Peleus
Also known as: King Peleus / son of Aeacus · Family: Achaeans · Role: father of Achilles · First appears: BOOK I
🌐 Also appears in: Greek Mythology — A Family Orrery (as Peleus) · The Metamorphoses of Ovid (as Peleus) · Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (as Peleus) · Greek Tragedy — The Same Myth, Three Voices (as Peleus)
In Book I, Achilles is identified as Peleus’s child, and in Book VII Nestor recalls that, when he was in Peleus’s house, Peleus loved to ask about the lineage of the Argives. In Book IX, Phoenix says that Peleus welcomed him and treated him like an only son and heir, making him rich and setting him over many people. Book XVI names Aeacus as Peleus’s father and Polydora as his daughter; it also recounts that Chiron gave him an ashen spear.
In Book XVIII, Thetis says Peleus was her mortal husband, whom she submitted to marry against her will. In Book XXIII, Patroclus says Peleus took him into his house, treated him kindly, and made him Achilles’s squire. In Book XVII, Hector puts on the immortal armour that the gods had given Peleus, who in his old age gave it to Achilles; Achilles did not grow old wearing his father’s armour.
Relationship record
Life events
- Hector took Achilles’ armour from Patroclus and put it on.(BOOK XVII · 📍 Ilius)
- With: Hector Patroclus Achilles
- “Standing for a while apart from the woeful fight, he changed his armour. His own he sent to the strong city of Ilius and to the Trojans, while he put on the immortal armour of the son of Peleus, which the gods had given to Peleus, who in his age gave it to his son; but the son did not grow old in his father’s armour.”
BOOK I
- child: Achilles “Achilles son of Peleus”
BOOK VII
- with Nestor (interaction) “The old knight Peleus, counsellor and orator among the Myrmidons, loved when I was in his house to question me concerning the race and lineage of all the Argives.”
BOOK VIII
- child: Achilles “the son of Peleus”
BOOK IX
- child: Achilles “your father Peleus sent you from Phthia to Agamemnon”
- protégé: Phoenix “I then fled through Hellas till I came to fertile Phthia, mother of sheep, and to King Peleus, who made me welcome and treated me as a father treats an only son who will be heir to all his wealth. He made me rich and set me over much people”
BOOK XI
- child: Achilles (Peleus is Achilles's father.) “Old Peleus bade his son Achilles fight ever among the foremost and outvie his peers”
BOOK XVI
- parent: Aeacus “Peleus son of Aeacus”
- child: Achilles “Achilles, son of Peleus”
- child: Polydora “Fair Polydora daughter of Peleus bore him”
- with Chiron (interaction) “This was the ashen spear from Mount Pelion, which Chiron had cut upon a mountain top and had given to Peleus”
BOOK XVII
- child: Achilles “the immortal armour of the son of Peleus, which the gods had given to Peleus, who in his age gave it to his son”
BOOK XVIII
- child: Achilles “you shall have grief infinite by reason of the death of that son whom you can never welcome home”
- married with Thetis “Me alone of the marine goddesses did he make subject to a mortal husband, Peleus son of Aeacus, and sorely against my will did I submit to the embraces of one who was but mortal”
BOOK XIX
- child: Achilles “my father, who is now in Phthia weeping for the loss of me his son”
- with Chiron (interaction) “which Chiron had once given to Peleus”
BOOK XX
- child: Achilles (Peleus is Achilles’s father.) “Men say that you are son to noble Peleus, and that your mother is Thetis, fair-haired daughter of the sea.”
BOOK XXI
- child: Achilles “My father is Peleus, son of Aeacus ruler over the many Myrmidons”
- parent: Aeacus “My father is Peleus, son of Aeacus ruler over the many Myrmidons”
BOOK XXII
- child: Achilles “His own father is even such another as myself—Peleus, who bred him and reared him”
BOOK XXIII
- child: Achilles “Spercheius, in vain did my father Peleus vow to you that when I returned home to my loved native land I should cut off this lock and offer you a holy hecatomb;”
- ward: Patroclus “The knight Peleus took me into his house, entreated me kindly, and named me to be your squire;”
BOOK XXIV
- child: Achilles “Think of your father, O Achilles like unto the gods, who is such even as I am, on the sad threshold of old age.”
- married with Thetis “I married her to Peleus, who is above measure dear to the immortals”
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Extracted from the original text of The Iliad. Made with Rho MD.