Editing Thetis (section)

===Thetis and the other deities===

[[File:Dish Thetis Peleus Louvre CA2569.jpg|thumb|Immortal Thetis with the mortal [[Peleus]] in the foreground, [[Boeotia]]n black-figure dish, c. 500–475 BC - [[Louvre]]]]

Pseudo-Apollodorus' ''[[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Bibliotheke]]'' asserts that Thetis was courted by both [[Zeus]] and [[Poseidon]], but she was married off to the mortal [[Peleus]] because of their fears about the prophecy by [[Themis]]<ref>[[Pindar]], Eighth Isthmian Ode.</ref> (or [[Prometheus]], or [[Calchas]], according to others) that her son would become greater than his father. Thus, she is revealed as a figure of cosmic capacity, quite capable of unsettling the divine order. (Slatkin 1986:12)

When [[Hephaestus]] was thrown from Olympus, whether cast out by Hera for his lameness or evicted by [[Zeus]] for taking Hera's side, the [[Oceanids|Oceanid]] Eurynome and the [[Nereids|Nereid]] Thetis caught him and allowed him to stay on the volcanic isle of [[Lemnos]], while he labored for them as a smith, "working there in the hollow of the cave, and the stream of [[Oceanus|Okeanos]] around us went on forever with its foam and its murmur" (''Iliad'' 18.369).

Thetis is not successful in her role protecting and nurturing a hero (the theme of ''[[kourotrophos]]''), but her role in succoring deities is emphatically repeated by Homer. Diomedes recalls that when Dionysus was expelled by [[Lycurgus of Thrace|Lycurgus]] with the Olympians' aid, he took refuge in the [[Red Sea|Erythraean Sea]] with Thetis in a bed of [[seaweed]] (6.123ff). These accounts associate Thetis with "a divine past—uninvolved with human events—with a level of divine invulnerability extraordinary by Olympian standards. Where within the framework of the ''Iliad'' the ultimate recourse is to Zeus for protection, here the poem seems to point to an alternative structure of cosmic relations."<ref>Slatkin 1986:10.</ref>

Once, Thetis and [[Medea]] argued in [[Thessaly]] over which was the most beautiful; they appointed the Cretan [[Idomeneus of Crete|Idomeneus]] as the judge, who gave the victory to Thetis. In her anger, Medea called all [[Crete|Cretans]] liars, and cursed them to never say the truth.<ref>[[Ptolemaeus Chennus]], ''New History'' Book 5, as epitomized by [[Photius I of Constantinople|Patriarch Photius]] in ''[[Bibliotheca (Photius)|Myriobiblon]]'' [https://topostext.org/work/237#190.36 190.36]</ref>