Black Ships Before Troy

When the sea nymph Thetis and King Peleus refuse to invite Eris to their wedding, they kick off the events of The Iliad. Thetis gives birth to Achilles, the best Greek warrior and one of the main characters of the story. She is willing to do absolutely anything for her son. When he is a baby, Thetis dips her son into the River Styx to make him immune to death in battle, but, by accident, she leaves a spot on his ankle vulnerable. Thetis fears for her son, who is destined to die young. She hides him from Agamemnon’s call to arms, but her plan fails. Though she warns Achilles of his fate, he chooses to seek glory. When Agamemnon takes Achilles’s war prize, the slave woman Briseis, Thetis appeals to Zeus on Achilles’s behalf. Later, when Achilles’s extreme grief for Patroclus leads to dishonorable behavior, Thetis soothes his temper and guides him to see reason.

Athene is Zeus’s daughter and the goddess of wisdom and battle strategy—a contrast to Ares, the god of bloodthirsty combat slaughter. She has “sword-gray eyes” and dresses in “gleaming armor” (4). After she claims Eris’s golden apple, her stake in the war becomes personal.