Thetis

Zeus and Poseidon competed for Thetis, daughter of Nereus and Doris. A prophecy then warned that any son she bore would become greater than his father. The two gods abandoned their pursuit.

The accounts name different sources for the warning. Themis delivered it in one tradition. Prometheus warned Zeus in another, saying that Thetis’s son would become ruler of heaven. One account instead names the Fates. The warning prevented Zeus from marrying Thetis.

The accounts also differ over Zeus’s reason for arranging a mortal marriage. Some say that Thetis had rejected him because Hera had raised her. Zeus became angry and decided that Thetis must marry a mortal. He swore that she would never marry an immortal. Hera then chose Peleus, described as the noblest of mortals, to become her husband.

Cheiron advised Peleus to seize Thetis and hold her firmly. She changed her shape as he tried to capture her, but Peleus eventually overcame her with Cheiron’s help. Thetis married Peleus, and the gods arranged their wedding. Their son was Achilles. He became greater than his father in power and renown, fulfilling the prophecy that had ended the gods’ contest for Thetis.

Calchas declared that Troy could not be taken without Achilles, who was then nine years old. Thetis knew that he was fated to die if he joined the expedition, so she disguised him in women’s clothing and entrusted him to King Lycomedes of Scyros. Achilles was young, slim and beautiful. He lived among Lycomedes’s daughters, who danced and played at ball, and the chiefs searching the island did not recognise him. During his stay, he had intercourse with Deidamia, Lycomedes’s daughter. She bore a son called Pyrrhos, later known as Neoptolemos.

Odysseus came to the court in disguise as a Phoenician merchant. He brought fine cloths, embroideries, gold jewellery, amber necklaces and other goods, along with women’s finery and musical instruments. Among these he placed a shield, spear and sword. He then had a trumpet sounded, with shouts and the clash of arms. Thinking that the palace was under attack, Achilles threw off the women’s clothing and seized the weapons. In another version, he revealed himself simply by instinctively taking the arms when they were placed among the ornaments. His military training exposed him, and he went with the Greeks to Troy. Phoenix, son of Amyntor, accompanied him.

The story differs in Homer. There, Achilles remained with Peleus and eagerly left when Nestor and Odysseus came to fetch him and Patroclus. The episode on Scyros was also absent from the Cypria. Another account places Achilles’s arrival on Scyros after the Greek attack on Mysia, when he married Deidameia.

Peleus held Thetis while she resisted him. She burned him, drenched him, mauled him, stung him, and covered him with sticky sepia ink, but he did not release her. At last she yielded, and they lay together. Thetis, daughter of Nereus and Doris, married Peleus, the mortal king. Their son was Achilles.

The wedding took place outside Cheiron’s cave on Mount Pelion. The Olympian gods attended and sat on twelve thrones. Hera raised the bridal torch. Zeus, reconciled to his defeat, gave Thetis away. The Fates and the Muses sang. Ganymedes poured nectar, and the fifty Nereids danced in a spiral on the white sands. Centaurs arrived wearing grass chaplets and carrying fir darts. They prophesied good fortune.

Cheiron gave Peleus a spear. Athene had polished its ash shaft, cut on the summit of Pelion, and Hephaestus had forged its blade. The gods gave Peleus golden armour. Poseidon added the deathless horses Balius and Xanthus, born to the West Wind and the Harpy Podarge.

Eris, goddess of discord, was connected with the wedding. She cast a golden apple among the gathering. It bore the words “to the fairest”, or Eris declared that the fairest should take it. Hera, Aphrodite, and Athene claimed it, but Zeus refused to judge between them. He sent them to Paris, prince of Troy, who was said to be the proper judge of beauty. The dispute led to the events that caused the Trojan War.

The women washed Achilles’ body and laid it on a bier beneath a great white mantle. They wept and sang dirges. Briseis led the mourning. She had loved Achilles more than her own country, father, and brothers, whom he had slain in war. The Greek princes stood around the body, weeping and cutting off their long yellow hair as a sign of grief and an offering to the dead.

Then Thetis came from the sea with the deathless maidens of the waters. They rose from their chambers beneath the sea and moved towards the shore in great numbers. Their song carried along the coast, and fear seized the Greeks. Nestor told the young Achaeans not to flee, because the woman from the sea was Achilles’ mother, and the maidens had come to see him. The daughters of the old man of the sea stood around Achilles and wept. They clothed him in immortal raiment.

The nine Muses also came. They raised their voices in lament, calling and answering one another. Every Argive wept as they sang. Mortals and immortals mourned Achilles for seven and ten days. On the eighteenth day, they gave him to the flames. They sacrificed many fat sheep and oxen around the pyre. Achilles was burned in the raiment of the gods, with rich resins and honey. Horse and foot heroes clashed their armour around the pyre, and their footsteps sounded like a great multitude.

When the heavenly flames had finished their work, the mourners gathered Achilles’ white bones at daybreak. They laid them in ointments and pure wine. Thetis brought a golden vase to hold them. It was a gift from Dionysus. Thus the gods and mortals completed the funeral honours for Achilles beside his dead body.

Patroclus had fallen, and Hector had taken Achilles’s armour. When the news reached Achilles among the Greeks, grief overwhelmed him. Those near him feared that he might destroy himself. Antilochus saw his distress. Achilles blamed himself for allowing his resentment to keep him from helping Patroclus. He declared that he would seek Hector at once.

Thetis heard her son’s cries from the sea caves where she lived. She came to him and asked why he suffered. Achilles said that he would no longer remain among men unless he made Hector pay for Patroclus’s death. Thetis reminded him that fate had decreed his own death soon after Hector’s. Achilles accepted this. He said that he would first kill the man who had destroyed his friend, then meet death when it came.

Achilles had no armour because Hector possessed the equipment he had lost. Thetis therefore asked him to wait until morning. She promised to bring new arms made by Hephaestus, the divine armourer. Achilles agreed not to leave at once. Another account says that Thetis promised armour from Hephaestus, which would be better than the suit Hector had taken.

Thetis went to Hephaestus’s palace and found him at his forge, making tripods for his own use. They moved forward when needed and withdrew when dismissed. Hephaestus made the new armour at her request. When Thetis brought it to Achilles, it was worthy of its maker. No man on earth had carried armour like it, and it would protect Achilles in his battle with Hector.