Peleus

Also Known As: Greek Πηλεύς; son of Aeacus, hence Aeacides; king of Phthia and of the Myrmidons; his son Achilles is called Pelides or Peleides, “son of Peleus”, after him
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Peleus is a mortal with no magic of his own, marked out by his piety, by a wrestler’s grip strong enough to hold a shape-changing goddess, and by the gifts the gods gave him: an ash spear from Chiron, immortal horses and divine armour.
Role in Mythos: He is the exile from Aegina who became king of Phthia, was given the sea goddess Thetis as his wife, and fathered Achilles.
Relation to Humans: Peleus is a man among men, a twice-purified killer who sailed with the Argonauts, hunted the Calydonian boar and later sheltered other fugitives such as Phoenix and Patroclus. In Homer he stands for every father left at home, the old king whose only son will not come back from Troy.

Late in the Iliad the old king of Troy kneels in an enemy’s shelter, takes hold of the hands that killed his son, and begins with one request: remember your father. The father he means is far from Troy. He is at home in Phthia, as old as Priam, and Priam guesses that the neighbours are pressing him hard with nobody there to keep them off. Achilles weeps. The man he weeps for is Peleus, who was once the most fortunate mortal alive.

Achilles says as much himself. Zeus keeps two urns on his floor, one of blessings and one of ills, and to Peleus the gods gave glorious gifts from the day he was born: wealth beyond other men, the kingship of the Myrmidons, a goddess for a wife. Then they gave him a single son, doomed to die young, who sits at Troy doing him no good at all while he ages. Homer never describes Peleus beyond that. Nobody gives him a face or a build. His wife, asked about him, says only that he lies in his halls worn out with grievous old age.

He started on Aegina, an island in the gulf off Athens, as a son of Aeacus, who was called the most pious man in Greece. Aeacus had two sons by his wife Endeis, Peleus and Telamon, and a third, Phocus, by the sea nymph Psamathe, who had turned herself into a seal to get away from him and failed. Phocus was the better athlete. In the version the handbook of Apollodorus gives, the two brothers plotted against him and drew lots, Telamon’s quoit struck him on the head during a match, and Peleus helped carry the body into a wood. Ovid lays the death at Peleus’s own door. Pindar, who was writing for Aeginetan patrons, declines to tell it at all and remarks that silence is often the wisest course. Aeacus banished both sons.

Peleus went north to Phthia, where King Eurytion purified him of the killing and gave him his daughter Antigone and a third of the country. Then came the hunt for the Calydonian boar. Peleus threw a javelin at the animal and hit his father-in-law. He fled again, this time to Iolcus, where King Acastus purified him a second time. He was running out of kings. Ovid routes the exile differently, through the court of Ceyx at Trachis, where Psamathe sent a wolf out of the marshes to slaughter his cattle in payment for her son, and stopped only when Thetis asked her to, turning the wolf to marble with a heifer in its jaws.

At Iolcus he wrestled Atalanta at the funeral games for Pelias, and he caught the eye of his host’s wife. Apollodorus calls her Astydameia and Pindar calls her Hippolyte. She made her offer; he refused it, out of fear, Pindar says, of Zeus who protects the bond between guest and host. She sent word to Antigone that Peleus was about to marry Acastus’s daughter, and Antigone hanged herself. Then she told her husband that Peleus had tried to seduce her. Acastus would not kill a man he had purified, so he took him hunting on Mount Pelion.

The hunt turned into a contest. Peleus worked through the day, and whatever he brought down he left where it fell, cutting out only the tongue and dropping it into his pouch. The others collected his kills and laughed at him that evening for coming back with nothing. He emptied the pouch in front of them and said he had killed as many animals as he had tongues. That night, while he slept on the mountain, Acastus hid his sword under a heap of cow dung and went home, leaving him for the centaurs. They very nearly had him. The centaur Chiron found the sword and gave it back. Peleus returned to Iolcus in due course. Pindar says he took the city alone, without an army; Apollodorus gives him Jason and the Dioscuri for company, and has him kill Astydameia, cut her in pieces and march his men into the city between them.

By then the gods had a use for him. Zeus and Poseidon both wanted the Nereid Thetis, and in Pindar’s telling the goddess Themis stopped them: Thetis was fated to bear a son stronger than his father, and if that father were Zeus or his brother the boy would carry a weapon mightier than the thunderbolt or the trident. Let her have a mortal, Themis said, and let it be Peleus, the most pious man on the plain of Iolcus. Others gave the warning to Prometheus. The lost epic called the Cypria told it another way again: Thetis refused Zeus to please Hera, who had brought her up, and Zeus swore in anger that she would have a mortal husband. Nobody asked Thetis. In the Iliad she says plainly that she endured a mortal’s bed much against her will.

Chiron told Peleus how it was to be done. He was to seize her and hold on, whatever she became. She became fire, then water, then a wild beast, according to Apollodorus; Pindar remembers the fire and the claws and teeth of lions. Ovid sets the struggle in a cave above a curved Thessalian bay ringed with myrtle, and has her go through a bird, a tree and a spotted tigress before Peleus, on advice, ties her with cords while she sleeps. In every telling he kept his grip, heat and salt water and hide, until what he was holding was a woman again.

The wedding was held on Pelion and every god came. Homer has Hera remind them of it: all of them at the feast, Apollo among them with his lyre in his hand. Pindar adds the Muses singing and the sons of Cronus on golden seats. What went wrong there is told in layers. The oldest account that can be traced is the Cypria, which survives in a later summary, and the summary says only that Strife arrived while the gods were feasting and started a dispute among Hera, Athena and Aphrodite over which of them was the fairest. It mentions no apple, and it does not say whether she had been invited. The apple comes later: in the handbook that goes under the name of Apollodorus, Strife throws one as a prize for beauty. The snub is later too. Hyginus and Lucian, both writing under the Roman empire, say that every god was asked except her; Hyginus has her turned away at the door and throwing the apple through it, and Lucian has her slip in unseen with a golden one marked for the fairest. By the time of Colluthus, around AD 500, it is a golden apple fetched from the garden of the Hesperides. Catullus, in a long poem on the wedding, has no Strife in it at all, and keeps Apollo away for good measure. In every version the quarrel was sent to a Trojan herdsman to settle, and the war that came of his verdict killed the bridegroom’s son.

The presents were remembered better than the guest list. Chiron cut an ash on the peak of Pelion and gave Peleus the shaft, and in the Cypria Athena polished it and Hephaestus fitted the head. Poseidon gave the immortal horses Balius and Xanthus, which Homer says the harpy Podarge bore to the West Wind. The gods gave armour. All of it went to Troy with Achilles. When Patroclus borrows his friend’s gear he takes everything except the spear, which is heavy, huge and strong, and which no other Achaean could wield. That is as near as the poem comes to saying what kind of man it was first cut for.

The marriage did not last. Thetis took to laying the infant Achilles in the fire at night to burn the mortal part out of him, and rubbing him with ambrosia by day. Peleus woke, saw his son gasping in the flames, and shouted. She threw the child down screaming, went out of the hall like a breath of wind, and plunged into the sea. She did not come back to the house. Apollonius, who puts Peleus among the Argonauts, gives them one later meeting: she rises from the water beside the beached ship, touches his hand, tells him how the crew must sail at dawn, warns him not to point her out to anyone, and is gone. Chiron raised the boy.

Peleus kept a house that took in other men’s castoffs. Phoenix, blinded by his own father on a false charge, was brought to Chiron for healing and made king of the Dolopians. Patroclus arrived as a boy who had killed a playmate over a game of dice. A man twice purified for homicide was perhaps the natural host.

His strengths were a mortal’s, carried further than most. He had a grip that outlasted a goddess, a respect for a host’s rights that Zeus chose to reward, and for a time the open favour of Olympus, which sat down at his table and armed him from its own forges. He had no power of his own beyond that. Everything remarkable he owned was a gift.

And the gifts did not stay. He could hold Thetis through fire and could not keep her in his house. Spear, horses and armour went to Troy with a son who never returned. Apollodorus has the sons of Acastus drive him out of Phthia in old age, and he dies in exile. Euripides is kinder. In the Andromache the old man lives to see the body of his grandson Neoptolemus carried home from Delphi, and Thetis rises from the sea to tell him to stop grieving, bury the dead, and wait for her in the hollow cave on the headland of Sepias. She will come with fifty Nereids and make him a god, to live with her in the house of Nereus, and from the water he will see Achilles on the island of Leuke. Peleus says he will do as he is told, and sets off for the glens of Pelion.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Peleus in Greek mythology?

Peleus was a mortal hero, the son of Aeacus of Aegina, who became king of Phthia and ruler of the Myrmidons. He married the sea goddess Thetis and was the father of Achilles. He also hunted the Calydonian boar and, in Apollonius, sailed with the Argonauts.

How did Peleus win Thetis as his wife?

Peleus caught Thetis and held on to her while she changed shape, on the advice of the centaur Chiron. Apollodorus says she became fire, water and a wild beast, Pindar speaks of fire and lions, and Ovid lists a bird, a tree and a tigress. The gods had chosen a mortal husband for her because her son was fated to be stronger than his father.

Was Eris really left out of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis?

The oldest traceable account does not say so. The summary of the lost epic Cypria says only that Strife arrived during the feast and started a dispute among Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, with no apple and no mention of an invitation. The thrown apple appears later in Apollodorus, the uninvited Eris appears in Hyginus and Lucian under the Roman empire, and the golden apple of the Hesperides is in Colluthus around AD 500.

Why did Thetis leave Peleus?

Thetis left Peleus after he interrupted her attempt to make their son immortal. She was laying the infant Achilles in the fire by night and anointing him with ambrosia by day, and Peleus cried out when he saw the child in the flames. She threw the baby down, went into the sea and did not return to his house, and Chiron raised Achilles.

What happened to Peleus in the end?

The ancient accounts disagree about the end of Peleus. Apollodorus says the sons of Acastus drove him out of Phthia in old age and he died in exile. In Euripides’ Andromache, Thetis returns after the death of his grandson Neoptolemus and promises to make Peleus a god who will live with her in the house of Nereus.