• 1  Ph. Borgeaud, “Note sur le Sépias. Mythe et histoire,” Kernos 8 (1995), p. 23-29.

1In his Kernos article of 1995, Philippe Borgeaud made a convincing assertion of the mythical and religious connections binding the sea-goddess Thetis with the Sepias promontory in Thessaly.1 This presented another dimension of a figure most commonly viewed through her Iliadic persona as the grieving mother of Achilles. It also valuably brought to the fore the cuttle-fish associa­tions of Thetis, which tend to be neglected in scholarship but which, argued Borgeaud, are important in understanding her Thessalian divine persona.

• 2  See Ph. Borgeaud, The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece, trans. K. Atlass and J. Redfield, Chicago, 19 (...)

4Thessaly is a rich land in myth. It is rich in heroes, such as Achilles, Admetos, Asklepios, Jason, Pelias, Peleus, Peirithoös, Protesilaos. As homeland of the Aiakid clan which produced Achilles, it is a significant backdrop to the Trojan war. So Thessalian names would have been part of the epic and the oral tradi­tions, and in this dimension the region does not lack glory. At the same time, these myths do not come to us from Thessalian sources, and from the ancient historian’s point of view Thessalian culture and society remain difficult to reconstruct. Just as Borgeaud in his work on Pan has expressed despair of ever attaining a vision of the ‘real Arkadia’,2 so we must here resign ourselves to being unable to establish myths as Thessalian products, and must acknowledge the certainty of perceptions and stories being imposed on the Thessalian setting from without. However, the Thessalian setting is of the greatest significance. One major aim of this paper is to shed further light on an aspect of Thetis that runs alongside, and rather counter to, the pervasive characterisation of epic, and to reveal her as a component within a strong network of intertwined mythology set around Pelion and the Magnesian littoral. That this Thetis is not ‘authentically’ or ‘purely’ Thessalian is in fact to be welcomed, as it allows one to regard the region within a much broader structure of story-telling.

• 7  W. Mannhardt,Antike Wald- und Feldkulte aus nordeuropäischer Überlieferung, Berlin, 1877, Bd. II, (...)

6When Thetis leaves Peleus, the infant Achilles is consigned to the centaur’s care, and receives from him tuition in various skills (for sources, see below). So strong are the Thetis-Peleus-Cheiron links that one scholar has even posited the existence of a lost epic, the Peleis, treating the episodes of the couple’s wedding and the childhood of Achilles, and Cheiron’s benign contributions.7 This is impossible to prove, especially the title, but is not on the face of it unlikely.

• 8  Herodotos, VII, 191, 2. The passage does not describe an offering by locals, but by the stranded P (...)
• 9  Wace and Droop excavated at Theotokou, ‘the traditional site of Sepias’, where they found, beneath (...)
• 10  Scholion on Lykophron, Alexandra, 175.

7The cult connections are less tangible: they rest largely on proximity. Thetis’ worship on Sepias is mentioned in Herodotos,8 but a degree of uncertainty remains as to quite where this promontory was, though we know it to have been on the ‘arm’ of Pelion.9 However, it is hard to ascertain whether Thetis had an actual temenos in this area – as a single late source suggests10 – or whether the area was simply sacred to her in a less minutely defined way. The latter is more likely, and does not of course preclude worship; it would be a gross misrepresentation of Greek religious behaviour as a whole to suggest that it always took place within man-made structures.

• 11  The text in question was previously attributed to Dikaiarchos,and appears under his name in FHistG (...)
• 12  Herakleides fr. 2, 12 (ed. Pfister).
• 13  Both deities in fact had other sites of worship in Thessaly: Cheiron in a cave near Pharsalos wher (...)

8Cheiron too seems to have enjoyed a general cultic association with a patch of territory, in his case the summit of Mount Pelion, with whose herbal lore he is thoroughly enmeshed. However, unlike Thetis, we also have a specific structure, though a natural one: the cave where, in myth, Cheiron dwelt, and in cult, he was worshipped. The Hellenistic geographer Herakleides tells of a ritual which brought an annual procession of young men to the mountain wrapped in new fleeces; they probably visited both the Cheironion – the cave of Cheiron – and the sanctuary of Zeus Akraios.11 Herakleides also provides another detail of Cheiron’s role as a deity in this region: his association with a local clan of healers.12 This and other features of the Pelion cult we shall return to at a later stage. Here it is only necessary to note the close proximity within Thessaly of Cheiron’s Pelion cult site and Thetis’ Sepias one.13 It will be shown in section ii. that geographical proximity of myth and cult is matched by a thematic closeness, albeit one which tends to consist largely of contrast.

• 14  E.L. Bowie, “Philostratus: Writer of Fiction,” in J.R. Morgan and R. Stoneman (eds.), Greek Fictio (...)
• 15  C.P. Jones, “Philostratus’Heroikos and its Setting in Reality,” JHS 121 (2001), p. 141-149: see es (...)
• 16  At Sigeion near the Hellespont: Hdt., V, 94; see also Strabo XIII, 1, 32. In the Iliad, though of (...)
• 17  E.g. W. Burkert, “Jason, Hypsipyle and New Fire at Lemnos: A Study in Myth and Ritual,” in Buxton (...)

11Scholars of the Second Sophistic rightly treat the Heroikos as a piece of literary sophistication on a par with the Life of Apollonios, with which it almost certainly shares authorship. As Bowie, Anderson, Rutherford and others have demonstrated,14 the piece is thematically and stylistically enmeshed with the rest of the Philostratean corpus in all its subtlety. At the same time, there have been several attempts to reveal it as a reflection of genuine cultic practices, beliefs and sites in existence at the time of its creation. The two approaches, though typically divergent in motivation, are not of course incompatible: clearly both literary artifice and a reflection of certain realities are present in the text. It is noted by Christopher Jones that the cult-site of Protesilaos at Elaious is depicted with quite some loyalty to what was actually there;15 and though Philostratus’ depiction of Achilles’ cult in the Euxine departs somewhat from the fascinating archaeological and epigraphic record, it is by no means baseless fantasy.The tomb of Achilles in the Troad, central to the section of the Heroikos here discussed, is mentioned as early as Herodotos.16 Philostratus was clearly interested in the actual state of hero-cult, and collects much material by way of illustration. Scholars have successfully extrapolated religious practice from other parts of the Heroikos; it can be done.17 The text, for all that we may call some of its details into question, is probably not solely a flight of intellectual fancy.

• 18  B. Helly, “Décret de Larisa pour Bombos, fils d’Alkaios, et pour Leukios, fils de Nikasias, citoye (...)

12Moreover, other evidence suggests at least a Hellenistic pedigree for the rites described. An inscription re-analysed quite recently by Bruno Helly and dated by him, soundly, to the mid second century BC testifies to regular and significant cultural contact between the Thessalian city of Larissa and the Troad.18 Though Helly’s attempt to read the context of the inscription in the light of Philostratus’ account of the annual theoria is not without problems, we can be sure that the narrative of the Heroikos is based on a real and longstanding rapport between Thessaly and the Troad. In my view, Philostratus is likely to have added some details, but not to have invented the ritual entirely. We cannot discount the possibility that Thetis’ rôle was partly or indeed wholly invented by Philostratus, but even if this is so it accords very completely with the mythology surrounding Thetis’ contribution to Achilles’ immortality, in particularly as reflected in the Aithiopis of Arktinos (on which see further below).

• 19  On the nostalgia and retrospection of Second Sophistic authors, see E.L. Bowie, “Greeks and their (...)
• 20  See above n. 16.

13At the same time, the Heroikos plainly has aims beyond the accurate re-telling of rather recherché religious practice. The Heroikos is essentially a work about epic: about memory and about the role of the poet in preserving kleos and continuity. (This is of course quite in keeping with the anxieties about loss and decay which characterise the period in which Philostratus worked.)19 The ritual in honour of Achilles may not be the author’s creation, but it does accord with the preoccupations of the text (hence its inclusion). In addition, the ritual itself must have been one of those that appear to have been fuelled by epic to a large extent.20 This immediately lifts it out of the purely Thessalian context, out of the realm of local cult, into the pan-Hellenic dimension of poetry. That Achilles and Thetis had their roots in Thessalian myth is quite probable; that the details in the Heroikos give us a snap-shot of uncontaminated Thessalian custom is not.

• 21  Philostratus, Heroikos, 53, 10: βαῖνε πρὸς αἰπὺν τόνδε κολωνὸν | μετ’ Ἀχιλλέως ἔμπυρα, | βαῖν’ ἀδά (...)

15In the Heroikos, when the Thessalian theoria reaches the Troad and begins to prepare for its offerings to Achilles, the hero’s mother is called upon with a hymn which ends with the following words:21

• 22  Philostr., Her., 53, 10.

16There is much here that is of interest, but here I wish to highlight the manner of Thetis’ hoped-for participation. Thetis is not herself Thessalian; as a daughter of Nereus she comes from the depths of the sea. However, she is here described as Peleia, which could be interpreted as a reference either to Pelion or to Peleus; either way it links her with her career in Thessaly. She is also implored to come ‘with Thessaly’ or ‘in company with Thessaly’. This phrase is cryptic, but the overall effect is to designate her as one of the vital Thessalian ‘products’ which the theoroi bring with them to the Troad: others include wood from Pelion and water from the river Spercheios. Achilles himself is different. As the hymn itself says, he belongs half to the Troad where his tomb is, and half to the Euxine where he lives as an immortal god;22 none of him is Thessalian. Also significant here is the way in which Thetis can, whatever her origins, be expected to turn up instantaneously in a completely different location. Of course, all gods can do this; but Thetis has a special mode of arrival in many narratives: emerging out of the sea.

• 23  Hom. Il. I, 357-363; XVIII, 65-77; XIX, 1-11.
• 24  On the association of Thetis with both grief and anger, see L. Slatkin, “The Wrath of Thetis,” TAP (...)
• 25  See e.g. Hom. Od. IX, 400.

17She does this most famously perhaps in the Iliad. On several occasions in the action of the poem, Thetis comes out of the sea onto the Trojan shore to communicate with Achilles: first in response to his anguish at Agamemnon’s theft of Briseis; second to console him for the death of Patroklos; third to bring him the miraculous armour of Hephaistos.23 Grief and consolation are the chief themes.24 The arrival of Thetis on the scene each time is one of miraculous swiftness; she hears his weeping despite the distance of air and water, and emerges from the sea cloaked in mist. Moreover, we are given insights into where she is supposed to be coming from. On the first two occasions of her arrival on land, she is described as sitting in the depths of the sea (benthos halos) beside her father the Halios Gerôn when she hears her son’s lamentation and rises to go to him; on the second we have the added details of a crowd of fellow-Nereids sitting about her also. The space in which this marine court resides is also, in the example in Book XVIII, described as an argupheon speos – literally a ‘silver-shining cave’. The word speos in almost all other instances of its use in ancient texts is used to refer to terrestrial grottoes, such as serve the Kyklopes as homes.25 It is striking to find Thetis and her companions occupying a speos in the sea; perhaps it derives from the abiding association of caves with nymphs in Greek thought.

• 26  Ovid, Met. XI, 238. This motif of the sea deity using the shore as a place for restful (but often (...)

19So Thetis has two spheres of existence. On the one hand, she dwells at the bottom of the sea, from which she may emerge wherever she wishes. On the other, she is, in cult and in the Heroikos’ representation, of – or strongly associated with – Pelion. In myth, she has four spheres; the sea, her place of origin; the Sepias shore, where she is caught and subdued by Peleus; Mount Pelion itself, where her marriage is conducted; and Pharsalos, where she and Peleus live once married and where she bears her children. Of course, the sea is the only place which has a lasting claim on her presence, and it is to the sea that she inevitably returns. The land is a place for brief sojourns: in Ovid’s retelling, she has come out onto the shore for a nap when Peleus assaults her.26 It is not a zone in which any sea-divinity is prepared to stay on a permanent basis.

• 27  Achilles: Pindar, Nemean III, 43-49; Ap. Rhod., Argon. I, 551-558; Apollod., III, 13, 6. Aristaios (...)

21In myth, infant heroes are brought to Cheiron on Pelion. The roll-call is extraordinary: Achilles, Aristaios, Aktaion, Asklepios, Jason: these are some of his famous charges.27 He ushers them from infancy into adulthood, equipping them with various essential heroic skills, but he himself is astonishingly constant in terms of age and state. We are given narratives to explain his birth, but hear next to nothing about his youth or upbringing; maturity, with its attendant qualities of sophia and sôphrosunê, is Cheiron’s natural and unwavering condition. They are constant as his location is constant; he affects change, but does not undergo it; he inspires movement, but does not himself move. The exception to this is of course his death, discussed below.

• 28  Ἐπ᾿ ἄκρας δὲ τῆς τοῦ ὄρους κορυφῆς σπήλαιόν ἐστι τὸ καλούμενον Χειρώνιον καὶ Διὸς Ἀκταίου ἱερόν ἐφ (...)

22There is a form of ritual counterpart to this motif of the young heroes’ sojourn with Cheiron: the pilgrimage described by Herakleides, mentioned above. The relevant passage is as follows:28

• 29  Buxton, o.c. (n. 11), p. 94. For a more complicated argument regarding the ritual association of Z (...)

24The dominant theme of the ritual is changes of state, symbolised in the donning of fleeces, which entails a dramatic and programmatic transformation: the noblest of the citizens don the garb of the rustic and the primitive. Since fleeces and caves share this quality, the visitors to the area of the Cheironion are modelling themselves on their destination, and undergoing transformation in parallel with their spatial movement away from the cultivated plain and up into the wild territory of the oros, as Buxton rightly observes.29 They are also, in a sense, stepping back into primeval time.

• 30  IG XII 3, 360. See M.Vogel, Chiron: der Kentaur mit der Kithara, Bonn, 1978, p. 218. The discussio (...)
• 31  Philippson, o.c. (n. 7). Much less persuasive is her theory that the cult of Cheiron travelled fro (...)

26That said, it is worth briefly noting that Cheiron may have been associated with adolescent transitions in another cult site. Philippson has argued, in a discussion which encourages tentative credence, that Cheiron was worshipped on Thera, near the temple of Apollo Karneios, in a kourotrophic capacity: his name appears in a seventh-century dedicatory inscription30 alongside names such as Lokaia which are associated with childbirth and -rearing, and there is also some evidence for his involvement in local ephebic rites.31 This would suggest that his excellent record of affecting human transitions has an echo in his cultic function. However, the Theran material remains highly speculative, and as for the Pelion site, there is no evidence of rites of passage, though this does not by itself mean they did not occur.

• 32  In the account of Apollodoros, Cheiron ends up in the Peloponnese following the expulsion of the c (...)

27So, to conclude this section, it may be seen that whereas Thetis is a mobile being who may be coaxed into a brief contact with the shore but who has no permanent residence there, Cheiron is a fixity on his mountain-top and is visited there accordingly in both myth and cult. (His only mythical departure from the cave leads, in the end, to his death, as if the cave is a place he cannot return to having once left it.)32 He does not change, but he effects change in others; he himself is static, but he effects movement and travel. Thetis, by comparison, is changeable and mobile. One final point must be made to modify this contrast, however, and it is a point which in fact narrows the distance between Cheiron and Thetis in a revealing way, reminding us that no symbolic contrast should ever be read as absolute or undeviating.

• 33  Aston, l.c. (n. 11).
• 34  On the importance of personal presence to the cult of Asklepios, and its Thessalian connections, s (...)

28Cheiron’s cave is a place of both real and mythical visits, true, but its inhabitant is prone to a special kind of uncertainty regarding his presence. In another article,33 I have shown that Cheiron is often depicted in the ancient literature as a departed, absent being; also, that this is reflected in his cult persona as the ancestor or fore-runner of a line of healers, a role which, while it emphasises his importance, also entails his supercession. This is in marked contrast with heroes such as Asklepios and Trophonios whose cult sites are marked by a sense of heightened personal residency.34 The implications of this for the fleece-ritual are striking: perhaps the Thessalians are visiting not so much Cheiron as a monument to his erstwhile, his mythical, presence.

• 35  Nicander, Theriaka 500-505: πρώτην μὲν Χείρωνος ἐπαλθέα ῥίζαν ἑλέσθαι, | Κενταύρου Κρονίδαο φερώνυ (...)

31Cheiron, Pelion and the mountain’s native healing herbs form an inseparable triad in the works of many ancient authors. This is reflected especially strongly in a fragment of the Hellenistic author Nicander’ Theriaka, which gives the following medical instruction:35

• 36  Theophrastos, On Plants IX, 11, 1-7. It is clear from the description of the plant (golden flowers (...)

32Cheiron, then, is the mythical discoverer of a major natural resource, and a form of culture-hero. This plainly accords with his healing persona among the Magnesians. He gives his name to the plant called ‘Cheironeion’, whose properties are described by Theophrastos: it is used to cure the bites of snakes, spiders and other venomous creatures.36

• 37  Mention of the anger of Achilles towards the Thessalians is also to be found in the Life of Apollo (...)
• 38  Her.,53, 19-21: Θετταλοῖς γὰν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐναγισμάτων μηνίοντα αἰσθόμενος, ‘ἐμοί’ ἔφην, ‘ὦ Ἀχιλλεῦ, π (...)

33So Cheiron in a sense embodies the healing properties of Mount Pelion itself, in the form of its native herbs. Thetis and the sea, however, have quite another quality in this regard. For the most striking expression of this difference one must return to the Heroikos, and to the section in which the hero Protesilaos (his words relayed by the Thracian vine-dresser to his Phoenician interlocutor) describes the anger of Achilles against the Thessalians when the latter have neglected – or rather, downgraded – the sacrifices performed in the Troad.37 The passage runs (it opens with the words of Protesilaos):38

• 39  Slatkin, l.c. (n. 24), makes the interesting and valuable connection between Thetis and Demeter Me (...)

34Here, clearly, the sea is a source of pestilence; Thetis represents the sea; and Achilles has a special ability as her son to unleash her malign marine powers on those who offend him. Some very interesting research has been done by Slatkin into Thetis’ role in the theme of Achilles’ mênis, and the two have been shown to be joined, in epic, within a potent discourse of anger and grief.39 Philostratus’ text, however, adds the special ingredient of the sea as source of blight and contagion, especially targeting agricultural achievement.

• 40  E. Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry, Berkeley, 1979, p. 185-186.
• 41  Buxton, o.c. (n. 11), p. 97-104.

35The pestilent properties of the sea are quite widely expressed in antiquity. For example, Plutarch in his Quaestiones Convivalium (Mor., 626f-627f) asks the question why sea-water is not used to wash clothes, and the various responses focus on the sea’s impurity: this is not just brine, but is also ‘coarse, earthy matter’ (τὸ τραχὺ καὶ γεῶδες) and, curiously, oil. The unclean quality of the sea is a topos in ancient attitudes which has been brilliant described by Vermeule, who argues that the sea was perceived as a repository of the unwanted, the unlucky, the contaminated.40 This is encapsulated by the remark in Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians (line 1193) that ‘The sea washes away all the evils of men.’ Though it can be a source of purification for those on shore, it consequently contains all the pollution and miasma which have been poured into it. A related theme is the sea’s barrenness, probably reflected in the some­what ambiguous Homeric word atrugetos, ‘unharvested’, from trugaô (‘gather’, ‘harvest’), if one regards it as a rough synonym of atrugês. This does not mean that the sea is devoid of products, some of them edible; indeed, it teems with fish and other creatures. However, as Buxton points out, the sea is perceived as unlike the realm of terrestrial agriculture, and cannot be treated to the same regulating, ordering human processes.41

• 42  Photios, Bibl., 149.
• 43  Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses XXXVIII.

36An odd and isolated myth about Thetis adds a final strand to this web of associations. In a passage of Ptolemy Hephaistion (transmitted by Photios), Thetis in the form of a seal (phokos) kills Helen.42 This peculiar little story does find an echo in the myth of Phokos, the son of Aiakos and Psamathe (‘Sandy’); Phokos is conceived while his mother – trying, as Thetis tries, to escape – is in temporary seal form.43 Phokos is the brother of Peleus, and so the myth clearly has Thessalian, and indeed Thetidian, connections. We could regard Photios’ version, the seal-metamorphosis of Thetis, as being a whimsical offshoot of the Phokos story with no real heredity; even if this is so, however, it is significant to find Thetis appearing in the guise of a destructive and vengeful seal. Seals are not merely random denizens of the sea; they have a special character based largely on their mammalian nature, which sets them apart from the world of fishes. This quality is most clearly seen in Book IV of the Odyssey, in which Menelaos is forced into close proximity with seals in his attempt to capture Proteus, the old sea-god and the seals’ herdsman.

• 44  Lines 441-443: ἔνθα κεν αἰνότατος λόχος ἔπλετο· τεῖρε γὰρ αἰνῶς | φωκάων ἁλιοτρεφέων ὀλοώτατος ὀδμ (...)

37Two things are notable in this episode. First, the seals share the pestilent and repellent property of the sea in which they live, described above. Menelaos makes this clear when he describes lying in ambush under flayed seal-skins, a ruse provided by the helpful Eidothea.44

• 45  Line 446.
• 46  Line 406.

38This is not just the stench of uncured skins; it is the perpetual keteos odme,45 which even Eidothea speaks ruefully of, describing living seals as ‘πικρὸν ἀποπνείουσαι ἁλὸςπολυβενθέος ὀδμήν’.46 The seals convey and embody the bitter, briny odour of the deep, which repels the human Menelaos so strongly that only a drop of Eidothea’s divine ambrosia beneath his nose makes it bearable.

• 47  It is interesting to note a remark of Plutarch, which could be seen to epitomise Greek attitudes t (...)
• 48  Lines 411-413.
• 49  Line 451.

39So in a way, seals represent all that is alien and off-putting, and miasmatic, about the sea’s depths.47 At the same time, however, their warm-bloodedness is implicitly acknowledged, in Odyssey IV, by the strong parallelism between them and the terrestrial flocks who follow shepherds on land. Proteus is directly compared with a shepherd, and his behaviour bears this out, for he is an unmissable marine counterpart to Polyphemos, counting his beasts carefully by fives before lying down to sleep in their midst48 (and so, like the Cyclops, rendering himself vulnerable to a hero’s attack). The shore-cave in which he sleeps enhances the similarity. Though products of the barren and pestilent sea, seals can echo the fruitful herds of the pastoral realm; they are even called zatrepheas, ‘fatted’.49 However, they give neither meat nor milk, and ultimately their resemblance to the flocks of the land only serves to highlight this basic distinction. Moreover, Proteus’ spell in his shepherd’s cave is a fleeting one, and once his prophecy is spoken he slips back into the atrugetos waves.

• 50  Note also the wider topos of punishment (especially divinely sent) coming from the sea, often in t (...)

40These, then, are the various significances of the seal, and we can perceive the suitability of Thetis adopting that form. To sum up this section, it may be said that the sea plainly has an independent characterisation as pestilent and unfruitful;50 in addition, however, Thetis can embody or channel this quality as she does in the Heroikos. In this, once again, sea and mountain, and Thetis and Cheiron, appear strongly contrasting: one brings disease, the other provides the means to ward it off. One damages crops; the other represents extreme natural fruitfulness, though of a sort at odds with normal agriculture. This will find resonances in the next section, in which the focus shifts to the theme of kourotrophy and care of the young.

• 51  Thetis and Dionysos: Hom., Il. VI, 130-137. Thetis and Hephaistos: Hom., Il. XVIII, 394-398; Hom. (...)
• 52  E.g. at Il. III, 180 (kunôps) and VI, 344 & 356 (both kuôn in the genitive, kunos).

41Both Thetis and Cheiron are explicitly connected, in myth, with the care and raising of the young. Cheiron is, as has been said, the nurse and educator of a large number of heroes; Thetis shelters and nurses the infant Dionysos when he is pursued by the impious Lykourgos, and similarly rescues the young Hephaistos after he has been cast away by his disgusted mother, Hera.51 Hephaistos himself highlights the contrast between rejecting Hera and sheltering Thetis. In so doing, he calls his mother kunôps, bitch-faced, a word which, along with variations, plays a special role in the designation of malign females in Greek myths. In the Iliad, Helen in self-reproach refers to herself several times as either kunôps or kuon (‘bitch’);52 in Hesiod’s verse, Pandora is described as having a kuneos noos, a bitch-like mind. Bitch-imagery seems in these contexts to be used of women who combine great beauty with a baneful and destructive nature; both Helen and Pandora function as scourges of the race of men, whose beauty is the key to their success in this role. Pandora especially is a perfect dolos – trick, snare – because of the discrepancy between her exterior (beautiful) and her interior (dog-like, destructive): her beauty is unreliable and does not reflect the nature within.

• 53  M. Davies, “Alcaeus, Thetis and Helen,” Hermes 114 (1986), p. 257-262.

42At first glance, Thetis seems to have nothing in common with such females, and indeed, in the Iliad, to be contrasted with one of them; Davies has argued, additionally, that in the poetry of Alkaios Thetis and Helen are presented as contrasting models of the maternal, good and bad respectively.53 Thus it might be said that Thetis and Cheiron share a kourotrophic function; and on one level their roles in this domain do seem rather similar. Cave and sea-bed both serve as havens for the young, and in Thetis’ case an element of rescue is added, rendering her not just a nurse but also a benefactrix. Moreover, Cheiron shares his nurturing role on Pelion with nymphs, his daughters; as Thetis, also a nymph, is in one tradition his daughter, it may be supposed that the two are to be perceived as working along very similar lines. It would be easy to turn this into a cultic label, designating both as – at root – kourotrophic deities with a fertility-dimension.

• 54  Thetis punished by Zeus for rejecting his advances: Kypria, fr. 2 (ed. Davies).
• 55  This version is found in Pindar, Isthm. VIII, 26-57.
• 56  E.g. at XVIII, 54.

46The first point to note is Thetis’ reluctance to wed Peleus or bear his children. This is a theme which, naturally perhaps, does not find a place in the Iliad, but which finds full expression elsewhere. In one tradition marriage to a mortal is a punishment;54 in another, it is a way of disarming the prophecy that she would produce a son greater than his father, a contingency rendering her unsuitable for a divine partner.55 Either way, Thetis’ marriage is underpinned by her unwillingness, which finds its most extreme expression in the contortions she performs to evade Peleus on the shore. So, even though Thetis is known as the mother of a glorious child, the circumstances of his conception were forced upon her very much against her will. Just as being yoked to the mortal Peleus gives Thetis displeasure, so she suffers keenly because of the mortality of her son Achilles; dusaristotokeia, the Iliad calls her,56 referring to the cruel irony that for all her son’s excellence he will, through his inevitable death, eventually bring her misery.

• 57  Achilleid I, 134-140. The evidence of visual material does, however, suggest the possibility of He (...)
• 58  Lyk., Alex., 178-179.
• 59  It is interesting to compare the story in which Medea, that notorious child-killer of myth, attemp (...)
• 60  Schol. Ap. Rhod., Argon. IV, 816: ἡ Θέτις εἰς λέβητα ὕδατος ἔβαλλεν τοὺν ἐκ Πηλέως γεννωμένους, γν (...)

48However, the oldest source for the Stygian version is Statius, in the first century AD,57 and among older variants we find some rather different stories. The Hellenistic Argonautika of Apollonios has Achilles immersed in fire rather than a river, and has Thetis anoint him with ambrosia; here the only real diver­gence from the famous Statian story is the substances employed. Lykophron, however, adds a curious detail: that Achilles was in fact the only child of Thetis who survived the procedure; six died in the flames.58 Here Lykophron seems to be drawing on an earlier, darker theme: that of the destructive aspect of Thetis’ attempts to immortalise her children.59 In the pseudo-Hesiodic Aigimios, transmitted by a scholiast on the Argonautika, there occur the following lines:60

• 61  Even in sources which do not treat Thetis as wantonly destructive of her children’s lives, the pro (...)

49This is rather startling. The dead children are not even the victims of botched attempts to render them immortal, as in Lykophron, but of a process of experimentation to which Achilles also would surely have fallen prey had not his father rescued him. In this version, there are only two possibilities, in the mind of Thetis, for her children: they must either be immortal or dead. Only Achilles, through his father’s intervention, is left to occupy the rather nebulous half-and-half state between mortality and divinity which is his salient feature in epic and more widely.61

• 62  Transmitted in Proklos, Chrestomathia, 2.

50Her relationship with Achilles takes Thetis off into another, very forceful epic discourse concerning the nature of the hero. She, like Eos (lover of Tithonos and mother of Memnon) presides over the fraught relationship between thnêtoi and athanatoi. This finds an echo in the Heroikos of Philostratus, in which she presides over the dual sacrifice to Achilles and therefore over his split nature, both mortal hero and immortal god. Of particular importance here, however, is the difference between the Thetis who champions her son in the Iliad (or the Thetis of the Aithiopis62 who eventually, after his death, installs him in divine glory on the Island of Leuke) and the Thetis who methodically scorches or boils away the mortal parts of her children, Achilles nearly included. Thessaly, it should be noted, is the setting for this dark chapter; when Achilles reaches adulthood, the location shifts into other zones, into the Troad, the Euxine, and the wide narrative sweep of epic.

• 63  Ap. Rhod., Argon. IV, 868-879: ἡ μὲν γὰρ βροτέας αἰεὶ περὶ σάρκας ἔδαιεν | νύκτα διὰ μέσσην φθογμῷ (...)

51Achilles, of course, survives Thetis’ destructive ministrations. However, the next stage of her imperfect parenting takes over: she leaves her husband and infant son and returns to the sea, her natural element. This is not so in the Homeric tradition, which does not mention a premature separation. It is impossible to say whether this is because such a story did not exist as early as that, or whether it did and the poet of the Iliad rejected it in order to preserve the closeness of his essential mother/son pairing. In any case, Thetis’ departure in Achilles’ infancy is, it should be noted, found only in post-Classical texts. The fullest treatment is in the Argonautika of Apollonios, a third century BC text, in which we find the following lines:63

• 64  In Photios, Bibl., 190.
• 65  It also increases the abiding impression given by the sources that Peleus and Cheiron are very muc (...)

54An even more explicit opposition of their contributions is made in the admittedly peculiar and isolated narrative of Ptolemy Hephaistion, who describes the following scene:64 Thetis is burning her children in her attempt to rid them of their mortal portion, has killed several, and has just begun on Achilles, when the child, having sustained burns only to his foot, is rescued by Peleus (clearly a variant on the vulnerable heel motif). Brought in to heal the injury, Cheiron replaces the damaged ankle-joint with one taken from a dead Giant known for his swift running. This component eventually fails Achilles and causes his death, but this does not detract from the sense that Cheiron’s mythical purpose is here to repair what Thetis has harmed.65 Moreover, Achilles’ eventual death is actually caused by the flaw which Thetis’ burning has implanted within him.

• 66  Etym. Magn. s.v. ‘Sepias’; schol. Ap. Rhod., Argon. I, 582.
• 67  Ath., I, 30d.
• 68  Schol. Lyk., Alex., 175: `διωκομένη ὑπὸ Πηλέως ἡ Θέτις μετήλαττεν ἑαυτὴν ὡς ὁ Πρωτεὺς εἰς διαφόρου (...)

57The figure of the cuttlefish, as Borgeaud points out, is the strongest link between Thetis and the stretch of Thessalian shore which was sacred to her. The promontory was called Sepias after her adoption of the form of a sepia, we are told;66 however, in a touch of double determination, we also learn from another source, Athenaios, that the sea around that point was especially full of sepiai.67 One source tells us that the sepia was the last form adopted by Thetis in her attempt to evade the clutches of Peleus; it was also when she was in this shape that the two actually had intercourse (a somewhat lurid contingency).68

• 69  Detienne and Vernant, o.c. (n. 68); the chapter on Thetis is p. 133-174.

58For the symbolic valency of the sepia, the reader is referred to the still powerful discussion by Detienne and Vernant,69 who treat it as a component within their study of the quality of mêtis, or cunning intelligence. Sepiai have, and indeed embody, mêtis, because of their extreme flexibility of form: like Thetis, they are pantomorphos; they can take almost any shape and can be confined to none. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, they have recourse to the trickery essential to mêtis: they use their black ink to conceal themselves when threatened (having first concealed it within themselves), and also when hunting their prey. This dolos is central to their adaptable, responsive nature.

• 70  On the text, see E. Degani, “Problems in Greek Gastronomic Poetry: On Matro’s Attikon Deipnon,” in (...)
• 71  Matron, Attikon Deipnon = Ath., I, 135 c: ἦλθε δὲ Νηρῆος θυγάτηρ, Θέτις ἀργυρόπεζα, | σηπίη εὐπλόκ (...)

59The connection between Thetis and the sepia receives some interesting expositions. Perhaps most telling (and most tantalising) are the lines from the AttikonDeipnon of Matron, a work of which we only have small excerpts, courtesy of Athenaios’ Deipnosophistai. It is a work of satire, in which the food items at an extravagant dinner-party are introduced in absurd epic language (with much direct verbal borrowing from Homer) as combatants within a heroic martial parade, whose enemies are the diners who fall on them raven­ously.70 Various ludicrous aristeiai occur. The following lines are important for the current discussion:71

• 72  For an ancient comparison of the sepia’s tentacles with hair, see Oppian, Halieutica II, 122.

60Thetis takes her place among the other edibles as the sepia, reflecting the myth of her sepia-transformation. Clearly, aspects of the cuttle’s real-life anatomy are evoked here. The use ofeuplokamos, for example, a Homeric epithet frequently used of female characters, including Thetis, derives its humour here from the fact that it echoes the sepia’s waving tentacles.72

• 73  Also ill-advised is the translation of the latter half of the line as ‘knows the difference betwee (...)
• 74  See for example the reference to an eel as white-armed (!) at Ath., IV, 135c – the choice of this (...)
• 75  See e.g. Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, 126. Here a woman in a false beard is compared with a cuttle (...)

61Rather more complicated is the third and final line, in which it is said of Thetis that she ‘alone, being a fish, knows both white and black.’ The sense of the participle ἐοῦσα is extremely uncertain. The phrase is often translated ‘alone of all the fishes’, and yet that sense seems to stretch the Greek itself beyond endurance.73 The participle might carry a causal sense – ‘because she is a fish’ – or equally a concessive one – ‘although she is a fish’. It is impossible to decide with any confidence, and yet one might extend cautious support to the latter, on the following grounds. Fish can occasionally be described as white, there being an example in this very text,74 though the (external) whiteness of sepiai seems to have received special notice.75 What sets the sepia apart from other sea-creatures, however, is the fact that it comprises – ‘knows’ – both white and (uniquely) black: it is white without yet contains blackness within. The sepia is arranged in concealing layers, black within white and, when the ink has been expelled, white within black.

• 76  Vermeule, o.c. (n. 40), p. 179 describes how, in ancient thought, the sea is persistently accorded (...)
• 77  Paus. VIII, 34, 2-3.

62Her association with the sepia transfers to Thetis something of this type of colour duality. She is never explicitly called ink-filled, but Borgeaud convincingly argues that the idea of inner blackness was an important element in her characterisation. He links it with the character of her element, the sea, calling her a ‘sombre déesse des profondeurs marines.’76 Slatkin’s article on Thetis’ mythological persona enhances and adds nuance to this picture. She shows that the black/white juxtaposition of Thetis’ sepia form ties her in with a strong class of goddesses for whom black expresses vengeful anger, white appeasement or benignity. The most graphic example of this is the Arkadian cult of the Eume­nides who, in myth, were black when angry and vengeful, white when appeased.77 This instance suggests that in Thetis’ case white is perhaps operat­ing as the expression not only of female beauty but also of divine benignity.

• 78  The mêtis of the sepia: Aristotle, Historia Animalium, 622a 8; Oppian (Hal. I, 406) refers to the (...)
• 79  For example, David Wiles has argued with regard to theatre that in ancient thought the donning of (...)
• 80  Reflected in the adjectives frequently used to describe the sea, such as oinops, kuaneos / kuanobe (...)

63What is vital to the character of Thetis, however, is not an overtly sombre quality but rather the disparity between the bright appearance and the murk within. It alerts us to the fact that Thetis is capable of two types of dolos, trickery, the word identified as crucial to the conception of mêtis by Detienne and Vernant.78 On the one hand, qua shape-changing goddess, she uses multiplicity of forms, and rapid transformation, as her means of evasion; on the other, qua sepia, she uses concealment, the creation of a pall of darkness to shroud and mask. In fact, transformation and layering/concealment go hand in hand in ancient thought.79 Thetis, however, gives the connection a special dimension, as the sepia simultaneously executes its ink-diffusing dolos and its physical fluidity and changefulness. It is worth noting that the sea and its denizens were frequently associated with darkness;80 on land, Thetis might look like a fair-skinned woman of great beauty, but she contains within her the murk of the sea from which she comes.

• 81  This is an interesting adjacent case of marine metamorphosis: Psamathe turned herself into a seal (...)
• 82  Ant. Lib., Met. XXXVIII; schol. Lyk., Alex., 175 and 901.
• 83  See J.-P. Vernant, Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays, edited by Froma I. Zeitlin, Princeton, (...)

64Darkness is perhaps not Thetis’ only form of concealed menace. Latent animality finds one final expression in the mythology of Thetis. In one account, Peleus has killed his younger half-brother Phokos (‘Seal’81) in a fit of jealousy, and Phokos’ mother Psamathe sends a fierce wolf to kill Peleus in revenge. The wolf, however, incapacitates itself by gorging on a herd of straying cattle; and when it catches up with Peleus, Thetis, who is with him, is able to turn it to stone by pulling a frightening face, tongue protruding.82 The grimace is irresistibly reminiscent of the gorgon-faces so frequent in Greek art, with their protruding tongues and prominent fangs; and though it is a lone instance in the case of Thetis, it shows her ability to take on an archetypal apotropaic, fear-inspiring form.83 Her ability suddenly to metamorphose from lovely goddess to terrifying one reminds us perhaps of the motif of the pale squid, when angered, ejecting black ink. Thetis’ loveliness is not to be relied on. In this she has more in common with Pandora and Helen (beauties with dog-minds and destructive potential) than might be thought from reading the Iliad alone.