Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/220

 188 HISTORY OF GREECE. formidable spear, cut from an ash-tree on Mount Pelion. Wo shall have reason hereafter to recognize the value of both these gifts in the exploits of Achilles. 1 The prominent part assigned to Thetis in the Iliad is well known, and the post-Homeric poets of the Legend of Troy in- troduced her as actively concurring first to promote the glory, finally to bewail the death of her distinguished son. 2 Peleus, having survived both his son Achilles and his grandson Neopto- lemus, is ultimately directed to place himself on the very spot where he had originally seized Thetis, and thither the goddess comes herself to fetch him away, in order that he may exchange the desertion and decrepitude of age for a life of immortality along with the Nereids. 3 The spot was indicated to Xerxes when he marched into Greece by the lonians who accompanied him, and his magi offered solemn sacrifices to her as well as to the other Nereids, as the presiding goddesses and mistresses of the oast. 4 Neoptolemus or Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, too young to engage in the commencement of the siege of Troy, comes on the stage after the death of his father as the indispensable and pro- minent agent in the final capture of the city. He returns victor from Troy, not to Phthia, but to Epirus, bringing with him the captive Andromache, widow of Hector, by whom Molossus is 1 Appollodor. iii. 13, 5. Homer, Iliad, xviii. 434 ; xxiv. 62. Pindar, Ncin. iv. S'O-GS; Isthm. vii. 27-50. Hcrodot. vii. 192. Catullus, Carm. 64. Epithal. Pel. et Thetidos, with the prefatory remarks of Dcering. The nuptials of Peleus and Thetis were much celebrated in the Hesiodic Catalogue, or perhaps in the Eoiai (Diintzer, Epic. Grtec. Frag. 36. p. 39), and jEgimius see Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. iv. 8G9 where there is a curious attempt of Staphylus to rationalize the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. There was a town, seemingly near Pharsalus in Thessaly, called Thetide inm. Thetis is said to have been carried by Peleus to both these places : probably it grew up round a temple and sanctuary of this goddess (Pherekyd. Frag. 16, Didot; Hellank. ap. Steph. Byz. 6e<m<Jctov). given by Proclus, in DQntzer, Fragm. Epic. Gr. p. 11-16; also Schol. ad Iliad, xvi. 140; and the extract from the lost ^v^oara^ia of JEschylus, ap, Plato, de Republic, ii. c. 21 (p. 382, St.). 3 Eurip. Androm. 1242-1260; Pindar, Olymp. ii. 86. Herodot. vii. 198.
 * See the arguments of the lost poems, the Cypria and the ^Ethiopia, as