Peleus
Peleus | |
---|---|
King of Endeis | |
Siblings | Telamon |
Consort | Thetis |
Offspring | Achilles, Polymele[1] |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/The_House_of_Theseus%2C_detail_of_The_first_bath_of_Achilles_mosaic%2C_the_Fates_Clotho_holding_a_spindle_and_distaff%2C_and_Lachenis_holding_a_diptych%2C_South_Wing%2C_Paphos_Archaeological_Park%2C_Cyprus_%2822384092519%29.jpg/170px-thumbnail.jpg)
In Greek mythology, Peleus (/ˈpiːliəs, ˈpiːljuːs/; Ancient Greek: Πηλεύς Pēleus) was a hero, king of Phthia, husband of Thetis and the father of their son Achilles. This myth was already known to the hearers of Homer in the late 8th century BC.[2]
Biography
Peleus was the son of Aeacus[3], king of the island of Aegina,[4] and Endeïs, the oread of Mount Pelion in Thessaly.[5] He married the sea-nymph Thetis with whom he fathered Achilles.
Peleus and his brother Telamon were friends of Jason and both were counted as Argonauts[7]. Though there were no further kings in Aegina, the kings of Epirus claimed descent from Peleus in the historic period.[8]
Mythology
Peleus and his brother
Peleus was purified of the murder of Eurytion in
Astydameia then told Acastus that Peleus had tried to rape her. Acastus took Peleus on a hunting trip atop Mount Pelion and once Peleus fell asleep, Acastus hid his sword away and abandoned him on the mountainside. Peleus woke up and as a group of
Marriage to Thetis
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Dish_Thetis_Peleus_Louvre_CA2569.jpg/280px-Dish_Thetis_Peleus_Louvre_CA2569.jpg)
After Antigone's death, Peleus married the sea-nymph
During the feast, Eris, in revenge for not being invited, produced the Apple of Discord, which started the quarrel that led to the Judgement of Paris and eventually the Trojan War. The marriage of Peleus and Thetis produced seven sons, six of whom died in infancy. The only surviving son was Achilles.
Rescue of Achilles
A nearly identical story is told by Plutarch, in his On Isis and Osiris, of the goddess Isis burning away the mortality of Prince Maneros of Byblos, son of Queen Astarte, and being likewise interrupted before completing the process. Later on in life, Achilles is killed by Paris when he is shot in his vulnerable spot, the heel. This is where the term "Achilles' heel" is derived from.
Peleus gave Achilles to the centaur Chiron, to raise on Mt. Pelion, which took its name from Peleus. In the Iliad, Achilles uses Peleus' immortal horses and also wields his father's spear.
In hero-cult
Though the tomb of Aeacus remained in a shrine enclosure in the most conspicuous part of the port city, a quadrangular enclosure of white marble sculpted with bas-reliefs, in the form in which Pausanias saw it, with the tumulus of Phocus nearby,[15] there was no temenos of Peleus at Aegina. Two versions of Peleus' fate account for this; in Euripides' Troades, Acastus, son of Pelias, has exiled him from Phthia;[16] and subsequently he dies in exile; in another, he is reunited with Thetis and made immortal.
In antiquity, according to a fragment of
The only other reference to veneration of Peleus comes from the Christian Clement of Alexandria, in his polemical Exhortation to the Greeks. Clement attributes his source to a "collection of marvels" by a certain "Monimos" of whom nothing is known, and claims, in pursuit of his thesis that daimon-worshipers become as cruel as their gods, that in "Pella of Thessaly human sacrifice is offered to Peleus and Cheiron, the victim being an Achaean".[20] Of this, the continuing association of Peleus and Chiron is the most dependable detail.[21]
In Athenian tragedy
A Peleus by Sophocles is lost. He appears as a character in Euripides' tragedy Andromache (c. 425 BC).
Gallery with Thetis
Wedding
Notes
- ^ Plutarch, Aristides 20.6
- ^ Peleus is mentioned in Homer's Odyssey during the conversation between Odysseus and the dead Achilles.
- ^ Apollodorus, 1.9.16
- ^ The island lies in the Saronic Gulf opposite the coast of Epidaurus; it had once been called Oenone, Pausanias was informed.
- ^ In poetry he and Telamon are sometimes the Endeides, the "sons of Endeis"; see, for example, Pausanias 2.29.10.
- ^ Plutarch, Aristides 20.6
- ^ Apollodorus, 1.9.16
- ^ Pausanias, 2.29.4.
- ^ "A witless moment" (Apollonius, Argonautica, I. 93,
- ^ Apollonius of Rhodes, 1.90-93, in Peter Green's translation (2007:45).
- ^ Aristophanes, The Clouds 1063-1067
- ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.219-74
- ^ Photius, Bibliotheca excerpts - GR
- ^ Photius, Bibliotheca excerpts, 190.46 - EN
- ^ Pausanias, 2.29.6-7
- ^ Scholia on Euripides, Troades 1123-28 note that in some accounts the sons of Acastus have cast him out, and that he was received by Molon in his exile
- Oxyrhynchus papyri, noted by Lewis Richard Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality: the Gifford Lectures, "The Cults of Epic Heroes: Peleus" 1921:310f.
- ^ Farnell 1921:310f; Farnell remarks on "some ethnic tradition that escapes us, but which led the inhabitants to attach the name of Peleus to some forgotten grave," so deep was the cultural discontinuity between Mycenaean Greece and the rise of hero-cults in the 8th century BC.
- ^ Greek Anthology, 7.2.
- ^ George William Butterworth, ed. and tr.Clement of Alexandria, "Exhortation to the Greeks" 1919:93.
- ^ By way of apology for Clement, Farnell suggests "human sacrifice was occasionally an adjunct of hero-cults, and this at Pella may have been an exceptional rite prescribed at a crisis by some later oracle." (Farnell 1921:311). Dennis D. Hughes, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece (Routledge, 1991) offers a skeptical view of the actuality of human sacrifices during historical times.
References
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- Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
- Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke I, ix, 16 and III, ix,2 and xii, 6- xiii,7; Epitome vi, 13.
- Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica translated by Robert Cooper Seaton (1853–1915), R. C. Loeb Classical Library Volume 001. London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1912. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
- Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica. George W. Mooney. London. Longmans, Green. 1912. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Apollonius Rhodius, ArgonauticaIV,805- 879
- Catullus, Poem 64
- Homer, Homeri Opera in five volumes. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1920. .
- Homer, Iliad XVIII, 78–87
- Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses translated by Brookes More (1859–1942). Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses. Hugo Magnus. Gotha (Germany). Friedr. Andr. Perthes. 1892. Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
- MetamorphosesVIII, 299–381.
- Euripides, Andromache with an English translation by David Kovacs. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1994. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.