Thetis

But Hera, when she saw him, knew that he and silver-footed Thetis, the daughter of the Old One of the Sea, had been planning mischief, so she at once began to upbraid him.

meanwhile stay where you are with your ships, nurse your anger [ mênis] against the Achaeans, and hold aloof from fight.

" Zeus sat for a while silent, and without a word, but Thetis still kept firm hold of his knees, and besought him a second time.

" "Surely you will not also claim to have been born of a goddess mother, like Achilles?

and there being no arms, but Hector having them—for here one true thing said escaped him—he says Thetis brought from heaven the arms made by Hephaestus;

for he not only imitated a form very near to the work of creation, naming the god's locks, and besides his chin straightway at the beginning of his poem, when he says that Thetis supplicated on behalf of the honour of her son;

And here I dwell upon the boundaries of Phthia and Pharsalia’s town, where Thetis erst, the goddess of the sea, abode with Peleus apart from the world, avoiding the throng of men;

So now they have torn and are dragging me from the altar of Thetis, the goddess of thy chiefest adoration and the mother of thy gallant son, without any proper trial, yea, and without waiting for my absent master;

for Peleus and his descendants hold it in honour as a symbol of his marriage with the Nereid.

Achilles next, that nimble runner, swift on his feet as the wind, whom Thetis bore and Chiron trained, I saw upon the beach, racing in full armor along the shingle, and straining every nerve to beat a team of four horses, as he sped round the track on foot;

Peleus, who wedded the daughter of Nereus.

It was there the gods celebrated the marriage feast of Peleus.

Thetis had offered it as a prize, but the Trojan prisoners and Athena were the judges.

You must have been present at the funeral of many a hero, when the young men gird themselves and make ready to contend for prizes on the death of some great chieftain, but you never saw such prizes as silver-footed Thetis offered in your honor;

Your mother, when she heard, came with her immortal nymphs from out of the sea, and the sound of a great wailing went forth over the waters so that the Achaeans quaked for fear.

And indeed not only here do we see his deep distress, but he mourned so sorely for him, that although his mother Thetis cautioned him and told him that if he would refrain from following up his enemies and leave the death of Patroclus unavenged, he should return to his home and die an old man in his own land, whereas if he should take vengeance, he should soon end his life, he chose fidelity to th …

Now to show that it was possible for him to have been saved had he refrained from avenging the death of Patroclus, read what Thetis says.

And Peleus married Thetis, too, through his modesty.

And then she went off and left him;

this is why the poet makes Thetis not specify her services to Zeus;

The Nereids, leaving Euboea’s headlands, brought from Hephaestus’ anvil his shield-work of golden armor, up to Pelion and the glens at the foot of holy Ossa, the Nymphs’ watch-tower.

For I will not disgrace my Trojan fame, nor, on my return to Hellas, will I receive great blame—I who robbed Thetis of Achilleus, and saw the slaughter of Aias, son of Telamon, and the son of Neleus made childless;

In the horse-drawn chariot, they set me as a bride on the sands of Aulis, oh woe, a wretched bride for the son of the Nereid, alas!

But is the son of Thetis the Nereid still alive?

Falls than to Thetis in her azure sea;

Howbeit an easier anguish even to me

And the silver-shod goddess Thetis was subject to Peleus and brought forth lion-hearted Achilles, the destroyer of men.

Telamon won the meed of valor in an expedition with Heracles against Laomedon, and Peleus, having distinguished himself in the battle with the Centaurs and having won glory in many other hazardous enterprises, wedded Thetis, the daughter of Nereus, he a mortal winning an immortal bride.

So great a passion for the hardships of that expedition and for participation in it took possession not only of the Greeks and the barbarians, but also of the gods, that they did not dissuade even their own children from joining in the struggles around Troy;

For according to your argument all the demigods would be bad who died at Troy, including the son of Thetis, who so despised danger, in comparison with enduring any disgrace, that when his mother (and she was a goddess) said to him, as he was eager to slay Hector, something like this, I believe, My son, if you avenge the death of your friend Patroclus and kill Hector, you yourself shall die;

Nor must anyone tell falsehoods about Proteus and Thetis, nor in any tragedy or in other poems bring in Hera disguised as a priestess collecting alms for the life-giving sons of Inachus, the Argive stream.

Then, though there are many other things that we praise in Homer, this we will not applaud, the sending of the dream by Zeus to Agamemnon, nor shall we approve of Aeschylus when his Thetis avers that Apollo singing at her wedding, foretold the happy fortunes of her issue — Their days prolonged, from pain and sickness free, And rounding out the tale of heaven’s blessings, Raised the proud paean, making glad my heart.

And after this Achilles conceives a desire to behold Helen, and Aphrodite and Thetis brought them together to the same place.

Zeus takes counsel with Thetis about the Trojan War.

But Thetis too bewailed her son.