Watch List notes:

Fragment of a rectangular platter (lanx) with Thetis dipping Achilles in the water of the River Styx. Roman, North Africa, circa AD 350-425. Red slip ware rim fragment depicting the nymph of the river Styx seated left, leaning on her left hand and holding a bowl of water in right. Before her kneels the nereid Thetis, holding her son Achilles, who she is about to dip in the bowl. Achilles is swaddled tightly and resembles a fish. Width: 8.5cm. Cf. Hermann & van den Hoek, Light from the age of Augustine: late antique ceramics from North Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Divinity School, 2002), no. 76 for a similar fragment. A highly interesting scene.

Thetis wished to make her son immortal by dipping him in the water of the Styx. Achilles was fully submerged save for his heel, which Thetis held him by, and consequently this was the only part of him that remained vulnerable. A great hero of the Greeks and the victor over the Trojan Hector, Achilles was fatally wounded when Paris struck him in the heel with an arrow.