This time Peleus was purified by Acastus, king of the city of lolcus in Thessaly in northeast Greece. Afterward Peleus competed in funeral games for Pelias, Acastus’s father and predecessor, during which he wrestled the female warrior Atalanta, another veteran of the Calydonian boar hunt. Later, however, Acastus’s wife, Astydameia, tried to seduce Peleus. When he resisted, she sent word to Antigone that he was going to marry her own daughter Sterope. Antigone, believing herself abandoned, committed suicide.
Astydameia then told Acastus that she had been raped by Peleus. Although desiring revenge, the king could not harm the man he had purified without violating religious law. So he took Peleus hunting on nearby Mount Pelion, stole his sword, and abandoned him while he slept, so that Peleus would become prey for centaurs, vicious half-man, half-horse creatures that inhabited the area. Peleus managed to save himself after being given a sword by the wise centaur Cheiron. In another version the gods gave him a sword.
Later Peleus gathered a force of soldiers, including the heroes Castor, Pollux, and Jason. With them he stormed lolcus and killed Astydameia and, according to Greek scholar and historian Apohodorus (fl. 140 BCE), also Acastus.
Left: The Calydonian boar hunt is depicted in this second-century-BCE alabaster relief
PELEUS
Right: In this painting Italian artist Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (1708—1787) depicts the centaur Cheiron teaching Achilles to play the lyre.
After other adventures, including service as an Argonaut, Peleus married Polydora, who was a Spartan princess. In another version Polydora was Peleus’s daughter rather than his wife. Later Peleus married the sea goddess Thetis. She was the daughter of the sea god Nereus and was courted by the gods Zeus and Poseidon. It was revealed that her son would be more powerful than his father, however, so Zeus resolved to marry Thetis to a mortal in order to prevent the birth of a son who could challenge him.
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