Peleus- Greek HeroHero"King of Phthia"

Son of Aeacus

Peleus was the son of Aeacus, king of Aegina, and Endeis. Through Aeacus he was grandson of Zeus, who had loved the nymph Aegina and fathered a son on the island that bore her name. When plague emptied the island, Zeus transformed its ants into men: the Myrmidons, the warrior people Peleus would one day lead. His brother Telamon would father Ajax the Great.

Exile and Bloodshed

Peleus and Telamon murdered their half-brother Phocus, a son of Aeacus by the Nereid Psamathe. Apollodorus records two versions of the killing: in one, Peleus struck Phocus with a stone discus during a contest; in the other, Telamon threw the discus while Peleus finished the victim with a sword. Aeacus discovered the crime and banished both sons from Aegina.

Peleus fled to Phthia in Thessaly, where King Eurytion purified him of blood-guilt and gave him his daughter Antigone in marriage along with a third of the kingdom. During the Calydonian Boar Hunt, Peleus accidentally killed Eurytion with a miscast javelin. He fled again, this time to Iolcus, where King Acastus purified him of the new bloodshed.

Mount Pelion

At Iolcus, Acastus's wife Astydameia fell in love with Peleus. When he rejected her, she told her husband he had forced himself on her. Acastus could not kill a guest he had purified without violating sacred hospitality, so he devised another punishment. He took Peleus hunting on Mount Pelion, and when the hero fell asleep from exhaustion, Acastus stole his divine sword and left him unarmed among the wild centaurs.

The centaur Chiron found Peleus before the others did. He retrieved the sword and nursed Peleus back to health. Peleus would later entrust his son Achilles to this same centaur.

After Pelion, Peleus sailed with Jason on the Argo and fought alongside Heracles in the first sack of Troy, when Heracles attacked King Laomedon for breaking his oath. At Pelias's funeral games, the huntress Atalanta threw Peleus in the wrestling match.

The Winning of Thetis

A prophecy revealed that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father. Pindar attributes it to Themis; Aeschylus, to Prometheus. Zeus and Poseidon had both desired Thetis, but the prophecy made her dangerous to any god whose son might overthrow him. They decreed she must marry a mortal, and Peleus was chosen.

Thetis had no desire to wed a mortal. Chiron told Peleus to find her in her sea cave on the coast of Magnesia and hold fast through whatever shape she took. She shifted from fire to serpent, from lion to water. Peleus held on until she returned to her true form and yielded.

Their wedding on Mount Pelion was the last feast the gods and mortals shared. Every Olympian came. Chiron gave Peleus an ash-wood spear cut from a tree on the summit, a weapon so heavy only Achilles would wield it. Poseidon gifted the immortal horses Xanthus and Balius, born of the Harpy Podarge and the West Wind.

But Eris, goddess of discord, had not been invited. She appeared and cast a golden apple inscribed "For the Fairest" among the guests. The quarrel over the apple led to the Judgment of Paris, and from there to the Trojan War.

Father of Achilles

When Achilles was born, Thetis tried to make him immortal. In one telling she held him by the heel and dipped him in the Styx. In Apollodorus, she anointed him with ambrosia and placed him in fire to burn away his mortality. Peleus discovered the fire and cried out. Thetis abandoned husband and child in fury and returned to the sea.

Peleus gave the boy to Chiron on Mount Pelion. The centaur raised Achilles on the marrow of lions and the entrails of bears, and taught him warfare and music. When the call came for Troy, Peleus was too old to fight. He gave Achilles the ash-wood spear and the immortal horses, and watched his only son leave for a war from which he would not return.

Old Age and Sorrow

Peleus's son died at Troy. In the Iliad, when Priam came to ransom Hector's body, Achilles spoke of his father: Peleus, once blessed with a kingdom and a goddess for a wife, now sat alone in Phthia without his son to protect him. Both men wept. Priam for his dead son. Achilles for the father he would never see again.

In Euripides's Andromache, Peleus appears on stage in old age, defending his grandson Neoptolemus's captive woman against her enemies. At the play's end, Thetis rises from the sea and promises her former husband a place among the immortals. She would carry him to the Islands of the Blessed. Their son had died mortal at Troy. The father would live forever.