Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Peleus.
The gallery
Peleus Seizing Thetis
Unknown (Boeotian black-figure painter), c. 500–475 BC
On this Boeotian black-figure dish the hero Peleus locks his arms around the sea-nymph Thetis, who twists and shape-shifts in a desperate bid to escape his grip. Warned by the prophecy that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father, the gods steered her away from Zeus and toward a mortal husband; to win her, Peleus had to wrestle her down as she transformed in turn into fire, water, a lion and a serpent. The vase captures the decisive moment of that struggle, the founding episode that would lead to the birth of Achilles. Now in the Musée du Louvre (CA 2569).
Peleus Consigns the Young Achilles to Chiron's Care
Edinburgh Painter, c. 500 BC
This white-ground lekythos attributed to the Edinburgh Painter shows Peleus, king of Phthia, handing over his infant son Achilles to the wise centaur Chiron, who will rear and educate the boy on Mount Pelion. The scene distills Peleus's role as the mortal father at the heart of the Achilles saga: having won the goddess Thetis, he entrusts their child to the gentlest of the centaurs for a heroic upbringing. The vessel is held by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis
Peter Paul Rubens, 1636
Rubens's luminous oil sketch on panel stages the celebrated wedding feast of the mortal Peleus and the goddess Thetis, attended by the assembled Olympian gods. It is at this banquet that the slighted goddess Eris hurls the golden Apple of Discord 'to the fairest,' setting in motion the Judgment of Paris and ultimately the Trojan War. Peleus, the only mortal granted a divine bride, presides over a union whose celebration sows the seeds of catastrophe. The panel is in the Art Institute of Chicago (1947.108).