Phoenix

Aged tutor and foster-father of Achilles, who had fled his own father Amyntor's house after a bitter quarrel and had been taken in as a young man at the court of Peleus in Phthia. Peleus gave him Dolopia to rule and the child Achilles to raise "to be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds" (*Iliad* 9.442-443). In Iliad 9 he is the third of the embassy sent by Agamemnon to plead with the sulking Achilles, and his long speech — half scolding, half grieving — is one of the most affecting moments of the poem (*Iliad* 9.432-605).

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