Mount Pelion

A wooded mountain in Thessaly.

Sometimes considered more of a hill than a mountain, Mount Pelion is located near the eastern coast of the mainland and having a height of 5,250 feet (1,600 meters); the slopes of Pelion were the home of the Centaurs before the war with the Lapithae; during their war with the Immortals, the Gigantes (Giants) tried to pile Mount Ossa on top of Mount Pelion in order to reach the summit of Mount Olympos (Olympus).

Mount Pelion was the site of the marriage between Thetis and Peleus; as one of the wedding gifts, the Centaur Kheiron (Chiron) presented an ashen spear which he had fashioned from wood cut from Mount Pelion; the spear was polished by the goddess Athene (Athena) and as a finishing touch, Hephaistos (Hephaestus) fitted it with a head; eventually the spear was used by Akhilleus (Achilles) during the siege of the city of Troy; men from the area around Mount Pelion were part of the Greek forces at the siege of Troy and were called Magnesians, i.e. men from Magnesia.

The ship the Argonauts used, the Argo, was built below Mount Pelion; when the Persians invaded Greece circa 480 BCE, their large naval fleet was wrecked by storms off the coast near Mount Pelion; also spelled Pelium.

• Histories, book 4, chapter 179; book 7, chapter 129; book 8, chapters 8 and 12
• Kypria, fragment 2
• Iliad, book 2, line 757; book 16, line 144; book 19, line 391
• Odyssey, book 11, line 316