Vital to an understanding of A. is the question of what he did not become or almost became: the vanquisher of Zeus and hence the most powerful god in the Greek pantheon. When the oracle goddess Themis prophesies that a son will emerge from the union of Thetis and Zeus, and that this son will overthrow the father of the gods, Zeus renounces Thetis and marries her off to the mortal Peleus. A. is the issue of this union; Them…