Eurytion, son of Actor, is King of Phthia, a once powerful realm in Thessaly which gained fame when Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha were saved from a cataclysmic flood on account of their piety. Their son Hellen gave his name to the land of Greece (Hellas) and its people (Hellenes). But by the time of Eurytion only a few generations later the kingdom is little more than a rural backwater, its poverty a vast contrast to Iolcus. Its insignificant is the reason Pelias has not made it subject to Iolcus, and Eurytion epitomises his kingdom: he is poorly dressed, lacking self-confidence, expectant of no good fortune. Yet in Peleus he finds a hero of similar hopelessness, but whose better fortune exalts Eurytion's own hopes, so much so that he eagerly seeks to betroth his daughter Antigone to Peleus.
Antigone is a female counterpart to her father, but both become more than they would otherwise have been because of Peleus' involvement in their lives and particularly his loyalty to them. Eurytion eagerly enlists on the Argonaut expedition, even though he is by no means a hero.