Peleus' wrestling-courtship of Thetis (Peithinos, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 2279, early 5th c. BCE)
The war begins with a rape. The hero Peleus wrestles down the reluctant metamorphic sea-nymph Thetis and holds on tight as she transforms herself (like another sea divinity, Proteus, in Odyssey 4.450-63) into a number of different shapes, among them the lion and snakes depicted in this vase painting, where successive transformations are represented simultaneously. The violent courtship ends when she returns to her true form and yields to his passion. The result of that union will be Achilles.