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1. Peleus fled to Phthia, to Eurytion son of Actor, who purified him and gave him his daughter Antigone in marriage, together with a third of his land. A daughter, Polydora, was born to him, and she married Borus son of Perieres.

2. From there he went with Eurytion to hunt the Calydonian boar. He hurled a javelin at the boar, but struck Eurytion and killed him unintentionally. So he fled once more, leaving Phthia for Iolcus, where he came to Acastus and was purified by him.

3. He also competed in the funeral games held in honor of Pelias, wrestling against Atalanta. Astydamia, the wife of Acastus, fell in love with Peleus and sent him proposals that they become lovers. Unable to persuade him, she sent word to his wife that Peleus was about to marry Sterope, the daughter of Acastus. On hearing this, Antigone hanged herself. Astydamia also falsely accused Peleus before Acastus, saying that he had tried to seduce her. When Acastus heard this, he was unwilling to kill a man whom he had purified, but took him hunting on Mount Pelion. There they held a contest in hunting, and Peleus cut out the tongues of the animals he killed and put them in a pouch. Acastus’s companions took possession of the animals and mocked Peleus for having caught nothing. But he produced the tongues and told them that he had killed as many animals as there were tongues. When Peleus fell asleep on Pelion, Acastus abandoned him, hiding his sword in some cattle dung, and returned home. Peleus awoke and was searching for his sword when the Centaurs caught him. He was about to be killed, but Chiron saved him, found his sword, and gave it back to him.

4. Peleus married Polydora, the daughter of Perieres, and by her became the reputed father of Menesthius, whose true father was the river Spercheius.

5. Later he married Thetis, the daughter of Nereus. Zeus and Poseidon had vied for her hand, but withdrew when Themis prophesied that the son born to her would be mightier than his father. Some say that, when Zeus was intent on sleeping with her, Prometheus declared that the son she bore him would rule heaven. Others say that Thetis refused to lie with Zeus because she had been brought up by Hera, and that Zeus, in his anger, wished to marry her to a mortal. Chiron therefore advised Peleus to seize her and hold her fast as she changed her shape. He lay in wait and caught her, and though she turned now into fire, now into water, and now into a wild beast, he did not release her until he saw her resume her original form. He married her on Mount Pelion, and there the gods feasted and sang in celebration of the wedding. Chiron gave Peleus an ash spear, and Poseidon gave him the horses Balius and Xanthus, which were immortal.

6. When Thetis bore Peleus a child, she wished to make it immortal. Without Peleus’s knowledge, she would put it in the fire at night to burn away the mortal nature it had inherited from its father, and by day she anointed it with ambrosia. But Peleus kept watch, and when he saw the child writhing in the fire, he cried out. Prevented from completing her purpose, Thetis left the infant and departed to join the Nereids. Peleus took the child to Chiron, who received him and fed him on the entrails of lions and wild boars, and the marrow of bears. He named him Achilles (his previous name had been Ligyron)

because his lips had never touched a breast.

7. After this, Peleus sacked Iolcus with Jason and the Dioscuri. He killed Astydamia, the wife of Acastus, cut her limb from limb, and led his army into the city between the pieces of her body.

8. When Achilles was nine years old, Calchas declared that Troy could not be taken without him. Thetis, knowing beforehand that he was destined to die if he went to war, disguised him in women’s clothing and entrusted him to Lycomedes as a maiden. While being brought up there, he lay with Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomedes, and she bore him a son, Pyrrhus, who was later called Neoptolemus. Odysseus, having been told that Achilles was with Lycomedes, searched for him and discovered him by sounding a trumpet. Thus Achilles went to Troy. He was accompanied by Phoenix, the son of Amyntor. Phoenix had been blinded by his father after Phthia, his father’s concubine, falsely accused him of seducing her. Peleus took him to Chiron, who restored his sight, and then made him king of the Dolopians. Patroclus also accompanied Achilles. He was the son of Menoetius and Sthenele, the daughter of Acastus, or of Periopis, the daughter of Pheres, or, as Philocrates says, of Polymela, the daughter of Peleus. At Opus, during a quarrel over a game of knucklebones, Patroclus killed a boy, Cleitonymus, the son of Amphidamas. He fled with his father, settled with Peleus, and became Achilles’ beloved.