Thetis

Who She Is

Thetis is the goddess of the sea, the silver-footed one, mother of Achilles and wife of Peleus, the mortal whom Zeus forced her to marry, the only one among the Nereids to be so bound. In the first book she brings her son's request to Zeus, and the poem says that this pact condemned many Greeks. She knows her son will live briefly and cannot postpone it. She stands between the sea, where she weeps with the Nereids, and Olympus, where she asks, and what she asks is always for Achilles: honor, armor, the return of a body. Her grief is that of a goddess who cannot shield her son from death, only help him fulfill his fate.

Trajectory

In Book I, Achilles, weeping at the seashore, calls his mother and asks her to beg Zeus to give victory to the Trojans until the Greeks are penned in beside the ships. Thetis answers, weeping, that his share of life is brief, not long at all, and that now he is at once destined for a swift death and the most wretched of all. She promises to climb to Olympus when Zeus returns from the feast with the Ethiopians. On the twelfth day, she embraces Zeus's knees and asks for honor for her son. Zeus delays his answer, because he knows Hera will quarrel, and then confirms with a nod of his head.

In Book VIII, Athena recalls with resentment that Thetis kissed Zeus's knees and took hold of his chin with her hand, begging him to honor Achilles, sacker of cities. In Book IX, Achilles repeats his mother's lesson: two fates of death lead him to his end, either to stay and fight with imperishable glory, losing the return home, or to go back home and have a long life without the good glory.

In Book XIII, the narrator explains that Zeus wants victory for the Trojans and for Hector to give glory to Achilles, and does not at all want the Achaean people to perish before Ilion, because he wants to honor Thetis and her son. In Book XV, Zeus tells Hera that he will not end his wrath until the desire of Achilles is fulfilled, as he promised with the nod of his head on the day Thetis embraced his knees. The narrator calls her prayer excessive.

In Book XVI, Achilles opens in his tent the chest that Thetis placed aboard for him, takes out the cup from which only he drinks, and prays to Zeus that Patroclus return safe and sound. In Book XVII, the narrator says that Achilles does not yet know his friend has died, and that his mother used to tell him Zeus's plans, but this time she did not tell him the greatness of the evil.

In Book XVIII, the moan of Achilles, on learning of Patroclus's death, reaches the bottom of the sea, where Thetis is beside her aged father. The Nereids gather in the grotto, and Thetis leads the lament: she bore the best of heroes, raised him like a plant and sent him to Troy, and now she knows she will not receive him back in the house of Peleus. She comes up to the shore, embraces her son's head, and asks why he weeps, reminding him that Zeus has already given him what he asked. Achilles answers that this no longer gives him pleasure, and he even wishes that his mother had stayed among the sea goddesses and that Peleus had taken a mortal wife. Thetis answers that if he kills Hector, his own end is ready right after.

She agrees that it is right to defend companions in danger, but reminds him that the armor of Achilles is with the Trojans and that he should not enter battle until he sees it come back, for at sunrise it will bring new armor, made by Hephaestus. She reaches the house of Hephaestus and is received by Charis. Hephaestus recalls that she saved him when, lame, he was flung from the sky, and tells her that he must pay back the life she saved. Thetis, weeping, says that no goddess has endured as many pains as she has, since to her alone Zeus forced a marriage with a mortal, and she asks for a shield, helmet, greaves, and breastplate for her son of short life. Hephaestus encourages her: he wishes he could hide him from death, as surely as the fine armor he will make. When he finishes, Thetis descends from Olympus like a hawk, carrying the armor.

In Book XIX, at dawn, she reaches the ships with the gifts of Hephaestus and finds Achilles embracing the body of Patroclus. She sets the armor before him, and it rings. She reassures him about the flies on the body, drips ambrosia and nectar into Patroclus's nostrils so that the flesh will not spoil, tells Achilles to give up his wrath against Agamemnon and arm himself, and fills him with courage.

In Book XXI, swept down by the river's current, Achilles blames his mother, who deceived him with lies: she said he would perish beneath the wall of the Trojans by the swift arrows of Apollo.

In Book XXIII, when the chariots circle the body of Patroclus, Thetis stirs in them the desire to lament. The urn for the bones of Achilles and Patroclus is the golden amphora that Achilles' mother gave him.

In Book XXIV, Zeus sends for her to give her a counsel that will lead her son to accept the ransom. Iris finds her in a grotto between Samos and Imbros, surrounded by the other sea goddesses, weeping over her son's fate, that he is going to die at Troy, far from his homeland. Thetis hesitates, because she is ashamed to appear among the immortals in such grief, but she obeys, wrapped in a dark blue veil, and climbs to Olympus. Athena gives up her place beside Zeus, and Hera hands her a golden cup. Zeus explains that for nine days the gods have been quarreling over the corpse, and tells her to tell her son that the gods are angry with him, Zeus more than all. Thetis goes down to the tent and finds him groaning. She strokes him with her hand and asks how long he will consume his heart without eating or sleeping, reminding him that death and strong fate are already near him. She passes on Zeus's message and asks him to release the body and accept the ransom. Achilles answers that whoever brings the ransom may take the corpse, if the Olympian himself orders it willingly.

Themes Embodied

Thetis embodies Loss and mourning in anticipation: she mourns her son while he is still alive, because she knows his life will be short. She embodies Death as information that a divine mother carries and cannot change. And she embodies Fate and free will in the distance between what a goddess can give, honor, armor, the message of a god, and what she cannot give, a long life.

Thetis never argues with her son's choice. In Book I she accepts the request without asking whether it is just, because what moves her is grief; in Book XVIII she makes the calculation that her son's words already contain, without promising a way out, and climbs to Olympus to fetch the armor even knowing that Hector's death brings Achilles' own. The poem leaves the question open: what leads a mother to help her son fulfill the choice that kills him? There are two readings. It may be loyalty to whoever decided, or the impossibility of giving anything else. In Book XXI, Achilles accuses her of a lie, that he would die beneath the wall by Apollo's arrows, and the text does not say why that version is gentler than the one she herself gave him in Book XVIII.

Relationships

• Achilles: the son whose short life she mourns, to whom she brings armor, and to whom she passes on Zeus's message.
• Zeus: the god to whom she asks honor for her son and who calls her to the council about the ransom.
• Hera: the goddess who, in Book XXIV, hands her the cup and says she raised Thetis.
• Athena: the goddess who resents Zeus having heeded Thetis and who gives up her place to her in Book XXIV.
• Apollo: the god whose arrows, according to Achilles, she said would kill him.
• Patroclus: the dead man whose body she preserves with ambrosia.
• Hephaestus: the smith who owes her his life and makes the armor for her son.
• Peleus: her mortal husband.