Both Homer and Apollodorus name Pheres among the sons that queenly Tyro bore to Cretheus. In the Nekyia, having borne Pelias and Neleus to Poseidon, Tyro bears to her husband Cretheus three sons — Aeson, Pheres, and Amythaon, the last of whom fought from chariots. Apollodorus repeats the same three at Iolcus: Cretheus founded the city, married Tyro daughter of Salmoneus, and had by her Aeson, Amythaon, and Pheres. Pheres is thus the middle brother of the Iolcian Aeolids.2Homer · Pseudo-Apollodorus — Odyssey 11.235–259; Bibliotheca 1.9.11

His own act, in Apollodorus, is a founding. Pheres son of Cretheus founded Pherae in Thessaly and begat Admetus and Lycurgus — so the Iolcian line throws off a Thessalian branch bearing his city's name. The same author makes him root of a wider kinship: it is Idomene, daughter of Pheres, whom his brother Amythaon married at Pylus to father the seers Bias and Melampus.3Pseudo-Apollodorus — Bibliotheca 1.9.11, 1.9.14

Through his son Lycurgus, Pheres reaches a grief that would haunt Nemea. Apollodorus tells that Lycurgus settled at Nemea and, marrying Eurydice — or, as some say, Amphithea — begat Opheltes, the child afterwards called Archemorus. So the second of Pheres' sons seeds the line that ends in the most famous of infant deaths.4Pseudo-Apollodorus — Bibliotheca 1.9.14

But Pheres' name lives chiefly in his elder son. Apollodorus, Homer, and Hyginus all reckon Admetus as son of Pheres. When Admetus reigned over Pherae, Apollo served him as a thrall and helped him win Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, by yoking a lion and a boar to a car — the bridal contest that Apollodorus and Hyginus both tell — while Homer's catalogue knows Eumelus, son of Admetus, whom Alcestis bore, and whose swift mares race at Patroclus' funeral. So the city Pheres founded becomes the seat of the Alcestis story.5Homer · Pseudo-Apollodorus · Hyginus — Iliad 2.711–715, 23.376; Bibliotheca 1.9.15; Fabulae 50–51, 173