Phoenix
（
Φοίνιξ). Son of Amyntor, king of Argos, and the preceptor
of Achilles, to whom he was so attached that he accompanied him to the Trojan War. According
to the Homeric account (
Il. ix. 447 foll.), Amyntor, having transferred his affections from his
lawful wife, Hippodamia, to a concubine, the former besought her son Phœnix to gain
the affections of his father's mistress, and alienate her from Amyntor. Phœnix
succeeded in his suit, and his enraged father imprecated upon him the bitterest curses. The
son, therefore, notwithstanding the entreaties and efforts of his relations to detain him at
his parent's court, fled to Phthia, in Thessaly, where he was kindly received by Peleus,
monarch of the country, who assigned him a territory on the confines of Phthia and the sway
over the Dolopians. He intrusted him also with the education of his son Achilles.
Later writers, however, make Amyntor to have put out his son's eyes, and the latter to have
fled in this condition to Peleus, who led him to Chiron, and persuaded the Centaur to restore
him to sight. There was a play entitled
Phoenix by Sophocles, another by
Euripides, and a third by Ion.
After the death of Achilles, Phoenix, who had gone with him to the Trojan War, was one of
those commissioned to return to Greece and bring young Pyrrhus to the war. On the fall of Troy
he returned with that prince to Thessaly, in which country he continued to reside until his
death.
