Daughter of Nereus, the ancient deity of the sea, and Oceanida Dorida, mother of the most famous Greek hero Achilles. Hera raised Tethys on Olympus. The beautiful daughter of Nereus never forgot her benefactor and was always ready to help her and satisfy her wishes. Zeus and Poseidon wanted to marry Thetis, but they gave up the marriage when they learned from the wise Themis that she would give birth to a son stronger than the father. Others say that Thetis rejected Zeus' love because she had a deep respect for his wife Harry. In order to humiliate the beautiful Thetis, Zeus decided to deny her a dignified marriage and marry her to a mortal. Wanting to mitigate that decision, Hera chose Peleus, the king of Phthia in Thessaly, the most pious and noble among the people, as the wife of her protégée. Tethys did not want to obey the decision of the gods and Peleus got her hand with great difficulty.
Peleus met Thetis on the seashore, near the Sepijad reef. Nere's beautiful daughter often visited that place because she enjoyed the nearby myrtle grove and the deserted sandy shore. While one day she was resting in the shade of fragrant trees, Peleus approached her and hugged her with strong arms (picture below). To avoid an unwanted hug, Tethys changed her appearance and turned into a bird, a tree or a tiger for an hour, and into fire and water for an hour. The wise centaur Chiron or the sea antiquity Proteus advised Peleus not to drop Nereus' daughter from her arms until she regained her original shape. The struggle between Thetis and the mortals lasted a long time. Only when she realized that the hero defeats her by the will of the gods, Tethys, on a night full of moonlight, surrendered to the strong Peleus.
The wedding of Peleus and Thetis was solemnly celebrated on Pelion, in the presence of all the gods and with the song of the muses. Hera lit the wedding torch, everyone was overjoyed and the joy lasted until Eris, the goddess of discord, threw a fatal apple of discord among the guests.
Peleus and Thetis' marriage was not happy. The goddess did not want her children to experience the horrors of old age, so she anointed them with ragweed and hardened them over the fire, trying to destroy the mortal part in them, which they inherited from their father. With these spells, she killed all her sons, six of them. According to Themis' prophecy, Thetis gave birth to a fast-footed son, Achilles, stronger than his father, and similar to Ares. When she wanted to make him immortal, Peleus thwarted her intention. Then the offended and angry goddess left the marriage bedroom and returned to her father Nereus in the depths of the sea. Some say that Tethys immersed little Achilles in the river Styx to make him invulnerable, but that the right heel, which she was holding, remained un wetted and that Achilles could only be wounded in that place.
Although she refused to remain the wife of a mortal, Tethys continued to watch over her son. She knew that Achilles was left to choose between a short but glorious life and a long life - monotonous and without parts. When Achilles chose glory, Thetis, although she knew that she could not change the course of destiny, tried in every way to postpone her son's death. To prevent him from going to the Trojan War, she disguised him as a girl and took him to the island of Skir, near King Lycomedes. When Achilles, in spite of this precaution, set out for Troy, Thetis advised him not to be the first to set foot on Asian soil, because she knew that the first Greek to step on Trojan soil would be killed. She also warned him that he would lose his life if he killed Apollo's son. In order to prevent the accident, she appointed Mnemon as his companion, whose duty was to constantly remind Achilles of her mother's words. That caution did not change the course of fate; at the time of the Greek landing on the island of Tened, Mnemon did not warn his master in time, and Achilles killed Apollo's son Tened. Because of that murder, Achilles lost his life in front of the walls of Troy.
During the Trojan War, Tethys lived in the depths of the sea, in her father's cave, but she still watched her son. When Achilles, due to a quarrel with Agamemnon, withdrew from the battlefield, Thetis went to Olympus and begged Zeus to promise that the Trojans would win until the Greeks returned the honors to her son. Later, when Achilles decided to avenge Patroclus' death, Thetis hurried to Hephaestus with a request to make a new weapon for her son. Hephaestus immediately fulfilled her wish because he was grateful to her for accepting him when he was thrown from Olympus. Tethys came to the Greek camp to bring Achilles a new weapon (picture above). She saw her living son only once more, when she told him about Zeus' decision to hand over Hector's corpse to the Trojans.
After Achilles' death, Thetis no longer appeared among mortals. She transferred her son to the island of Leuca, where the divine part of his being continued to live, and she promised eternal and exhausted Peleus eternal life.
Literature:
• Dragoslav Srejović - Aleksandrina Cermanović-Kuzmanović, Recnik grčke i rimske mitologije, drugo izdanje, Beograd: Srpska književna zadruga, 1987
I find out about her for the first time now, I didn't know this.