The staying power of Thetis: allusion, interaction, and reception from Homer to the 21st century

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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of this review]

The phrase “minor sea goddess” has conventionally clung to Thetis, as if Homer had made that her epithet. These words, or some variation on them, have conventionally been used to characterize her in relation to the “major” deities of the Iliad. She is not one of the Olympians that dwell on Olympus with Zeus, nor does she even appear (in that text at least) to have strong ties to the prominent god of her home element, Poseidon. But in The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad (1991), Laura Slatkin has demonstrated that there are indications within the text that the Iliadic poet was aware of and relying on a larger mythological background, wherein the titular power of Thetis was far more profound. The most overt indication of this is the passage in the Iliad where Achilles describes the debt of Zeus to his mother as a result of her unbinding Zeus when the other deities had rebelled against him (Il. 1.393-412).[1] She alone was able to rescue the father of gods and men, an event that hints at much more substantial power and greater cosmic significance for Thetis than we might expect from one of a plethora of minor sea nymphs.

Slatkin’s work, examining this and other portions of the Iliad concerning Thetis, has certainly been well received by scholars of Homer, but has not led to a revolution in classicists’ overall appreciation of this goddess in other areas of ancient myth. Thetis is still often introduced as a “minor sea goddess” by scholars, in keeping with her evidently diminished power within the Iliad. This may partially be a result of ignorance of Slatkin’s work. But there is also perhaps a tacit assumption that whatever her larger cosmic role in a pre-Homeric mythological world, the influence of the Iliad on later Greco-Roman mythology has cemented her minor status within the divine hierarchy, and thus also flattened out any complexities.

Whatever the case, it is unraveling that perfunctory and overly simplistic assumption that is the primary objective of this volume by providing a more nuanced view of Thetis’ mythological biography, abilities, and place within the post-Homeric world. These chapters originate from a panel at the 2019 Celtic Conference in Classics held at the University of Coimbra and explicitly build upon Slatkin’s work by further exploring the nature of Thetis’ position as a powerful goddess who was more than the mother of Achilles alone. Following the introductory chapter by the editors, which contextualizes the volume against the backdrop of Slatkin’s work, the volume is divided into four thematic parts.

Part I consists of seven chapters that effectively explore the role of Thetis within the Olympian hierarchy, as Slatkin’s work does, but with an expanded purview. Thus, these chapters include strong examinations of Thetis in the Iliad and in the lost poems of the epic cycle, as well as detailed readings of her treatment in later texts, such as Euripides’ Andromache, Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo, Catullus 64, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Worth singling out among these is Maciej Paprocki’s first chapter for the volume, which is an insightful reconstruction of and exploration of the myth of Peleus’ rape of Thetis. Paprocki convincingly argues that this is the event that effectively disempowered her, and connotated her apparent loss of status during the events of the Iliad. This chapter also offers a lucid examination of what it means to bind a god (p.45-48), which will be a handy resource for mythologists in general. Such a concept appears elsewhere in Greco-Roman mythology, though its exact nature and limitations have previously only been dimly understood at best.

The four chapters of Part II shift to the theme of Thetis’ familial relationships, particularly her maternal nature. Of course, much scholarly attention has traditionally been given to her relationship with Achilles, which is here dealt with indirectly in Serena Cannavale’s chapter exploring Thetis’ role as a grieving mother in a series of funerary epigrams. This quartet of chapters, however, generally highlights Thetis’ other, less well-trodden relationships, particularly her role as a foster mother for Dionysus and Hephaestus. Particularly strong is the chapter by Hannah Silverblank, utilizing the lens of ecofeminist Donna Haraway’s “tentacular thinking” (p. 258-259) to show how Thetis’ role as a foster mother functions as a type of queer kinship, subverting the divine nuclear family.

Following this, there is a surprisingly brief Part III, which is a mere two chapters and concerns material culture. This is the weakest part of the volume as one would have hoped to see examinations of a greater variety of the extant visual representations of Thetis in ancient material culture.  (The Nereids were a frequent subject of ancient art, and they as whole were examined most prominently in Judith Barringer’s Divine Escorts: Nereids in Archaic and Classical Greek Art 1995).

Part IV centers on reception. Here, there is a considerable amount of variety, with contributions tackling middle English poetry, an early modern Spanish comedic play, a twentieth-century poem, and films from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although they concern later depictions of Thetis, many of these chapters highlight threads of thought about her that were already evident in the ancient world, or otherwise explore speculative scenarios featuring her. David Wright’s analysis of Thetis in the original Clash of the Titans (1981), argues that the film is an interesting reimagining of her position among the gods that effectively “activates Thetis’ cosmic power and anger” (p. 411). Paprocki’s second chapter for the volume advances the useful concept of “Thetidean figures,” characters that have, among other Thetis-like qualities, the tendency to exhibit “numerous overlapping categories of power and oppression, being othered, dehumanized, exoticized and eroticized” (p.430).  Such a concept is surely worth exploring for other such examples in modern media, while Paprocki himself focuses on Disney’s Ursula and Tia Dalma as “hypothetical re-incarnations of Thetis” (p. 430). Given the frequency of cross-references back to other chapters, this chapter effectively serves as a well-placed epilogue to the rest of the volume, just as the concept of a Thetidean figure functions to illustrate the wider potential influences of this goddess.

The final two contributions, appended at the end of Part IV, could logically have been split off into a concluding section of their own. The penultimate contribution includes an interview with Bettina Joy de Guzmen and a written version of her poem on Thetis, which had been performed at the close of the conference. The final chapter is an afterword by Laura Slatkin herself, elucidating four themes of her own that she sees in the chapters of this volume: 1) Thetis’ salvific role, 2) her grief, 3) her power, and 4) her remaking of traditions.

The volume contains only a small handful of minor typographical errors throughout, such as “stoke” instead of “stroke” (p. 152). A more substantial oversight occurs in the chapter by Daniela Milo, where there is a significant slip in the statement that Thetis and Oceanus created the rivers in Hesiod’s Theogony (p. 90), which erroneously conflates her with Tethys, the wife of Oceanus. Aside from such rarities, the volume is well edited and thorough. Much excellent work has gone into constructing the index locorum, which includes references to scholia and to medieval works as well as to ancient texts. The subject index will serve as a valuable guide to those seeking out to explore Thetis in relation to other mythological figures.

This volume is by no means an exhaustive treatment of every aspect of Thetis, nor does it pretend to be. The editors, presciently anticipating such a critique, have already included several suggestions for further avenues of exploration in their introduction chapter (pp.12-15). In particular, they suggest conducting a study on Thetis’ relationships to her own biological family (chiefly Nereus and her sister Nereids), something that hasn’t yet been undertaken, likely due to the slim nature of the possible material, but that would, nevertheless, add another interesting dimension to this goddess. As Slatkin declares in her afterword: “If one ever needed evidence for the metamorphic capacities of Thetis, this array of essays provides and guarantees it” (p. 485). It does indeed succeed in highlighting the ever-shifting nature of Thetis. Accordingly, it is worthy to stand side-by-side with Slatkin’s original work, effectively being a companion volume. These two key works of scholarship highlight the rich and diverse nature of a figure that can, and should, be considered one of the major goddesses of the ancient world.

Authors and Titles

Introduction: The Power of Thetis, 30 Years On (Maciej Paprocki, Gary P. Vos and David J. Wright)

Part I: The Powers of Thetis – Strife, Succession, and Cosmic Balance

1. The Power and Failures of Thetis in Early Poetic Traditions and Beyond (Ettore Cingano)
2. The Rape and Binding of Thetis in Its Mythological Context (Maciej Paprocki)
3. Divine Even If Not Olympian: The Mobility of Thetis in the Iliad (Ariadne Konstantinou)
4. Suggestions and Themes in Thetis’ rhesis in Euripides’ Andromache (Daniela Milo)
5. Thetis in Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo: Dynasty and Succession (Gary P. Vos)
6. Secrets and Lies: The Power of Thetis in Roman Culture (Peter Heslin)
7. Neque … sine numine uincis: Thetis, Medusa and (Literary) Creation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Simona Marorana)

Part II: Thetis’ Family Matters

8. In the Bosom of the Goddess: Thetis and Dionysus in 6.130-140 (Laura Massetti)
9. Motherhood and Shapeshifting in Depictions of Thetis (Katharine Mawford)
10. Forging Families with Thetis: “Tentacular Thinking” and Queer Kinship in Homer’s Iliad (Hannah Silverblank)
11. Mourning Mothers and Premature Deaths: Thetis’ Example in Greek Funerary Epigrams (Serena Cannavale)

Part III: Material Culture

12. ‘A Dread and Revered Goddess’: Thetis and Other Gods in Attic Vases (Diana Burton)
13. Saviour Mermaids of the Ancient Mediterranean: Thetis and the Nereids as Patrons of Ancient Greek Mariners (Amelia R. Brown and Nile de Jonge)

Part IV: Reception – Thetis’ Aftermaths

14. The Wicked Witch of the West? Thetis’ Controversial Transformations in 14^th-Century Middle English Vernacular Poetry (Tine Scheijnen)
15. Reading Thetis in Tirso de Molia’s El Aquiles (Julene Abad Del Vecchio)
16. Thetis and the Shield of Achilles – Reading the Iliad with Auden (Naoko Yamagata)
17. Thetis of the Silver Screen: The Vengeful and Cosmic Goddess in Clash of the Titans (David J. Wright)
18. Sea Witches in Exile: Thetidean Figures in Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989/2008) and Pirates of the Caribbean (2006/2007) (Maciej Paprocki)
19. Reception in Performance: Interview and Poetry (Bettina Joy de Guzman)

Afterword to the Staying Power of Thetis (Laura M. Slatkin)

Notes

[1] Slatkin (1991), 18-20.