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Thetis (; (:tʰétis)), is encountered in Greek mythology mostly as a sea nymph or known as the goddess of water, one of the 50 Nereids, daughters of the ancient sea god Nereus. When described as a Nereid in Classical myths, Thetis was the daughter of Nereus and Doris,〔Hesiod, ''Theogony'' 240 ff.; her mother was Thalassa according to Lucian, ''Dialog of the Sea Gods'', 11, 2.〕 and a granddaughter of Tethys with whom she sometimes shares characteristics. Often she seems to lead the Nereids as they attend to her tasks. Sometimes she also is identified with Metis. Some sources argue that she was one of the earliest of deities worshipped in Archaic Greece, the oral traditions and records of which are lost. Only one written record, a fragment, exists attesting to her worship and an early Alcman hymn exists that identifies Thetis as the creator of the universe. Worship of Thetis as the goddess is documented to have persisted in some regions by historical writers such as Pausanias. In the Trojan War cycle of myth, the wedding of Thetis and the Greek hero Peleus is one of the precipitating events in the war which also lead to the birth of their child Achilles. ==Thetis as goddess== Most extant material about Thetis concerns her role as mother of Achilles, but there is some evidence that as the sea-goddess she played a more central role in the religious beliefs and practices of Archaic Greece. The pre-modern etymology of her name, from ''tithemi'' (τίθημι), "to set up, establish," suggests a perception among Classical Greeks of an early political role. Walter Burkert〔Burkert, ''The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age'', 1993, pp 92-93.〕 considers her name a transformed doublet of Tethys. In ''Iliad'' I, Achilles recalls to his mother her role in defending, and thus legitimizing, the reign of Zeus against an incipient rebellion by three Olympians, each of whom has pre-Olympian roots: You alone of all the gods saved Zeus the Darkener of the Skies from an inglorious fate, when some of the other Olympians—Hera, Poseidon, and Pallas Athene—had plotted to throw him into chains... You, goddess, went and saved him from that indignity. You quickly summoned to high Olympus the monster of the hundred arms whom the gods call Briareus, but mankind Aegaeon,〔The "goatish one"〕 a giant more powerful even than his father. He squatted by the Son of Cronos with such a show of force that the blessed gods slunk off in terror, leaving Zeus free Quintus of Smyrna, recalling this passage, does write that Thetis once released Zeus from chains; but there is no other reference to this rebellion among the Olympians, and some readers, such as M. M. Willcock,〔M. M. Willcock, "Ad Hoc Invention in the ''Iliad''," ''Harvard Studies in Classical Philology'' 81 (1977), pp. 41-53.〕 have understood the episode as an ''ad hoc'' invention of Homer's to support Achilles' request that his mother intervene with Zeus. Laura Slatkin explores the apparent contradiction, in that the immediate presentation of Thetis in the ''Iliad'' is as a helpless minor goddess overcome by grief and lamenting to her Nereid sisters, and links the goddess's present and past through her grief.〔Slatkin, "The Wrath of Thetis" ''Transactions of the American Philological Association'' (1974)116 (1986), pp 1-24.〕 She draws comparisons with Eos' role in another work of the epic Cycle concerning Troy, the lost ''Aethiopis'',〔The summary by Proclus survives.〕 which presents a strikingly similar relationship—that of the divine Dawn, Eos, with her slain son Memnon; she supplements the parallels with images from the repertory of archaic vase-painters, where Eos and Thetis flank the symmetrically opposed heroes, Achilles and Memnon, with a theme that may have been derived from traditional epic songs.〔"When Achilles fights with Memnon, the two divine mothers, Thetis and Eos, rush to the scene—this was probably the subject of a pre-Iliad epic song, and it also appears on one of the earliest mythological vase paintings." (Walter Burkert, ''Greek Religion'' 1985, p 121.〕 Thetis does not need to appeal to Zeus for immortality for her son, but snatches him away to the White Island ''Leuke'' in the Black Sea, an alternate Elysium〔Erwin Rohde calls the isle of Leuke a ''sonderelysion'' in ''Psyche: Seelen Unsterblickkeitsglaube der Grieche'' (1898) 3:371, noted by Slatkin 1986:4note.〕 where he has transcended death, and where an Achilles cult lingered into historic times. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Thetis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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