History
Origin[]
Thetis was a Sea Goddess to the Greeks,[2] a Sea Nymph[4][3]/Nereid,[3] and the daughter of Sea God Nereus.[1]
Raising Hephaestus[]
When Hera gave birth to Hephaestus, she was mortified by his grotesque physical appearance, and threw him from the top of Mount Olympus.[3][4]
He was rescued and adopted by Thetis and her fellow Nereid Eurynome educating and raising him in their grotto on the Isle of Lemnos, where Hephaestus took great pleasure in crafting inventions[3] in the workshop she gave him.[4]
Thetis wore some of his creations, and Hera soon examined them and realized her mistake, and tried to make amends by arranging his marriage to Aphrodite, most beautiful of the goddesses.[4]
Wedding[]
To please Hera, Thetis avoided a union with her husband Zeus. Enraged, Zeus swore she would become the wife of Peleus, a mortal and the greatest of Achaean warriors.[2]
Their wedding was celebrated on Mount Pelion by many Gods (including Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo, Cheiron the Centaur, Hermes, Zeus, etc.) who brought gifts, among them Cheiron's spear, crafted by Athena and Hephaestus.[2]
The wedding was interrupted by the arrival of Eris, Goddess of strife and discord, infuriated to having not been invited. She brought a gift, an apple, for the fairest, and threw it in the assembly, causing Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite to claim it. That event would lead to the Trojan War.[2]
She bore at least seven sons, the seventh being Achilles, who was foretold by the priest Calchas that without him, Troy would never be taken.[2]
Thetis dipped Achilles into the sacred Styx River to render him invulnerable, but held him by the ankle, which wasn't dipped and remained vulnerable.[2]
As Achilles grew up, Thetis foresaw that he would gain glory in the Trojan War, but never return home alive, she disguised him as a girl and sent him to the court of Lycomedes, King of Scyros.[2]
Trojan War[]
When the Achaeans started gathering to help Menelaus retrieve his wife Helen who had been taken by Trojan prince Paris, they went to Scyros where Odysseus tricked Achilles into revealing himself, and he accepted, despite his mother's wishes, to join them, leading his Myrmidon warriors.[2]
After arriving at Troy, Achilles called out to his mother. As she knew what he wished, she brought Aphrodite so the goddesses could bring him before Helen for him to judge if she was worth a war, which he agreed, leading him to push his comrades to pursue the siege.[5]
When her son died, she wept the most, and raged at Zeus for making her son the mightiest of men, but with a brief life span. Her father Nereus mourned Achilles along with all the sea gods.[1] On the funeral pyre of her son, Thetis gave away his Hephaestus-forged armor to the one who who rescued his body from the Trojans (though Ajax was the one to do it, Odysseus was awarded the prize as he had guarded Ajax's retreat).[6]
When the Achaean fleet moved to Tenedos in a trick to lure the Trojans that they abandoned the siege of their city (while a squad of warriors entered the city hidden in a massive wooden horse), Thetis intervened, sending a driving wind to speed them up on their return to Troy.[7]
At the end of war, Thetis forewarned her grandson and Achilles' son Neoptolemus of the tragedies which would befall some of the Achaeans returning home, and he traveled home by overland, along with his father's mentor Old Phoenix (who died on the road and was buried by Neoptolemus).[7]Attributes
Powers
See Also
- 11 appearance(s) of Thetis (Earth-616)
- 2 mention(s) of Thetis (Earth-616)
- 1 image(s) of Thetis (Earth-616)