Lachlan (Immortal Highlander #1), Tharaen (Immortal Highlander, #2), Evander (Immortal Highlander #3), Tormod (Immortal Highlander #4), Gavin (Immortal. Your immortal life and experiences may be infinite, but your brain's ability to store and recall them is not. It wouldn't be very long before your brain is piled up with junk like one of the houses on Hoarders. Your body will be young, but you'll still be forgetting people's names and telling the same jokes to the same person twice in one day. The Immortals of rugby league in Australia are 13 players named as the greatest ever. To be chosen as an Immortal is the greatest honour a player can receive and it is widely considered that to.

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He simply is an immortal, born that way unto a race of immortals. The Highlander, played by British actor Adrian Paul, was the star of the long-running series and movies of the same name. The show follows MacLeod, a skilled Scottish clan swordsman and successor of Connor Macleod, over four centuries. An Immortal cannot completely regenerate or replace a limb or major portion of the body that is destroyed or separated. If they lose a hand or an eye, that is permanent. Immortals in the original movie Highlander can sense each other, with one of them describing it as feeling ill.

Immortality is a popular subject in fiction, as it explores humanity's deep-seated fears and comprehension of its own mortality. Immortal beings and species abound in fiction, especially fantasy fiction, and the meaning of 'immortal' tends to vary.

Some fictional beings are completely immortal (or very nearly so) in that they are immune to death by injury, disease and age. Sometimes such powerful immortals can only be killed by each other, as is the case with the Q from the Star Trek series. Even if something can't be killed, a common plot device involves putting an immortal being into a slumber or limbo, as is done with Morgoth in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion and the Dreaming God of Pathways Into Darkness. Storytellers often make it a point to give weaknesses to even the most indestructible of beings. For instance, Superman is supposed to be invulnerable, yet his enemies were able to exploit his now-infamous weakness: Kryptonite. (See also Achilles' heel.)

Many fictional species are said to be immortal if they cannot die of old age, even though they can be killed through other means, such as injury. Modern fantasy elves often exhibit this form of immortality. Other creatures, such as vampires and the immortals in the film Highlander, can only die from beheading. The classic and stereotypical vampire is typically slain by one of several very specific means, including a silver bullet (or piercing with other silver weapons), a stake through the heart (perhaps made of consecrated wood), or by exposing them to sunlight.^[1][2]

Mythical creatures[edit]

Mythological beings are often used in modern fiction as characters, as a plot device, or even just as 'window dressing'. Such beings are often either immortal or associated with immortality.

Tezuka Osamu's lifework Phoenix (known in Japan as Hi no Tori) had a phoenix whose blood would provide immortality. In various ages, many 'heroes' and 'heroines' would strive for immortality only to realize that there is something beyond eternal life. In one story titled 'Rose Ham' (lit. 'Next World Story') the last remaining human male who survived a holocaust, blessed (or cursed) with immortality through the phoenix blood, would create another beginning of life. In his immortal form, he would see a race of slugs, after gaining intelligence, destroy themselves in another holocaust. He would seed the earth with life that would become present day humans, and finally leave the earth to join his lover, who died billions of years ago, in heaven.

In the Cthulhu Mythos created by H. P. Lovecraft, there is a race of 'Fish-Men' known as Deep Ones. They stop aging after reaching adulthood and can breed with humans to birth offspring with this 'eternal youth.' This is a faustian bargain, as after reaching the age of 20, the Deep One Hybrids undergo a transformation from normal humans into Deep Ones. They also lose all concept of humanity and morality and go to live in the ocean with the Deep Ones and to worship the undersea deity Father Dagon, the Ruler of the Deep Ones and consort to Mother Hydra.

Negative effects[edit]

Since immortality is seen as a desire of humanity, themes involving immortality often explore the disadvantages as well as the advantages of such a trait. Sometimes immortality is used as a punishment, or a curse that might be intended to teach a lesson. It is not uncommon to find immortal characters yearning for death. In Greek mythology Tithonus was given immortality by Zeus at the behest of his lover Eos, but she did not ask for eternal youth as well so he grew older and weaker and was turned into a cicada, eternally begging for death.

In some parts of popular culture, immortality is not all that it is made out to be, possibly causing insanity and/or significant emotional pain. Much of the time, these things only happen to mortals who gain immortality. Beings born with immortality (such as deities, demigods and races with 'limited immortality') are usually quite adjusted to their long lives, though some may feel sorrow at the passing of mortal friends, but they still continue on. Some immortals may also watch over mortal relations (either related to or descended from them), occasionally offering help when needed.

In legend, most famously in Wagner's opera The Flying Dutchman, a ship's captain is cursed with immortality after attempting to sail around the Cape of Good Hope in a terrible storm. He is doomed to sail around the Cape forever.

In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, some of the inhabitants of the island of Immortals (near Japan) don't die, but they age and become ill, demented, and a nuisance to themselves and those surrounding them. Swift presents immortality as a curse rather than a blessing.

In Mikhail Lermontov's 1841 poem Demon, the protagonist is burdened by his immortality. Outcast from Paradise, 'his desert had no refuge in it: and one by one the ages passed, as minute follows after minute, each one monotonously dull.' He seeks escape in love, but fails.^[3]

In Jorge Luis Borges's story 'The Immortal' the central character begins by seeking the water of eternal life and then spends centuries seeking the water of death.

In Gerald Kershs 'Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?' the eponymous corporal was given immortality by Ambroise Paré's digestif in 1537. He has been trying to replicate the exact recipe he received ever since and has never done so. Corporal Cuckoo was not only made immortal. He retained the same personality and defects he had in 1537: it has taken him four hundred years to reach the rank of corporal. Because he has learned no more and has not become wiser, however, the corporal does not suffer the misery of other fictional immortals.

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In general, a theme seen with many variations, is the notion of an essential world weariness akin to extreme exhaustion for which death is the only relief. This is inescapable when immortality is defined as (half) infinite life. Immortality defined as finite but arbitrarily long per the desire to exist does not, as a definition, suffer this limitation. When a person is tired of life, even death is shut off to them, creating an endless torture.

The 2018 science fiction TV series Ad Vitam explored the social impact of biological immortality.

Undeath[edit]

The undead are fictional people who have died and still maintain some aspects of life. In many examples, the undead are immune to aging or even heal at an accelerated rate. Dracula is one of the most famous examples of the undead.

Science fiction[edit]

Immortality can be achieved in fiction through scientifically plausible means. Extraterrestrial life might be immortal or it might be able to give immortality to humans. Immortality is also achieved in many examples by replacing the mortal human body by machines.

Regeneration[edit]

There are many examples of immortality in fiction where a character is vulnerable to death and injury in the normal way but possesses an extraordinary capacity for recovery.

The long-running British science-fiction series Doctor Who focuses on a character called the Doctor, a member of the alien Time Lord race, who can 'regenerate' instead of dying or aging; however, rather than simply healing wounds, this results in a Time Lord's entire physical appearance changing when fatally wounded or terminally sick. Most Time Lords are only capable of doing so twelve times before finally dying for good, but the Doctor and his friend-turned-foe the Master have each gone beyond this limit, the Master possessing others before the events of the Time War led to him and the Doctor being granted a new cycle of regenerations for helping their people in the conflict.

Wolverine from the Marvel Comics is famously able to heal from any injury, making him functionally immortal. He has sometimes been depicted in the far future having aged little from his 'present' appearance. ^[4]

Fictional immortals[edit]

The list is in chronological order for the first appearance of the fictional character.

• The Wandering Jew appears in a series of legends, starting in the 13th century, about a Jewish man who is made immortal in the time of Jesus, and cursed to wander the Earth until the second coming.
• 1706-1710. In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the title character encounters the human struldbruggs on the island of Luggnagg. They are immortal, but continue to age, and are considered legally dead when they turn 80.
• La Belle Dame sans Merci: A knight seduces what he thinks is a beautiful woman; he finds out too late she is a vampirelike beautiful femme fatale who uses black magic to drain the lifeforce out of males to remain young.
• Ayesha, the 2000-year old titular character of H. Rider Haggard's 1886 novel She: A History of Adventure.
• Dorian Gray, who stays young while his painted portrait ages terribly in Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
• Valdar, the hero of Valdar the Oft-Born: A Saga of Seven Ages (1895) by George Griffith is immortal by repeated reincarnation.
• Emilia Marty in the 1922 play The Makropulos Affair, later adapted into an opera by Leoš Janáček, is a 300 year old opera singer on whom a potion of immortal life had been tested when she was a child.
• Anton York (Conquest of Life, Thrilling Wonder Stories August 1937 by Eando Binder). Anton York was injected with a chemical formula that would halt his aging until the universe was double its current age. At that point he could presumably produce and drink a second dose, if he so desired. A series of Anton York stories were written which were later collected in the anthologyAnton York, Immortal in 1965.
• Shining Hawk (The Gnarly Man June 1939 by L. Sprague de Camp). A Neanderthal Man over 50,000 years old who is living as a circus artist.
• Robert Hedrock, The Weapon Shops of Isher 1941 and The Weapon Makers 1943 by A. E. van Vogt. A man accidentally becomes immortal, and secretly runs an organization that provides exclusively self-defensive weapons to people and runs a parallel justice system.
• Woodrow Wilson Smith, also known as Lazarus Long, Methuselah's Children 1941 by Robert A. Heinlein. A fairly early 'Howard', Smith becomes the Senior of the Howard families, who are named for Ira Howard (founder of a project to extend the human lifespan). He is mentioned in four other Heinlein novels, most notably Time Enough for Love.
• Vandal Savage (Green Lantern vol. 1 #10, Winter 1943). Caveman Vandar Adg was bathed in the radiation of a mysterious meteorite, granting him intellect and immortality. In subsequent years, he claims to have been or advised dozens of world leaders.
• Raimon Fosca, the cursed subject of Simone de Beauvoir's 1946 novel All Men Are Mortal.
• Nero (1947). The main protagonist of The Adventures of Nero is a regular man. In 'De Bronnen van Sing Song Li' ('The Sources of Sing Song Li') (1951) he drinks an elixir which gives him eternal life. In 'De Wallabieten' (1968) he drinks a pill which makes people 1.000 year old and in 'De Nerobloemen' ('The Nero Flowers') (1978) he drinks another elixir that gives him eternal life. A wizard in 'Zongo in de Kongo' ('Zongo in the Kongo') (1970) gives him immortality as well.
• Gilbert Nash, the hero of Wilson Tucker's The Time Masters (1953, revised 1971) is the present-day name of an immortal alien who has been stranded on Earth for several thousand years - prior aliases include Gilgamesh.
• Jadis, the White Witch (The Magician's Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) is an inhabitant of Charn, but is brought in to Narnia. She has survived the destruction of Charn by putting herself in eternal sleep, but then eats a silver apple from the Western Wild, and becomes immortal, but is later killed by Aslan.
• The Twilight Zone Long Live Walter Jameson [1960] has a 2,000 year old immortal man Walter Jameson killed by the elderly wife he had abandoned; this episode was later remade as Queen of the Nile (The Twilight Zone) in which the 'beauty' is shown to be a femme fatale who uses murder and black magic to drain the lifeforce out of males to remain young.
• Immortal Man (Strange Adventures #177, June 1965). Gaining immortality from the same meteorite that granted longevity to Vandal Savage, the Immortal Man instantaneously reincarnates when he dies.
• Conrad Nomikos (…And Call Me Conrad, 1966 by Roger Zelazny. Later expanded to the novel This Immortal).
• The original Star Trek Series had several episodes with immortality beings: Miri; The Squire of Gothos; The Alternative Factor; Who Mourns for Adonais and a sequel Pilgrim of Eternity; Wolf in the Fold; The Omega Glory; The Gamesters of Triskelion; Return to Tomorrow; Assignment: Earth;Plato's Stepchildren; Let That Be Your Last Battlefield; The Mark of Gideon; Requiem for Methuselah.
• Star Trek animated cartoon series The Lorelei Signal: Kirk, Spock and McCoy are captured by beautiful femme fatales who use science to drain the lifeforce out of the male crewmen to remain young.
• Favorite Son (Star Trek: Voyager): Ensign Kim finds his life energy drained by an all female society.
• Captain Scarlet (1967), in the British Supermarionation science fiction television series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, was turned nearly immortal (the actual term is 'virtually indestructible;' the process which makes him so is called 'retro-metabolism') after undergoing Mysteronization, from which he either escaped or was released. Captain Black, also in this series, is presumably another Mysteronized immortal; however, he remains under Mysteron control.
• Gilgamesh the immortal (1969), from the Argentine comic of the same name, was an ancient king turned immortal by advanced technology.
• Ra's al Ghul (Batman #232, 1971): Ra's maintained an unnaturally long life through the use of natural phenomena known as Lazarus Pits. Other characters given some measure of immortality by the Lazarus Pit include al Ghul's father Sensei, his daughters Talia al Ghul and Nyssa Raatko, and his agent Whisper A'Daire.
• In a 1973 episode of 'Mission Impossible' aka ['The Fountain'] the IMF team tricks a Crime syndicate boss into thinking he was discovered a group of Immortals with a Fountain of Youth.
• The Night Stalker (1972 film) in which a serial killer is a centuries-old vampire;
• The Night Strangler (film) features a 140 year old physician who uses an elixir from murder victiums to remain young
• Kolchak: The Night Stalker TV series had several episodes of immorality: 'The Ripper' [A seriel killer is a Jack the Ripper](1974); 'Bad Medicine' [A shape shifting shaman/killer); 'Demon In Lace' succubus/femme fatale who uses murder and black magic to drain the lifeforce out of males to remain immortal; 'The Youth killer' in which the 'beauty' is shown to be a femme fatale who uses murder and black magic to drain the lifeforce out of males to remain young.
• Ark II's 1976 last episode 'Orkus' where the crew rapidly ages after encountering a group of Immortals.
• Casca Longinus (Casca: The Eternal Mercenary, 1979): Casca is the Roman soldier who plunges his spear into the side of Jesus on the cross at Golgotha and is cursed to wander the world forever until the two should meet again.
• Nathan Young (Misfits): Nathan is given community service where he is caught up in a storm which gave him the power of immortality.
• Hob Gadling: First appears in issue thirteen, Volume 2 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman saga. He is a soldier returned from the Hundred Years' War, who in conversation with friends in a pub pronounces himself to want nothing to do with Death, regarding it as something humans only do by habit because everyone else does it. By chance he is overheard by Death herself and her brother Dream, and Dream offers him a wager on which he'll pay out if Gadling meets him in the same inn in one hundred years. The rest of the comic concerns Gadling's once-per-century meetings with Dream. It is established that there are other immortals in the Sandman universe, including but not limited to Mad Hettie, a homeless women in London, Thessaly, a witch, and Orpheus.
• The Man from Earth revolves around the protagonist who has secretly survived for more than 14,000 years.
• Time is on my side (Supernatural): In this episode a 19th-century surgeon called Doc Benton has found a way to live forever by replacing organs the moment they stopped working.
• Salem and Ozma are two characters in RWBY who were cursed with immortality by the Gods after their actions inadvertently kickstarted an apocalypse. The two are now cursed to forever roam Remnant whilst trying to defeat the other.

Lists of immortals[edit]

As noted above, specific characters who as a class tend to be immortal such as vampires and robots are not listed individually. Lists of classes whose members are typically immortal include:

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^'How To Kill a Vampire - The Only 5 Methods Known To Man'. Retrieved 30 December 2016.
2. ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 2012-01-02. Retrieved 2011-11-13.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
3. ^Narrative Poems by Alexander Pushkin and by Mikhail Lermontov(PDF). Translated by Charles Johnston. Random House. 1979. pp. 107–108. ISBN0394533259. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
4. ^https://screenrant.com/wolverine-healing-immortal-marvel-comics/

The Immortals (Ancient Greek: Ἀθάνατοι, romanized: Athánatoi) also known as the Persian Immortals was the name given by Herodotus to an elite heavily-armed infantry unit of 10,000 soldiers in the army of the Achaemenid Empire. This force performed the dual roles of both Imperial Guard and standing army. The force consisted mainly of Persians, but also included Medes and Elamites. Essential questions regarding the unit remain unanswered, because authoritative sources are missing.^[2]

Herodotus[edit]

Herodotus describes the 'Immortals' as being heavy infantry, led by Hydarnes; it provided the professional corps of the Persian armies and was kept constantly at a strength of exactly 10,000 men. He stated that the unit's name stemmed from the custom that every killed, seriously wounded, or sick member was immediately replaced with a new one, maintaining the corps as a cohesive entity with a constant strength.^[3]

The Persian denomination of the unit is uncertain.^[4] This elite corps is only called the 'Immortals' in sources based on Herodotus. There is evidence of the existence of a permanent corps from Persian sources, which provided a backbone for the tribal levies who made up the bulk of the Achaemenid armies.^{[citation needed]} These do not however record the name of 'Immortals'. It is suggested that Herodotus' informant has confused the word anûšiya- ('companion') with anauša- ('immortal'),^[3] but this theory has been criticized by Rudiger Schmidt.^[2]

History[edit]

The Immortals played an important role in Cambyses II's conquest of Egypt in 525 BC and Darius I's invasion of ancient India's smaller western frontier kingdoms (western Punjab and Sindh, now in Pakistan) and Scythia in 520 BC and 513 BC. Immortals participated in the Battle of Thermopylae 480 BC and were amongst the Persian occupation troops in Greece in 479 BC under Mardonius.^[3]

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During the final decades of the Achaemenid empire, the role expected of the hazarapatish (commanding officer) of the Immortals was extended to include that of chief minister to the king.^[5] The provision of a bodyguard, in direct attendance on the monarch, had already been allocated to a select thousand strong detachment of the corps.^[5]

Equipment[edit]

Xenophon (Cyropaedia 6.4.1; 7.1.2) describes the guard of Cyrus the Great as having bronze breastplates and helmets, while their horses wore bronze chamfrons and peitrels together with shoulder pieces which also protected the rider’s thighs.Herodotus, instead, describes their armament as follows: wicker shields covered in leather, short spears, quivers, swords or large daggers, slings, bow and arrow. Underneath their robes they wore scale armour coats. The spear counterbalances of the common soldiery were of silver; to differentiate commanding ranks, the officers' spear butt-spikes were golden.^[3] The regiment was followed by a caravan of covered carriages, camels, and mules that transported their supplies, along with concubines and attendants to serve them; this supply train carried special food that was reserved only for their consumption.^[6][7]

The headdress worn by the Immortals is believed to have been the Persian tiara. Its actual form is uncertain, but some sources describe it as a cloth or felt cap which could be pulled over the face to keep out wind and dust in the arid Persian plains.^[3] Surviving Achaemenid colored glazed bricks and carved reliefs represent the Immortals as wearing elaborate robes, hoop earrings and gold jewelry, though these garments and accessories were most likely worn only for ceremonial occasions.^[8]

Legacy[edit]

Sassanid Empire[edit]

The first reoccurrence of the word 'Immortals' is in Roman historians' description of an elite cavalry unit of the army of the Sasanian Empire. Primary sources suggest that they were numbered 10,000 men, with the difference that they were heavy cavalry. However, recent scholarship has doubted that the Roman description of the force, including their name, their size, and that they were modeled on the Achaemenid Immortals, although there may have been one or more of such distinct elite cavalry units in the Sasanian period. Their task was mainly to secure any breakthroughs and to enter battles at crucial stages.^[9]

Byzantine Empire[edit]

The designation 'Immortal' to describe a military unit was used twice during the Byzantine Empire, first as elite heavy cavalry under John I Tzimiskes (r. 969–976) and then later by Nikephoritzes, the chief minister of Emperor Michael VII (r. 1071–1081), as the core of a new central field army, following the disastrous defeat of Manzikert by the Seljuk Turks in 1071.

French Empire[edit]

Many centuries later, during the Napoleonic Wars, French soldiers referred to Napoleon's Imperial Guard as 'the Immortals'.^[10]

Imperial State of Iran[edit]

The Iranian Army under the last Shahanshah included an all volunteer Javidan Guard, also known as the 'Immortals' after the ancient Persian royal guard. The 'Immortals' were based in the Lavizan Barracks in Tehran. By 1978 this elite force comprised a brigade of 4,000–5,000 men, including a battalion of Chieftain tanks. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979 the 'Immortals' were disbanded.^[11]

The signature shield of the Achaemenid Immortals has been adopted in the insignia of the 65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade and 55th Airborne Brigade of the modern Iranian Army.

In popular culture[edit]

Herodotus' account of two warrior elites - the Spartanhoplites and the Immortals - facing each other in battle has inspired a set of rather colorful depictions of the battle, especially in regard of the Immortals:

• In the 1962 film The 300 Spartans the Immortals carry a spear and wicker shields like the actual Immortals. However, they are mostly dressed in black and other dark colors, as opposed to historical depictions.^[11]
• Frank Miller's 1998 comic book 300, and the 2006 feature film adapted from it, present a heavily fictionalized version of the Immortals at the Battle of Thermopylae. These Immortals wear Mengu-style metal masks, appear to be inhuman or disfigured, and carry a pair of swords closely resembling Japanese wakizashis.^[11]
• The History Channel documentary Last Stand of the 300 also features the Immortals as part of the reconstruction of the Thermopylae battle. In this version, the tiara the Immortals habitually wear is depicted here as a full-face black cloth mask transparent enough to see through.^[11]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/persepolis
2. ^ ^abEncyclopaedia Iranica.
3. ^ ^abcdeLendering 1997.
4. ^Charles, Michael (1 January 2011). 'The Sassanian immortals'. Iranica Antiqua: 289–313. doi:10.2143/IA.46.0.2084423.
5. ^ ^abHicks 1975, p. 61.
6. ^John Manuel Cook (1983). The Persian Empire. Schocken Books. p. 105. ISBN978-0-8052-3846-4.
7. ^Kaveh Farrokh (24 April 2007). Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War. Bloomsbury USA. pp. 76–. ISBN978-1-84603-108-3.
8. ^Volume IX, Encyclopædia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition 1983
9. ^Charles, Michael (1 January 2011). 'The Sassanian immortals'. Iranica Antiqua: 289–313. doi:10.2143/IA.46.0.2084423.
10. ^Georges Blond, La Grande Armée, trans. Marshall May (New York: Arms and Armor, 1997), 48, 103, 470
11. ^ ^abcdRastani, Nabil (27 October 2010). 'The Guards of the Shahanshah, How to fight, carry weapons, ride horses and learn archery'.

Sources[edit]

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• Hicks, Jim (1975). The Persians. Time-Life Books.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Lendering, John (1997). ''Immortals''. Livius.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)^{[better source needed]}
• Schmitt, Rüdiger (2004). 'Immortals'. Encyclopaedia Iranica.

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External links[edit]