’t need to be good to win - he just needs to be persistent.
The last time he fought someone with skin that couldn’t be cut, he gripped the guy’s arm and wrenched until Grendel’s bone cracked under the strain for the win. And the last time he fought someone with skin that couldn’t be cut except at one spot, he weaved his way through the trees and kept parrying with his shield until our hero was exhausted but the other guy couldn’t keep from getting hit in the Achilles’ heel and dying.
It’s funny how much the legends of old are like comic books, with their byzantine continuity. Case in point - Achilles’ general invincibility is not mentioned in the Iliad, and in fact an ambidextrous dude named Asteropaios manages to wound him in the arm at one point. Achilles did have a totally bitchin’ shield and magic armor, though.
Beowulf is known for his grappling, so I’d probably give the fight to him at the end of the day.
There are certainly legends that Achilles was invulnerable except around his heel. Supposedly his mother had held baby Achilles by his foot and dunked him in the River Styx, making his entire body invulnerable except for the parts of his foot that never went underwater.
But as Ambrosio points out, ***The Iliad ***never refers to that legend. Homer does indicate that
Now, if Achilles were invulnerable, why would he worry at all about dying in Troy?
And, if you’ve ever seen the movie Troy, you may remember a scene where a boy says to Achilles, “They say you’re invincible and cannot be killed.” Achilles replies, “I wouldn’t be bothering with this armor, then, would I?”
Good question- if Achilles was invulnerable, why would he wear armor? Why wouldn’t he just fight in civvies?
All this proves is that there have been many variations on the legends of the Trojan War, and they don’t all agree.
So I’m thinking of it from the point of view of their stories (I guess, maybe their authors).
IIRC, Beowulf brags about beating another guy in a swimming contest, but only kills various monsters. In fact the only humans that die are nameless thralls and (upon checking wikipedia) Beowulf himself in a grand closing of the story. So, if Achilles wandered into Beowulf (the poem), I think they’d fight for an epic length of time, neither one getting the upper hand, until they decide to settle their differences another way. Beowulf wins the swimming/boating contest, Achilles wins the track and field portion, and they end up drinking together at the end of it.
On the other hand, Homer wasn’t shy about going all Game of Thrones/Joss Wheden and killing off main characters, or putting in unexpected twists. So it’s a lot less clear to me what happens when Beowulf stumbles into the Iliad.
If this thread hadn’t already pointed out that the Achilles in the *Iliad *isn’t stone-skinned, then I’d be thinking how ancient Greeks would love the idea of the guy with invulnerable skin being defeated by wrestling (newly discovered lost chapter of the Iliad: Strange northern barbarian shows up and challenges Greeks. Achilles fights him, and the barbarian lands strokes that bounce off his skin. Barbarian realizes what’s happening and grapples, breaking Achilles’ arm. [missing text obscures final outcome of battle]. Greeks are delayed for half a year while Achilles’ arm heals. )
In fact, maybe that’s more or less how it goes down anyway. Greeks send a couple raids against some nearby third-party city-state, doing pretty well, until the third time when their new champion (a stranger) kicks the Greek’s butt. They come back with Achilles, and there’s an epic battle, only ending at sundown with Achilles getting the worst of it. That night Achilles, um, gets dust in his eye, and can’t continue the fight, so the Greeks sign a peace treaty (as long as the third party doesn’t help Troy). All the Greeks agree to never really bring this fight up again when talking about Achilles the undefeated.
What happens if Grendel’s mother shows up in the middle of the Achilles/Beowulf battle? Does she sit back and see if the new guy can take out the man who killed her son? Or does she wade in and make it a free for all?
Maybe she can fight Achilles’ mother, the sea nymph Thetis.
That’d be worth watching – a mother vs. mother -and- son vs. son tandem battle
Beowulf, after initial surprise (which could cost him the match) would just rip Achilles head off.
I’m assuming Angelina Jolie sides with Brad Pitt.
Another possible outcome is that Achilles, being bereft of Patroclus and in need of the greatest form of consolation . . .