Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Zeus carried off the nymph Aegina, daughter of Asopus, to the island then called Oenone; he named it Aegina after her and begot Aeacus. Hera, jealous, sent a plague (or serpent-poisoned water) that emptied the island of people. Aeacus prayed to Zeus his father to repopulate the land; Zeus turned the ants on an oak (or the island’s ants) into humans—the Myrmidons, industrious and loyal. Aeacus became famed for justice, so upright that he judged disputes even among the gods and, after death, was set among the judges of the underworld with Minos and Rhadamanthys. Aeacus’s sons were Peleus and Telamon (and, in some lists, Phocus by the Nereid Psamathe). Peleus and Telamon killed Phocus—out of envy of his athletic prowess—and were exiled. Telamon went to Salamis; Peleus came to Phthia, was purified by Eurytion (or by Acastus of Iolcus in the related intrigue), and inherited or gathered Myrmidon followers who later sailed with Achilles to Troy. The ants’ children thus become the Phthian war-band: an Aeginetan foundation myth that explains the name Myrmidon and ties Achilles’ people to Zeus’s island son Aeacus, justice, and exile-pollution preceding Peleus’s marriage to Thetis.