text: The city was visited in 333 BC by Alexander the Great, who envisioned himself as the new Achilles and carried the Iliad with him, but his court biographers do not mention the spear; however, it was shown in the time of Pausanias in the 2nd century CE.Achilles, Ajax and a game of petteia Numerous paintings on pottery have suggested a tale not mentioned in the literary traditions.At some point in the war, Achilles and Ajax were playing a board game (petteia).They were absorbed in the game and oblivious to the surrounding battle.The Trojans attacked and reached the heroes, who were saved only by an intervention of Athena.Worship and heroic cult The tomb of Achilles, extant throughout antiquity in Troad, was venerated by Thessalians, but also by Persian expeditionary forces, as well as by Alexander the Great and the Roman emperor Caracalla.Achilles' cult was also to be found at other places, e.g.on the island of Astypalaea in the Sporades, in Sparta which had a sanctuary, in Elis and in Achilles' homeland Thessaly, as well as in the Magna Graecia cities of Tarentum, Locri and Croton, accounting for an almost Panhellenic cult to the hero.The cult of Achilles is illustrated in the 500 BC Polyxena sarcophagus, which depicts the sacrifice of Polyxena near the tumulus of Achilles.Strabo (13.1.32) also suggested that such a cult of Achilles existed in Troad: The spread and intensity of the hero's veneration among the Greeks that had settled on the northern coast of the Pontus Euxinus, today's Black Sea, appears to have been remarkable.An archaic cult is attested for the Milesian colony of Olbia as well as for an island in the middle of the Black Sea, today identified with Snake Island (Ukrainian Зміїний, Zmiinyi, near Kiliya, Ukraine).