The mythology of ancient Greece and Italy

314 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE.
groom a ; Cheiron gave him an ashen spear b , and Poseidon
the immortal Harpy-born steeds Balios and Xanthos c . The
Muses sang, the Nereides danced, to celebrate the wedding,
and Ganymedes poured forth nectar for the guests d .
When the celebrated son of Peleus and Thetis was born,
his mother wished to make him immortal. She therefore
placed him unknown to Peleus each night in the fire, to purge
away what he had inherited of mortal from his father ; and by
day she anointed him with ambrosia. But Peleus watched,
and seeing the child panting in the fire cried out. Thetis
thus frustrated in her design left her babe, and returned to
her sister-Nereides. Peleus then conveyed the infant to Chei-
ron, who reared him on the entrails of lions and on the marrow
of bears and wild boars, and named him Achilleus, be-
cause he never applied his lips faefoaj) to a breast e .
According to the ^Egimios (a poem ascribed to Hesiod),
Thetis cast her children as they were born into a caldron of
boiling water, to try if they were mortal. Several had perished,
unable to stand the test, when Peleus lost patience and
refused to let the experiment be tried on Achilleus. His god-
dess-wife then deserted him f . These fictions are evidently
posterior to Homer, who represents Peleus and Thetis as dwell-
ing together all the lifetime of their sons,
Of Peleus it is further related, that he survived his son and
even grandson 11
, and died in misery in the isle of Cos 1 . This
history of Achilleus forms an important portion of the events
of the Trojan War.
'I£*W. Ixion.
Ixion was the son of Antion or Peision ; others gave him
Phlegyas or the god Ares for a sire. He obtained the hand
of Dia the daughter of Deioneus, having, according to the
a
c
II. xvii. 195 ; xviii. 84. t>
II. xvi. 867 ; xvii. 443 ; xxiii. 277.
II. xv i. 143.
A Eurip. Iph. in Aul. 1036. seq. Catullus, Nuptiae Pel. et Thet.
e Apollod. ut sup. i Ap. Sch. Apoll. Rh. iv. 846. »
E II. i. 396 ; xvi. 574 ; xviii. 89. 332. 440 ; xix. 422.
h Od. xi. 493. Eurip. Andromache.
1
Callimachus, ap. Sch. Pind. Pyth. iii. 167. On the subject of Peleus and Thetis
see below, chap. xii. jEacos.