Thetis

alas, that you should be at once short of life and long of sorrow above your peers:

" Thetis wept and answered, "My son, woe is me that I should have borne or suckled you.

even now she is always railing at me before the other gods and accusing me of giving aid to the Trojans.

" "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;

Dost see the image of Thetis with her eye upon thee?

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

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;

Agamemnon:

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.

Your mother brought us a golden vase to hold them - gift of Bacchus, and work of Hephaistos himself;

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.

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 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 …

And then she went off and left him;

And Peleus married Thetis, too, through his modesty.

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;

But is the son of Thetis the Nereid still alive?

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!

Howbeit an easier anguish even to me

Falls than to Thetis in her azure sea;

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;

But the immortal minds of the gods did not accomplish that marriage for them, when they heard the divine prophecies.

The fruit of her words did not perish, for they say that Zeus shared the common concern even for the marriage of Thetis.

All this was remembered even by the assembly of the blessed gods, when Zeus and splendid Poseidon contended for marriage with Thetis, each of them wanting her to be his lovely bride;

And the Muses began with a prelude to Zeus, then sang first of divine Thetis and of Peleus;

Thetis rules in Phthia, and Neoptolemus in the expanses of Epirus, where jutting ox-pasturing headlands, beginning in Dodona, slope down to the Ionian sea.

Among old examples of excellence is king Peleus, who rejoiced when he cut a matchless spear, and who alone, without an army, captured Iolcus, and caught the sea-nymph Thetis after many struggles.

From that time forward, the son of Thetis exhorted him in deadly war never to post himself far from his own man-subduing spear.

Peleus and Cadmus are counted among them, and Achilles who was brought there by his mother, when she had persuaded the heart of Zeus with her prayers—

And Peleus’ son, the only child whom immortal Thetis bore in Phthia, had his life taken in battle by the bow, and roused the wailing of the Danaans while his body was burning on the pyre.

yet they are said to have attained the highest prosperity of all mortal men, since they heard the Muses of the golden headbands singing on the mountain and in seven-gated Thebes, when Cadmus married ox-eyed Harmonia, and Peleus married the famous daughter of wise Nereus.

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.

Zeus takes counsel with Thetis about the Trojan War.

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

But Thetis too bewailed her son.