Peleus

Also known as: PEL · Family: Greeks · Role: father of Achilles · First appears: Sophocles, Philoctetes — Scene 2

Peleus was the son of Aeacus and brother of Phocus, whose murder he later reproached Aeacus for committing. Poseidon tamed swift horses and gave them to Peleus, and at Pelion he married Thetis at the gods’ feast, where the Muses celebrated the union. He later reared Achilles alone and afar, making him “the star / Of Hellas, and swift help of war”; after Achilles’ death, Philoctetes asked whether Peleus’ offspring was dead. Peleus was also elder-kin to Neoptolemus and Molossus.

After Acastus expelled him from his realm, Peleus was at Phthia when Menelaus seized Andromache and intended to kill her. Peleus ordered her chains removed, threatened the guards who disobeyed, and told Menelaus, “Thy head I with this sceptre / Will smite.” He rescued Andromache and her child, though he opposed her connection with Helen’s family and counted Menelaus, Helen, and Paris as enemies; Andromache regarded him as her protector, while Hermione feared that Peleus would pursue her from his grandson’s house.

After the deaths of his sons, Peleus was left without children or descendants. Thetis then ordered him to carry Achilles’ slaughtered son to Delphi for burial and promised, “From all the ills which wait on human life / Releasing, thee immortal will I make,” so that he would live with her as a god in Nereus’ watery mansions.