Le BAPTÊME D'ACHILLE. Comme on trempe une arme de guerre, Thétis de son moutard voulant faire un héros, Le trempa dans le Styx dès qu'il vit la lumière; Ce qui prouve qu'un bain est bon à tout propos. (De l'influence des bains, poëme par Mr. Vigier).

Trustman, Benjamin A., Trustman, Julia M. · 1842

Thetis is baptizing his son Achilles in the river Styx. Daumier explains in his very unusual way the origin of the Achilles tendon. Could it possibly be that the crab, solidly attached to his nose, created another point of weakness with Achilles, hitherto unknown? On the lower left side of this print within the image one can see an annotation by Daumier: "A mon ami, Albéric Second". During the 1840's, a quarrel between painters of the classic and romantic schools had fully flared up. Delacroix asked the "loaded" question: "Who is going to liberate us from the old Greeks?" Daumier succeeded to answer it his own way by showing historic personalities such as Hercules, Pygmalion or Agamemnon in absurd situations.