Thetis

, one of the sea deities, daughter of Nereus and Doris, often confounded with Tethys her grandmother. She was courted by Neptune and Jupiter; but when the gods were informed that the son she would bring forth must become greater than his father, their addre es were stopped, and Peleus the son of Œacus was permitted to solicit her hand. Thetis refused him, but the lover had the artifice to catch her when asleep, and, by binding her strongly, he prevented her from escaping from his grasp, in a uming different forms. When Thetis found that she could not elude the vigilance of her lover she consented to marry him, though much against her inclination. Their nuptials were celebrated on mount Pelion with great pomp; all the deities attended except the godde of discord, who punished the negligence of Peleus, by throwing into the midst of the a embly a golden apple, to be given to the fairest of all the godde es. See: Discord i a . Thetis became mother of several children by Peleus, but all these she destroyed by fire in attempting to see whether they were immortal. Achilles must have shared the same fate, if Peleus had not snatched him from her hand as she was going to repeat the cruel operation. She afterwards rendered him invulnerable by plunging him in the waters of the Styx, except that part of the heel by which she held him. As Thetis well knew the fate of her son, she attempted to remove him from the Trojan war by concealing him in the court of Lycomedes. This was usele . He went with the rest of the Greeks. The mother, still anxious for his preservation, prevailed upon Vulcan to make him a suit of armour; but when it was done, she refused the god the favours which she had promised him. When Achilles was killed by Paris, Thetis i ued out of the sea with the Nereides to mourn his death, and after she had collected his ashes in a golden urn, she raised a monument to his memory, and instituted festivals in his honour. Hesiod , Theogony , li. 244 , . — Apollo dor us , bk. 1 , chs. 2 & 9; bk. 3 , ch. 13 .— Hyginus , fable 54.— Homer , Iliad , bk. 1 , . ; Ody ey , bk. 24 , li. 55 .— Pausanias , bk. 5 , ch. 18 , . — Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 11 , fable 7; bk. 12 , fable 1, .