Editing Peleus (section)

==In hero-cult==
Though the tomb of Aeacus remained in a shrine enclosure in the most conspicuous part of the port city, a quadrangular enclosure of white marble sculpted with bas-reliefs, in the form in which [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] saw it, with the tumulus of [[Phocus]] nearby,<ref>Pausanias, 2.29.6-7</ref> there was no ''[[temenos]]'' of Peleus at Aegina. Two versions of Peleus' fate account for this; in [[Euripides]]' ''Troades'',  Acastus, son of [[Pelias]], has exiled him from [[Phthia]];<ref>[[Scholia]] on Euripides, ''Troades'' 1123-28 note that in some accounts the ''sons'' of Acastus have cast him out, and that he was received by Molon in his exile</ref> and subsequently he dies in exile;  in another, he is reunited with [[Thetis]] and made immortal.

In antiquity, according to a fragment of [[Callimachus]]' lost ''Aitia'',<ref>One of the fragmentary [[Oxyrhynchus papyri]], noted by Lewis Richard Farnell, ''Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality: the Gifford Lectures'', "The Cults of Epic Heroes: Peleus" 1921:310f.</ref> there was a tomb of Peleus in [[Alonissos|Ikos (modern Alonissos)]], an island of the northern [[Sporades]]; there Peleus was venerated as "king of the [[Myrmidons]]" and the [[Nostos|"return of the hero"]] was celebrated annually.<ref>Farnell 1921:310f; Farnell remarks on "some ethnic tradition that escapes us, but which led the inhabitants to attach the name of Peleus to some forgotten grave," so deep was the cultural discontinuity between [[Mycenaean Greece]] and the rise of hero-cults in the 8th century BC.</ref> And there was his tomb, according to a poem in the [[Greek Anthology]].<ref>Greek Anthology, 7.2.</ref>

The only other reference to veneration of Peleus comes from the Christian [[Clement of Alexandria]], in his polemical ''Exhortation to the Greeks''. Clement attributes his source to a "collection of marvels" by a certain "Monimos" of whom nothing is known, and claims, in pursuit of his thesis that ''[[daimon]]''-worshipers become as cruel as their gods, that in "Pella of [[Thessaly]] human sacrifice is offered to Peleus and Cheiron, the victim being an Achaean".<ref>George William Butterworth, ed. and tr.''Clement of Alexandria'', "Exhortation to the Greeks" 1919:93.<!--a better edition could be cited--></ref> Of this, the continuing association of Peleus and Chiron is the most dependable detail.<ref>By way of apology for Clement, Farnell suggests "human sacrifice was occasionally an adjunct of hero-cults, and this at Pella may have been an exceptional rite prescribed at a crisis by some later oracle." (Farnell 1921:311). Dennis D. Hughes, ''Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece'' (Routledge, 1991) offers a skeptical view of the actuality of human sacrifices during historical times.</ref>