Page "Thetis" Paragraph 10

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, 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.

She draws comparisons with Thetis ' role in another work of the epic Cycle concerning Troy, the lost Aethiopis, 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 Eros and Thetis flank the symmetrically opposed heroes with a theme that may have been derived from traditional epic songs.