But Thetis in the night stands beside the sea-sounding rocks. Her mind is split this way and that as she turns over what secret place she should choose for her son, in what lands she should decide to conceal him. Thrace is nearest, but much given to Mavors’ pursuits. Nor does the hardy race of Macedonians please, nor yet the children of Cecrops (they would spur him to glory). Sestos and the bay of Abydos are too much in the way of ships. She decides to go through the crowding Cyclades. Here she spurns Myconos and lowly Seriphos and Lemnos, to men unfriendly, and Delos, hospitable to all peoples. A while back she had heard from Lycomedes’ unwarlike palace bevies of girls and the sound of their play along the shore, while on a mission to follow Aegaeon as he relaxed his harsh bonds and to number the god’s hundred chains. This land pleases, this is safest for the fearful mother. Even so a bird, near to giving birth, already careful, already afraid, wonders on what branch to hang her vacant house; here she foresees winds, here thinks anxiously of serpents, here of men; finally as she doubts, a shady place takes her fancy; scarce has she alighted on the stranger boughs and all at once she loves the tree.

Another care remains for the sad goddess’ weary pondering: should she herself take her son through the waters in her embrace or use mighty Triton, call on the swift winds to aid or Thaumas’ daughter, wont to feed upon the sea? Then from the deep she summons her team, a pair of dolphins, bridling them with sharp seashells. Great Tethys had reared them for her in the Atlantic ocean, deep in an echoing sea hollow. No denizen of Neptune’s watery kingdom has such beauty of grey-blue form, such power of swimming, or more of human mind. She tells them to halt in the full sea verge, so that contact with bare earth do them no hurt. Then she herself carries Achilles, his bosom all relaxed in the sleep of boyhood, down from the crags of the Haemonian cave to the placid waters and the shore commanded to be silent. Cynthia shows the way, shining out with all her orb. Untroubled by the sea, Chiron follows the goddess on her path and begs speedy return, hiding his moist eyes and gazing out from horse erect as they are suddenly carried away and presently hidden from sight, where for a little while foam the white traces of flight and the track dies upon the liquid flood. Him now sad Pholoë, now cloudy Othrys lament, no more to return to Thessalian Tempe, likewise Sperchios in thinner flow and the learned ancient’s muted cavern. The Fauns miss his boyish songs and the Nymphs bewail long hoped-for nuptials.