Menoetius

An Opuntian noble, son of Actor, and the father of Patroclus. When his young son Patroclus, in a boyhood quarrel over a game of knucklebones, accidentally killed the son of Amphidamas, Menoetius took the boy to the court of Peleus in Phthia and asked for sanctuary; Peleus took Patroclus in and raised him beside his own son Achilles (*Iliad* 23.85-90 for the dice-game killing). Nestor, recounting to Patroclus the Greek muster at Troy, remembers arriving at Peleus's hall with Odysseus and finding Menoetius still there inside the house, pouring libation beside the altar and charging his son to be the elder and wiser counsel to the headstrong young Achilles (*Iliad* 11.765-790).

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