Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Aeacus’s sons by Endeis were Peleus and Telamon; by the Nereid Psamathe he had Phocus, a gifted athlete. Envious of their half-brother’s prowess (or acting on Endeis’s instigation in some tellings), Peleus and Telamon plotted against Phocus during games or a hunt. They killed him—accounts speak of a discus cast in “sport” that struck him dead, or of deliberate assault—and hid the body. The crime was discovered; Aeacus drove both sons into exile. Telamon fled to Salamis and became king there, father of Ajax and Teucer. Peleus came to Phthia in Thessaly, was purified (by Eurytion, whom he later accidentally killed, or in related strands by Acastus), and gathered the Myrmidon following that Achilles would lead to Troy. The murder of Phocus is the hinge between Aeginetan Aeacid glory and the scattered seats—Salamis and Phthia—of the Trojan War’s greatest heroes. Catalogue it apart from the ants-to-Myrmidons aetion and from Peleus’s later courtship of Thetis.