As we have seen, the marriage between the sea-goddess Thetis and the mortal Peleus would not only spark off the quarrel between the three goddesses but would also lead to the birth of Achilles, the most bitter enactment of the sorrows of heroic mortality. The Mythographus Homericus refers to Thetis’ ‘marriage to a mortal (thnētogamia)’1 – phrasing that suggests this marriage marked a reversal of the mingling between male gods and mortal women that characterised the heroic age, at least according to the formulation followed in the Catalogue of Women.