III. LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS

The sons of the Titan god Iapetus, as described in the Hesiodic theogony, are Atlas, Menœtius, Promêtheus and Epimêtheus.[160] Of these, Atlas alone is mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey, and even he not as the son of Iapetus: the latter himself is named in the Iliad as existing in Tartarus along with Kronos. The Homeric Atlas “knows the depths of the whole sea, and keeps by himself those tall pillars which hold the heaven apart from the earth.”[161]

[160] Hesiod, Theog. 510.

[161] Hom. Odyss. i. 120.—

Ἄτλαντος θυγατὴρ ὀλοόφρονος, ὅστε θαλάσσης Πάσης βένθεα οἶδε, ἔχει δέ τε κίονας αὐτὸς Μακρὰς, αἳ γαῖάν τε καὶ οὐρανὸν ἀμφὶς ἔχουσιν.

As the Homeric theogony generally appears much expanded in Hesiod, so also does the family of Iapetus, with their varied adventures. Atlas is here described, not as the keeper of the intermediate pillars between heaven and earth, but as himself condemned by Zeus to support the heaven on his head and hands;[162] while the fierce Menœtius is thrust down to Erebus as a punishment for his ungovernable insolence. But the remaining two brothers, Promêtheus and Epimêtheus, are among the most interesting creations of Grecian legend, and distinguished in more than one respect from all the remainder.

[162] Hesiod, Theog. 516.—

Ἄτλας δ᾽ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχει κρατερῆς ὑπ᾽ ἀνάγκης Ἑστηὼς, κεφαλῇ τε καὶ ἀκαμάτοισι χέρεσσι.

Hesiod stretches far beyond the simplicity of the Homeric conception.

First, the main battle between Zeus and the Titan gods is a contest of force purely and simply—mountains are hurled and thunder is launched, and the victory remains to the strongest. But the competition between Zeus and Promêtheus is one of craft and stratagem: the victory does indeed remain to the former, but the honors of the fight belong to the latter. Secondly, Promêtheus and Epimêtheus (the fore-thinker and the after-thinker[163]) are characters stamped at the same mint and by the same effort, the express contrast and antithesis of each other. Thirdly, mankind are here expressly brought forward, not indeed as active partners in the struggle, but as the grand and capital subjects interested,—as gainers or sufferers by the result. Promêtheus appears in the exalted character of champion of the human race, even against the formidable superiority of Zeus.

[163] Pindar extends the family of Epimêtheus and gives him a daughter, Πρόφασις (Pyth. v. 25), Excuse, the offspring of After-thought.

In the primitive or Hesiodic legend, Promêtheus is not the creator or moulder of man; it is only the later additions which invest him with this character.[164] The race are supposed as existing, and Promêtheus, a member of the dispossessed body of Titan gods, comes forward as their representative and defender. The advantageous bargain which he made with Zeus on their behalf, in respect to the partition of the sacrificial animals, has been recounted in the preceding chapter. Zeus felt that he had been outwitted, and was exceeding wroth. In his displeasure he withheld from mankind the inestimable comfort of fire, so that the race would have perished, had not Promêtheus stolen fire, in defiance of the command of the Supreme Ruler, and brought it to men in the hollow of a ferule.[165]

[164] Apollodôr. i. 7. 1. Nor is he such either in Æschylus, or in the Platonic fable (Protag. c. 30), though this version became at last the most popular. Some hardened lumps of clay, remnants of that which had been employed by Promêtheus in moulding man, were shown to Pausanias at Panopeus in Phokis (Paus. x. 4, 3).

The first Epigram of Erinna (Anthol. i. p. 58, ed. Branck) seems to allude to Promêtheus as moulder of man. The expression of Aristophanês (Aves, 689)—πλάσματα πηλοῦ—does not necessarily refer to Promêtheus.

[165] Hesiod, Theog. 566; Opp. Di. 52.

Zeus was now doubly indignant, and determined to play off a still more ruinous stratagem. Hêphæstos, by his direction, moulded the form of a beautiful virgin; Athênê dressed her, Aphroditê and the Charities bestowed upon her both ornament and fascination, while Hermês infused into her the mind of a dog, a deceitful spirit, and treacherous words.[166] The messenger of the gods conducted this “fascinating mischief” to mankind, at a time when Promêtheus was not present. Now Epimêtheus had received from his brother peremptory injunctions not to accept from the hands of Zeus any present whatever; but the beauty of Pandôra (so the newly-formed female was called) was not to be resisted. She was received and admitted among men, and from that moment their comfort and tranquillity was exchanged for suffering of every kind.[167] The evils to which mankind are liable had been before enclosed in a cask in their own keeping: Pandôra in her malice removed the lid of the cask, and out flew these thousand evils and calamities, to exercise forever their destroying force. Hope alone remained imprisoned, and therefore without efficacy, as before—the inviolable lid being replaced before she could escape. Before this incident (says the legend) men had lived without disease or suffering; but now both earth and sea are full of mischiefs, while maladies of every description stalk abroad by day as well as by night,[168] without any hope for man of relief to come.

[166] Theog. 580; Opp. Di. 50-85.

[167] Opp. Di. 81-90.

[168] Opp. Di. 93. Pandôra does not bring with her the cask, as the common version of this story would have us suppose: the cask exists fast closed in the custody of Epimêtheus, or of man himself, and Pandôra commits the fatal treachery of removing the lid. The case is analogous to that of the closed bag of unfavorable winds which Æolus gives into the hands of Odysseus, and which the guilty companions of the latter force open, to the entire ruin of his hopes (Odyss. x. 19-50). The idea of the two casks on the threshold of Zeus, lying ready for dispensation—one full of evils the other of benefits—is Homeric (Iliad, xxiv. 527):—

Δοιοὶ γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὔδει, etc.

Plutarch assimilates to this the πίθος opened by Pandôra, Consolat. ad Apollôn. c. 7. p. 105. The explanation here given of the Hesiodic passage relating to Hope, is drawn from an able article in the Wiener Jahrbücher, vol. 109 (1845), p. 220, Ritter; a review of Schömmann’s translation of the Promêtheus of Æschylus. The diseases and evils are inoperative so long as they remain shut up in the cask: the same mischief-making influence which lets them out to their calamitous work, takes care that Hope shall still continue a powerless prisoner in the inside.

The Theogony gives the legend here recounted, with some variations—leaving out the part of Epimêtheus altogether, as well as the cask of evils. Pandôra is the ruin of man, simply as the mother and representative of the female sex.[169] And the variations are thus useful, as they enable us to distinguish the essential from the accessory circumstances of the story.

[169] Theog. 590.—

Ἐκ τῆς γὰρ γένος ἐστὶ γυναικῶν θηλυτεράων, Τῆς γὰρ ὀλώιόν ἐστι γένος· καὶ φῦλα γυναικῶν, Πῆμα μέγα θνητοῖσι μετ᾽ ἀνδράσι ναιετάουσι, etc.

“Thus (says the poet, at the conclusion of his narrative) it is not possible to escape from the purposes of Zeus.”[170] His mythe, connecting the calamitous condition of man with the malevolence of the supreme god, shows, first, by what cause such an unfriendly feeling was raised; next, by what instrumentality its deadly results were brought about. The human race are not indeed the creation, but the protected flock of Promêtheus, one of the elder or dispossessed Titan gods: when Zeus acquires supremacy, mankind along with the rest become subject to him, and are to make the best bargain they can respecting worship and service to be yielded. By the stratagem of their advocate Promêtheus, Zeus is cheated into such a partition of the victims as is eminently unprofitable to him; whereby his wrath is so provoked, that he tries to subtract from man the use of fire. Here however his scheme is frustrated by the theft of Promêtheus: but his second attempt is more successful, and he in his turn cheats the unthinking Epimêtheus into the acceptance of a present (in spite of the peremptory interdict of Promêtheus) by which the whole of man’s happiness is wrecked. This legend grows out of two feelings; partly as to the relations of the gods with man, partly as to the relation of the female sex with the male. The present gods are unkind towards man, but the old gods, with whom man’s lot was originally cast, were much kinder—and the ablest among them stands forward as the indefatigable protector of the race. Nevertheless, the mere excess of his craft proves the ultimate ruin of the cause which he espouses. He cheats Zeus out of a fair share of the sacrificial victim, so as both to provoke and justify a retaliation which he cannot be always at hand to ward off: the retaliation is, in his absence, consummated by a snare laid for Epimêtheus and voluntarily accepted. And thus, though Hesiod ascribes the calamitous condition of man to the malevolence of Zeus, his piety suggests two exculpatory pleas for the latter: mankind have been the first to defraud Zeus of his legitimate share of the sacrifice—and they have moreover been consenting parties to their own ruin. Such are the feelings, as to the relation between the gods and man, which have been one of the generating elements of this legend. The other element, a conviction of the vast mischief arising to man from women, whom yet they cannot dispense with, is frequently and strongly set forth in several of the Greek poets—by Simonidês of Amorgos and Phokylidês, not less than by the notorious misogynist Euripidês.

[170] Opp. Di. 105.—

Οὕτως οὔτι πῆ ἐστὶ Διὸς νόον ἐξαλέασθαι.

But the miseries arising from woman, however great they might be, did not reach Promêtheus himself. For him, the rash champion who had ventured “to compete in sagacity”[171] with Zeus, a different punishment was in store. Bound by heavy chains to a pillar, he remained fast imprisoned for several generations: every day did an eagle prey upon his liver, and every night did the liver grow afresh for the next day’s suffering. At length Zeus, eager to enhance the glory of his favorite son Hêraclês, permitted the latter to kill the eagle and rescue the captive.[172]

[171] Theog. 534. Οὕνεκ᾽ ἐρίζετο βουλὰς ὑπερμενέϊ Κρονίωνι.

[172] Theog. 521-532.

Such is the Promêthean mythe as it stands in the Hesiodic poems; its earliest form, as far as we can trace. Upon it was founded the sublime tragedy of Æschylus, “The Enchained Promêtheus,” together with at least one more tragedy, now lost, by the same author.[173] Æschylus has made several important alterations; describing the human race, not as having once enjoyed and subsequently lost a state of tranquillity and enjoyment, but as originally feeble and wretched. He suppresses both the first trick played off by Promêtheus upon Zeus respecting the partition of the victim—and the final formation and sending of Pandôra—which are the two most marked portions of the Hesiodic story; while on the other hand he brings out prominently and enlarges upon the theft of fire,[174] which in Hesiod is but slightly touched. If he has thus relinquished the antique simplicity of the story, he has rendered more than ample compensation by imparting to it a grandeur of idéal, a large reach of thought combined with appeals to our earnest and admiring sympathy, and a pregnancy of suggestion in regard to the relations between the gods and man, which soar far above the Hesiodic level—and which render his tragedy the most impressive, though not the most artistically composed, of all Grecian dramatic productions. Promêtheus there appears not only as the heroic champion and sufferer in the cause and for the protection of the human race, but also as the gifted teacher of all the arts, helps, and ornaments of life, amongst which fire is only one:[175] all this against the will and in defiance of the purpose of Zeus, who, on acquiring his empire, wished to destroy the human race and to beget some new breed.[176] Moreover, new relations between Promêtheus and Zeus are superadded by Æschylus. At the commencement of the struggle between Zeus and the Titan gods, Promêtheus had vainly attempted to prevail upon the latter to conduct it with prudence; but when he found that they obstinately declined all wise counsel, and that their ruin was inevitable, he abandoned their cause and joined Zeus. To him and to his advice Zeus owed the victory: yet the monstrous ingratitude and tyranny of the latter is now manifested by nailing him to a rock, for no other crime than because he frustrated the purpose of extinguishing the human race, and furnished to them the means of living with tolerable comfort.[177] The new ruler Zeus, insolent with his victory over the old gods, tramples down all right, and sets at naught sympathy and obligation, as well towards gods as towards man. Yet the prophetic Promêtheus, in the midst of intense suffering, is consoled by the foreknowledge that the time will come when Zeus must again send for him, release him, and invoke his aid, as the sole means of averting from himself dangers otherwise insurmountable. The security and means of continuance for mankind have now been placed beyond the reach of Zeus—whom Promêtheus proudly defies, glorying in his generous and successful championship,[178] despite the terrible price which he is doomed to pay for it.

[173] Of the tragedy called Προμηθεὺς Λυόμενος some few fragments yet remain: Προμηθεὺς Πύρφορος was a satyric drama, according to Dindorf. Welcker recognizes a third tragedy, Προμηθεὺς Πύρφορος, and a satyric drama, Προμηθεὺς Πυρκαεύς (Die Griechisch. Tragödien, vol. i. p. 30). The story of Promêtheus had also been handled by Sapphô in one of her lost songs (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 42).

[174] Apollodôrus too mentions only the theft of fire (i. 7. 1).

[175] Æsch. Prom. 442-506.—

Πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως.

[176] Æsch. Prom. 231.—

βροτῶν δὲ τῶν ταλαιπώρων λόγον Οὐκ ἔσχεν οὐδέν᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ἀϊστώσας γένος Τὸ πᾶν, ἔχρῃζεν ἄλλο φιτῦσαι νέον.

[177] Æsch. Prom. 198-222. 123.—

διὰ τὴν λίαν φιλότητα βροτῶν.

[178] Æsch. Prom. 169-770.

As the Æschylean Promêtheus, though retaining the old lineaments, has acquired a new coloring, soul and character, so he has also become identified with a special locality. In Hesiod, there is no indication of the place in which he is imprisoned; but Æschylus places it in Scythia,[179] and the general belief of the Greeks supposed it to be on Mount Caucasus. So long and so firmly did this belief continue, that the Roman general Pompey, when in command of an army in Kolchis, made with his companion, the literary Greek Theophanês, a special march to view the spot in Caucasus where Promêtheus had been transfixed.[180]

[179] Prometh. 2. See also the Fragments of the Promêtheus Solutus, 177-179, ed. Dindorf, where Caucasus is specially named; but v. 719 of the Promêtheus Vinctus seems to imply that Mount Caucasus is a place different from that to which the suffering prisoner is chained.

[180] Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 103.

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IV. HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS

Having briefly enumerated the gods of Greece, with their chief attributes as described in legend, we come to those genealogies which connected them with historical men.

In the retrospective faith of a Greek, the ideas of worship and ancestry coalesced. Every association of men, large or small, in whom there existed a feeling of present union, traced back that union to some common initial progenitor; that progenitor being either the common god whom they worshipped, or some semi-divine person closely allied to him. What the feelings of the community require is, a continuous pedigree to connect them with this respected source of existence, beyond which they do not think of looking back. A series of names, placed in filiation or fraternity, together with a certain number of family or personal adventures ascribed to some of the individuals among them, constitute the ante-historical past through which the Greek looks back to his gods. The names of this genealogy are, to a great degree, gentile or local names familiar to the people,—rivers, mountains, springs, lakes, villages, demes, etc.,—embodied as persons, and introduced as acting or suffering. They are moreover called kings or chiefs, but the existence of a body of subjects surrounding them is tacitly implied rather than distinctly set forth; for their own personal exploits or family proceedings constitute for the most part the whole matter of narrative. And thus the genealogy was made to satisfy at once the appetite of the Greeks for romantic adventure, and their demand for an unbroken line of filiation between themselves and the gods. The eponymous personage, from whom the community derive their name, is sometimes the begotten son of the local god, sometimes an indigenous man sprung from the earth, which is indeed itself divinized.

It will be seen from the mere description of these genealogies that they included elements human and historical, as well as elements divine and extra-historical. And if we could determine the time at which any genealogy was first framed, we should be able to assure ourselves that the men then represented as present, together with their fathers and grandfathers, were real persons of flesh and blood. But this is a point which can seldom be ascertained; moreover, even if it could be ascertained, we must at once set it aside, if we wish to look at the genealogy in the point of view of the Greeks. For to them, not only all the members were alike real, but the gods and heroes at the commencement were in a certain sense the most real; at least, they were the most esteemed and indispensable of all. The value of the genealogy consisted, not in its length, but in its continuity; not (according to the feeling of modern aristocracy) in the power of setting out a prolonged series of human fathers and grandfathers, but in the sense of ancestral union with the primitive god. And the length of the series is traceable rather to humility, inasmuch as the same person who was gratified with the belief that he was descended from a god in the fifteenth generation, would have accounted it criminal insolence to affirm that a god was his father or grandfather. In presenting to the reader those genealogies which constitute the supposed primitive history of Hellas, I make no pretence to distinguish names real and historical from fictitious creations; partly because I have no evidence upon which to draw the line, and partly because by attempting it I should altogether depart from the genuine Grecian point of view.

Nor is it possible to do more than exhibit a certain selection of such as were most current and interesting; for the total number of them which found place in Grecian faith exceeds computation. As a general rule, every deme, every gens, every aggregate of men accustomed to combined action, religious or political, had its own. The small and unimportant demes into which Attica was divided had each its ancestral god and heroes, just as much as the great Athens herself. Even among the villages of Phokis, which Pausanias will hardly permit himself to call towns, deductions of legendary antiquity were not wanting. And it is important to bear in mind, when we are reading the legendary genealogies of Argos, or Sparta, or Thêbes, that these are merely samples amidst an extensive class, all perfectly analogous, and all exhibiting the religious and patriotic retrospect of some fraction of the Hellenic world. They are no more matter of historical tradition than any of the thousand other legendary genealogies which men delighted to recall to memory at the periodical festivals of their gens, their deme, or their village.

With these few prefatory remarks, I proceed to notice the most conspicuous of the Grecian heroic pedigrees, and first, that of Argos.

The earliest name in Argeian antiquity is that of Inachus, the son of Oceanus and Têthys, who gave his name to the river flowing under the walls of the town. According to the chronological computations of those who regarded the mythical genealogies as substantive history, and who allotted a given number of years to each generation, the reign of Inachus was placed 1986 B. C., or about 1100 years prior to the commencement of the recorded Olympiads.[181]

[181] Apollodôr. ii. 1. Mr. Fynes Clinton does not admit the historical reality of Inachus; but he places Phorôneus seventeen generations, or 570 years prior to the Trojan war, 978 years earlier than the first recorded Olympiad. See Fasti Hellenici, vol. iii. c. 1. p. 19.

The sons of Inachus were Phorôneus and Ægialeus; both of whom however were sometimes represented as autochthonous men, the one in the territory of Argos, the other in that of Sikyôn. Ægialeus gave his name to the north-western region of the Peloponnêsus, on the southern coast of the Corinthian Gulf.[182] The name of Phorôneus was of great celebrity in the Argeian mythical genealogies, and furnished both the title and the subject of the ancient poem called Phorônis, in which he is styled “the father of mortal men.”[183] He is said to have imparted to mankind, who had before him lived altogether isolated, the first notion and habits of social existence, and even the first knowledge of fire: his dominion extended over the whole Peloponnêsus. His tomb at Argos, and seemingly also the place called the Phorônic city, in which he formed the first settlement of mankind, were still shown in the days of Pausanias.[184] The offspring of Phorôneus, by the nymph Teledikê, were Apis and Niobê. Apis, a harsh ruler, was put to death by Thelxiôn and Telchin, having given to Peloponnêsus the name of Apia:[185] he was succeeded by Argos, the son of his sister Niobê by the god Zeus. From this sovereign Peloponnêsus was denominated Argos. By his wife Evadnê, daughter of Strymôn,[186] he had four sons, Ekbasus, Peiras, Epidaurus, and Kriasus. Ekbasus was succeeded by his son Agênôr, and he again by his son Argos Panoptês,—a very powerful prince who is said to have had eyes distributed over all his body, and to have liberated Peloponnêsus from several monsters and wild animals which infested it:[187] Akusilaus and Æschylus make this Argos an earth-born person, while Pherekydês reports him as son of Arestôr. Iasus was the son of Argos Panoptês by Ismênê, daughter of Asôpus. According to the authors whom Apollodôrus and Pausanias prefer, the celebrated Iô was his daughter: but the Hesiodic epic (as well as Akusilaus) represented her as daughter of Peiras, while Æschylus and Kastor the chronologist affirmed the primitive king Inachus to have been her father.[188] A favorite theme, as well for the ancient genealogical poets as for the Attic tragedians, were the adventures of Iô, of whom, while priestess of Hêrê, at the ancient and renowned Hêræon between Mykênæ and Argos, Zeus became amorous. When Hêrê discovered the intrigue and taxed him with it, he denied the charge, and metamorphosed Iô into a white cow. Hêrê, requiring that the cow should be surrendered to her, placed her under the keeping of Argos Panoptês; but this guardian was slain by Hermês, at the command of Zeus: and Hêrê then drove the cow Iô away from her native land by means of the incessant stinging of a gad-fly, which compelled her to wander without repose or sustenance over an immeasurable extent of foreign regions. The wandering Iô gave her name to the Ionian Gulf, traversed Epirus and Illyria, passed the chain of Mount Hæmus and the lofty summits of Caucasus, and swam across the Thracian or Cimmerian Bosporus (which also from her derived its appellation) into Asia. She then went through Scythia, Cimmeria, and many Asiatic regions, until she arrived in Egypt, where Zeus at length bestowed upon her rest, restored her to her original form, and enabled her to give birth to his black son Epaphos.[189]

[182] Pausan. ii. 5, 4.

[183] See Düntzer, Fragm. Epic. Græc. p. 57. The Argeian author Akusilaus treated Phorôneus as the first of men, Fragm. 14. Didot ap. Clem. Alex. Stromat i. p. 321. Φορωνῆες, a synonym for Argeians; Theocrit. Idyll. xxv. 200.

[184] Apollodôr. ii. 1, 1; Pausan. ii. 15, 5; 19, 5; 20, 3.

[185] Apis in Æschylus is totally different: ἰατρόμαντις or medical charmer, son of Apollo, who comes across the gulf from Naupactus, purifies the territory of Argos from noxious monsters, and gives to it the name of Apia (Æschyl. Suppl. 265). Compare Steph. Byz. v. Ἀπίη; Soph. Œdip. Colon. 1303. The name Ἀπία for Peloponnêsus remains still a mystery, even after the attempt of Buttmann (Lexilogus, s. 19) to throw light upon it.

Eusebius asserts that Niobê was the wife of Inachus and mother of Phorôneus, and pointedly contradicts those who call her daughter of Phorôneus—φασὶ δέ τινες Νιόβην Φορωνέως εἶναι θυγατέρα, ὅπερ οὐκ ἀληθές (Chronic. p. 23, ed. Scalig.): his positive tone is curious, upon such a matter.

Hellanikus in his Argolica stated that Phorôneus had three sons, Pelasgus, Iasus and Agênôr, who at the death of their father divided his possessions by lot. Pelasgus acquired the country near the river Erasinus, and built the citadel of Larissa: Iasus obtained the portion near to Elis. After their decease, the younger brother Agênôr invaded and conquered the country, at the head of a large body of horse. It was from these three persons that Argos derived three epithets which are attached to it in the Homeric poems—Ἄργος Πελασγικὸν, Ἴασον, Ἱππόβοτον (Hellanik. Fr. 38, ed. Didot; Phavorin. v. Ἄργος). This is a specimen of the way in which legendary persons as well as legendary events were got up to furnish an explanation of Homeric epithets: we may remark as singular, that Hellanikus seems to apply Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος to a portion of Peloponnêsus, while the Homeric Catalogue applies it to Thessaly.

[186] Apollod. l. c. The mention of Strymôn seems connected with Æschylus Suppl. 255.

[187] Akusil. Fragm. 17, ed. Didot; Æsch. Prometh. 568; Pherekyd. Fragm. 22, ed. Didot; Hesiod. Ægimius. Fr. 2, p. 56, ed. Düntzer: among the varieties of the story, one was that Argos was changed into a peacock (Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 102). Macrobius (i. 19) considers Argos as an allegorical expression of the starry heaven; an idea which Panofska also upholds in one of the recent Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy, 1837, p. 121 seq.

[188] Apollod. ii. 1, 1; Pausan. ii. 16, 1; Æsch. Prom. v. 590-663.

[189] Æschyl. Prom. v. 790-850; Apollod. ii. 1. Æschylus in the Supplices gives a different version of the wanderings of Iô from that which appears in the Promêtheus: in the former drama he carries her through Phrygia, Mysia, Lydia, Pamphylia and Cilicia into Egypt (Supplic. 544-566): nothing is there said about Promêtheus, or Caucasus or Scythia, etc.

The track set forth in the Supplices is thus geographically intelligible, that in the Promêtheus (though the most noticed of the two) defies all comprehension, even as a consistent fiction; nor has the erudition of the commentators been successful in clearing it up. See Schutz, Excurs. iv. ad Prometh. Vinct. pp. 144-149; Welcker, Æschylische Trilogie, pp. 127-146, and especially Völcker, Mythische Geographie der Griech. und Römer, part i. pp. 3-13.

The Greek inhabitants at Tarsus in Cilicia traced their origin to Argos: their story was, that Triptolemus had been sent forth from that town in quest of the wandering Iô, that he had followed her to Tyre, and then renounced the search in despair. He and his companions then settled partly at Tarsus, partly at Antioch (Strabo, xiv. 673; xv. 750). This is the story of Kadmos and Eurôpê inverted, as happens so often with the Grecian mythes.

Homer calls Hermês Ἀργειφόντης; but this epithet hardly affords sufficient proof that he was acquainted with the mythe of Iô, as Völcker supposes: it cannot be traced higher than Hesiod. According to some authors, whom Cicero copies, it was on account of the murder of Argos that Hermês was obliged to leave Greece and go into Egypt: then it was that he taught the Egyptians laws and letters (De Natur. Deor. iii. 22).

Such is a general sketch of the adventures which the ancient poets, epic, lyric, and tragic, and the logographers after them, connect with the name of the Argeian Iô,—one of the numerous tales which the fancy of the Greeks deduced from the amorous dispositions of Zeus and the jealousy of Hêrê. That the scene should be laid in the Argeian territory appears natural, when we recollect that both Argos and Mykênæ were under the special guardianship of Hêrê, and that the Hêræon between the two was one of the oldest and most celebrated temples in which she was worshipped. It is useful to compare this amusing fiction with the representation reported to us by Herodotus, and derived by him as well from Phœnician as from Persian antiquarians, of the circumstances which occasioned the transit of Iô from Argos to Egypt,—an event recognized by all of them as historical matter of fact. According to the Persians, a Phœnician vessel had arrived at the port near Argos, freighted with goods intended for sale to the inhabitants of the country. After the vessel had remained a few days, and disposed of most of her cargo, several Argeian women, and among them Iô the king’s daughter, coming on board to purchase, were seized and carried off by the crew, who sold Iô in Egypt.[190] The Phœnician antiquarians, however, while they admitted the circumstance that Iô had left her own country in one of their vessels, gave a different color to the whole by affirming that she emigrated voluntarily, having been engaged in an amour with the captain of the vessel, and fearing that her parents might come to the knowledge of her pregnancy. Both Persians and Phœnicians described the abduction of Iô as the first of a series of similar acts between Greeks and Asiatics, committed each in revenge for the preceding. First came the rape of Eurôpê from Phœnicia by Grecian adventurers,—perhaps, as Herodotus supposed, by Krêtans: next, the abduction of Mêdeia from Kolchis by Jasôn, which occasioned the retaliatory act of Paris, when he stole away Helena from Menelaos. Up to this point the seizures of women by Greeks from Asiatics, and by Asiatics from Greeks, had been equivalents both in number and in wrong. But the Greeks now thought fit to equip a vast conjoint expedition to recover Helen, in the course of which they took and sacked Troy. The invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxes were intended, according to the Persian antiquarians, as a long-delayed retribution for the injury inflicted on the Asiatics by Agamemnôn and his followers.[191]

[190] The story in Parthênius (Narrat. 1) is built upon this version of Iô’s adventures.

[191] Herodot. i. 1-6. Pausanias (ii. 15, 1) will not undertake to determine whether the account given by Herodotus, or that of the old legend, respecting the cause which carried Iô from Argos to Egypt, is the true one: Ephorus (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 168) repeats the abduction of Iô to Egypt, by the Phœnicians, subjoining a strange account of the Etymology of the name Bosporus. The remarks of Plutarch on the narrative of Herodotus are curious: he adduces as one proof of the κακοήθεια (bad feeling) of Herodotus, that the latter inserts so discreditable a narrative respecting Iô, daughter of Inachus, “whom all Greeks believe to have been divinized by foreigners, to have given name to seas and straits, and to be the source of the most illustrious regal families.” He also blames Herodotus for rejecting Epaphus, Iô, Iasus and Argos, as highest members of the Perseid genealogy. He calls Herodotus φιλοβάρβαρος (Plutarch, De Malign. Herodoti, c. xi. xii. xiv. pp. 856, 857).

The account thus given of the adventures of Iô, when contrasted with the genuine legend, is interesting, as it tends to illustrate the phænomenon which early Grecian history is constantly presenting to us,—the way in which the epical furniture of an unknown past is recast and newly colored so as to meet those changes which take place in the retrospective feelings of the present. The religious and poetical character of the old legend disappears: nothing remains except the names of persons and places, and the voyage from Argos to Egypt: we have in exchange a sober, quasi-historical narrative, the value of which consists in its bearing on the grand contemporary conflicts between Persia and Greece, which filled the imagination of Herodotus and his readers.

To proceed with the genealogy of the kings of Argos, Iasus was succeeded by Krotôpus, son of his brother Agênôr; Krotôpus by Sthenelas, and he again by Gelanôr.[192] In the reign of the latter, Danaos came with his fifty daughters from Egypt to Argos; and here we find another of those romantic adventures which so agreeably decorate the barrenness of the mythical genealogies. Danaos and Ægyptos were two brothers descending from Epaphos, son of Iô: Ægyptos had fifty sons, who were eager to marry the fifty daughters of Danaos, in spite of the strongest repugnance of the latter. To escape such a necessity, Danaos placed his fifty daughters on board of a penteconter (or vessel with fifty oars) and sought refuge at Argos; touching in his voyage at the island of Rhodes, where he erected a statue of Athênê at Lindos, which was long exhibited as a memorial of his passage. Ægyptos and his sons followed them to Argos and still pressed their suit, to which Danaos found himself compelled to assent; but on the wedding night he furnished each of his daughters with a dagger, and enjoined them to murder their husbands during the hour of sleep. His orders were obeyed by all, with the single exception of Hypermnêstra, who preserved her husband Lynkeus, incurring displeasure and punishment from her father. He afterwards, however, pardoned her; and when, by the voluntary abdication of Gelanôr, he became king of Argos, Lynkeus was recognized as his son-in-law and ultimately succeeded him. The remaining daughters, having been purified by Athênê and Hermês, were given in marriage to the victors in a gymnic contest publicly proclaimed. From Danaos was derived the name of Danai, applied to the inhabitants of the Argeian territory,[193] and to the Homeric Greeks generally.

[192] It would be an unprofitable fatigue to enumerate the multiplied and irreconcilable discrepancies in regard to every step of this old Argeian genealogy. Whoever desires to see them brought together, may consult Schubart, Quæstiones in Antiquitatem Heroicam, Marburg, 1832, capp. 1 and 2.

The remarks which Schubart makes (p. 35) upon Petit-Radel’s Chronological Tables will be assented to by those who follow the unceasing string of contradictions, without any sufficient reason to believe that any one of them is more worthy of trust than the remainder, which he has cited:—“Videant alii, quomodo genealogias heroicas, et chronologiæ rationes, in concordiam redigant. Ipse abstineo, probe persuasus, stemmata vera, historiæ fide comprobata, in systema chronologiæ redigi posse: at ore per sæcula tradita, a poetis reficta, sæpe mutata, prout fabula postulare videbatur, ab historiarum deinde conditoribus restituta, scilicet, brevi, qualia prostant stemmata—chronologiæ secundum annos distributæ vincula semper recusatura esse.”

[193] Apollod. ii. 1. The Supplices of Æschylus is the commencing drama of a trilogy on this subject of the Danaïdes,—Ἱκετίδες, Αἰγύπτιοι, Δαναΐδες. Welcker, Griechisch. Tragödien, vol. i. p. 48: the two latter are lost. The old epic poem called Danaïs or Danaïdes, which is mentioned in the Tabula Iliaca as containing 5000 verses, has perished, and is unfortunately very little alluded to: see Düntzer, Epic. Græc. Fragm. p. 3; Welcker, Der Episch. Kyklus, p. 35.

From the legend of the Danaïdes we pass to two barren names of kings, Lynkeus and his son Abas. The two sons of Abas were Akrisios and Prœtos, who, after much dissension, divided between them the Argeian territory; Akrisios ruling at Argos, and Prœtos at Tiryns. The families of both formed the theme of romantic stories. To pass over for the present the legend of Bellerophôn, and the unrequited passion which the wife of Prœtos conceived for him, we are told that the daughters of Prœtos, beautiful, and solicited in marriage by suitors from all Greece, were smitten with leprosy and driven mad, wandering in unseemly guise throughout Peloponnêsus. The visitation had overtaken them, according to Hesiod, because they refused to take part in the Bacchic rites; according to Pherekydês and the Argeian Akusilaus,[194] because they had treated scornfully the wooden statue and simple equipments of Hêrê: the religious character of the old legend here displays itself in a remarkable manner. Unable to cure his daughters, Prœtos invoked the aid of the renowned Pylian prophet and leech, Melampus son of Amythaôn, who undertook to remove the malady on condition of being rewarded with the third part of the kingdom. Prœtos indignantly refused these conditions: but the state of his daughters becoming aggravated and intolerable, he was compelled again to apply to Melampus; who, on the second request, raised his demands still higher, and required another third of the kingdom for his brother Bias. These terms being acceded to, he performed his part of the covenant. He appeased the wrath of Hêrê by prayer and sacrifice; or, according to another account, he approached the deranged women at the head of a troop of young men, with shouting and ecstatic dance,—the ceremonies appropriate to the Bacchic worship of Dionysos,—and in this manner effected their cure. Melampus, a name celebrated in many different Grecian mythes, is the legendary founder and progenitor of a great and long-continued family of prophets. He and his brother Bias became kings of separate portions of the Argeian territory: he is recognized as ruler there even in the Odyssey, and the prophet Theoklymenos, his grandson, is protected and carried to Ithaca by Telemachus.[195] Herodotus also alludes to the cure of the women, and to the double kingdom of Melampus and Bias in the Argeian land: he recognizes Melampus as the first person who introduced to the knowledge of the Greeks the name and worship of Dionysos, with its appropriate sacrifices and phallic processions. Here again he historicizes various features of the old legend in a manner not unworthy of notice.[196]

[194] Apollod. 1. c.; Pherekyd. ap. Schol. Hom. Odyss. xv. 225; Hesiod, Fragm. Marktsch. Fr. 36, 37, 38. These Fragments belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Apollodôrus seems to refer to some other of the numerous Hesiodic poems. Diodôrus (iv. 68) assigns the anger of Dionysos as the cause.

[195] Odyss. xv. 240-256.

[196] Herod. ix. 34; ii. 49: compare Pausan. ii. 18, 4. Instead of the Prœtides, or daughters of Prœtos, it is the Argeian women generally whom he represents Melampus as having cured, and the Argeians generally who send to Pylus to invoke his aid: the heroic personality which pervades the primitive story has disappeared.

Kallimachus notices the Prœtid virgins as the parties suffering from madness, but he treats Artemis as the healing influence (Hymn. ad Dianam 235).

But Danaê, the daughter of Akrisios, with her son Perseus acquired still greater celebrity than her cousins the Prœtides. An oracle had apprized Akrisios that his daughter would give birth to a son by whose hand he would himself be slain. To guard against this danger, he imprisoned Danaê in a chamber of brass under ground. But the god Zeus had become amorous of her, and found means to descend through the roof in the form of a shower of gold: the consequence of his visits was the birth of Perseus. When Akrisios discovered that his daughter had given existence to a son, he enclosed both the mother and the child in a coffer, which he cast into the sea.[197] The coffer was carried to the isle of Seriphos, where Diktys, brother of the king Polydektês, fished it up, and rescued both Danaê and Perseus. The exploits of Perseus, when he grew up, against the three Phorkides or daughters of Phorkys, and the three Gorgons, are among the most marvellous and imaginative in all Grecian legend: they bear a stamp almost Oriental. I shall not here repeat the details of those unparalleled hazards which the special favor of Athênê enabled him to overcome, and which ended in his bringing back from Libya the terrific head of the Gorgon Medusa, endued with the property of turning every one who looked upon it into stone. In his return, he rescued Andromeda, daughter of Kêpheus, who had been exposed to be devoured by a sea-monster, and brought her back as his wife. Akrisios trembled to see him after this victorious expedition, and retired into Thessaly to avoid him; but Perseus followed him thither, and having succeeded in calming his apprehensions, became competitor in a gymnic contest where his grandfather was among the spectators. By an incautious swing of his quoit, he unintentionally struck Akrisios, and caused his death: the predictions of the oracle were thus at last fulfilled. Stung with remorse at the catastrophe, and unwilling to return to Argos, which had been the principality of Akrisios, Perseus made an exchange with Megapenthês, son of Prœtos king of Tiryns. Megapenthês became king of Argos, and Perseus of Tiryns: moreover, the latter founded, within ten miles of Argos, the far-famed city of Mykênæ. The massive walls of this city, like those of Tiryns, of which remains are yet to be seen, were built for him by the Lykian Cyclôpes.[198]

[197] The beautiful fragment of Simonidês (Fragm. vii. ed. Gaisford. Poet. Min.), describing Danaê and the child thus exposed, is familiar to every classical reader.

[198] Paus. ii. 15, 4; ii. 16, 5. Apollod. ii. 2. Pherekyd. Fragm. 26, Dind.

We here reach the commencement of the Perseid dynasty of Mykênæ. It should be noticed, however, that there were among the ancient legends contradictory accounts of the foundation of this city. Both the Odyssey and the Great Eoiai enumerated, among the heroines, Mykênê, the Eponyma of the city; the former poem classifying her with Tyrô and Alkmênê, the latter describing her as the daughter of Inachus and wife of Arestôr. And Akusilaus mentioned an Eponymus Mykêneus, the son of Spartôn and grandson of Phorôneus.[199]

[199] Odyss. ii. 120. Hesiod. Fragment. 154. Marktscheff.—Akusil. Fragm. 16. Pausan. ii. 16, 4. Hekatæus derived the name of the town from the μύκης of the sword of Perseus (Fragm. 360, Dind.). The Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 1247, mentions Mykêneus as son of Spartôn, but grandson of Phêgeus the brother of Phorôneus.

The prophetic family of Melampus maintained itself in one of the three parts of the divided Argeian kingdom for five generations, down to Amphiaraos and his sons Alkmæôn and Amphilochos. The dynasty of his brother Bias, and that of Megapenthês, son of Prœtos, continued each for four generations: a list of barren names fills up the interval.[200] The Perseids of Mykênæ boasted a descent long and glorious, heroic as well as historical, continuing down to the last sovereigns of Sparta.[201] The issue of Perseus was numerous: his son Alkæos was father of Amphitryôn; another of his sons, Elektryôn, was father of Alkmênê;[202] a third, Sthenelos, father of Eurystheus.

[200] Pausan. ii. 18, 4.

[201] Herodot. vi. 53.

[202] In the Hesiodic Shield of Hêraklês, Alkmênê is distinctly mentioned as daughter of Elektryôn; the genealogical poet, Asios, called her the daughter of Amphiaraos and Eriphyle (Asii Fragm. 4, ed. Markt. p. 412). The date of Asios cannot be precisely fixed; but he may be probably assigned to an epoch between the 30th and 40th Olympiad.

Asios must have adopted a totally different legend respecting the birth of Hêraklês and the circumstances preceding it, among which the deaths of her father and brothers are highly influential. Nor could he have accepted the received chronology of the sieges of Thêbes and Troy.

After the death of Perseus, Alkæos and Amphitryôn dwelt at Tiryns. The latter became engaged in a quarrel with Elektryôn respecting cattle, and in a fit of passion killed him:[203] moreover the piratical Taphians from the west coast of Akarnania invaded the country, and slew the sons of Elektryôn, so that Alkmênê alone was left of that family. She was engaged to wed Amphitryôn; but she bound him by oath not to consummate the marriage until he had avenged upon the Têleboæ the death of her brothers. Amphitryôn, compelled to flee the country as the murderer of his uncle, took refuge in Thêbes, whither Alkmênê accompanied him: Sthenelos was left in possession of Tiryns. The Kadmeians of Thêbes, together with the Locrians and Phocians, supplied Amphitryôn with troops, which he conducted against the Têleboæ and the Taphians:[204] yet he could not have subdued them without the aid of Komæthô, daughter of the Taphian king Pterelaus, who conceived a passion for him, and cut off from her father’s head the golden lock to which Poseidôn had attached the gift of immortality.[205] Having conquered and expelled his enemies, Amphitryôn returned to Thêbes, impatient to consummate his marriage: but Zeus on the wedding-night assumed his form and visited Alkmênê before him: he had determined to produce from her a son superior to all his prior offspring,—“a specimen of invincible force both to gods and men.”[206] At the proper time, Alkmênê was delivered of twin sons: Hêraklês the offspring of Zeus,—the inferior and unhonored Iphiklês, offspring of Amphitryôn.[207]

[203] So runs the old legend in the Hesiodic Shield of Hêraklês (12-82). Apollodôrus (or Pherekydês, whom he follows) softens it down, and represents the death of Elektryôn as accidentally caused by Amphitryôn. (Apollod. ii. 4, 6. Pherekydês, Fragm. 27, Dind.)

[204] Hesiod, Scut. Herc. 24. Theocrit. Idyll. xxiv. 4. Teleboas, the Eponym of these marauding people, was son of Poseidôn (Anaximander ap. Athenæ. xi. p. 498).

[205] Apollod. ii. 4, 7. Compare the fable of Nisus at Megara, infra, chap. xii. p. 302.

[206] Hesiod, Scut. Herc. 29. ὄφρα θεοῖσιν Ἀνδράσι τ᾽ ἀλφηστῇσιν ἀρῆς ἀλκτῆρα φυτεύσῃ.

[207] Hesiod. Sc. H. 50-56.

When Alkmênê was on the point of being delivered at Thêbes, Zeus publicly boasted among the assembled gods, at the instigation of the mischief-making Atê, that there was on that day about to be born on earth, from his breed, a son who should rule over all his neighbors. Hêrê treated this as an empty boast, calling upon him to bind himself by an irremissible oath that the prediction should be realized. Zeus incautiously pledged his solemn word; upon which Hêrê darted swiftly down from Olympus to the Achaic Argos, where the wife of Sthenelos (son of Perseus, and therefore grandson of Zeus) was already seven months gone with child. By the aid of the Eileithyiæ, the special goddesses of parturition, she caused Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelos, to be born before his time on that very day, while she retarded the delivery of Alkmênê. Then returning to Olympus, she announced the fact to Zeus: “The good man Eurystheus, son of the Perseid Sthenelos, is this day born of thy loins: the sceptre of the Argeians worthily belongs to him.” Zeus was thunderstruck at the consummation which he had improvidently bound himself to accomplish. He seized Atê his evil counsellor by the hair, and hurled her forever away from Olympus: but he had no power to avert the ascendency of Eurystheus and the servitude of Hêraklês. “Many a pang did he suffer, when he saw his favorite son going through his degrading toil in the tasks imposed upon him by Eurystheus.”[208]

[208] Homer, Iliad, xix. 90-133; also viii. 361.—

Τὴν αἰεὶ στενάχεσχ᾽, ὅθ᾽ ἑὸν φίλον υἱὸν ὁρῷτο Ἔργον ἀεικὲς ἔχοντα, ὑπ᾽ Εὐρυσθῆος ἀέθλων.

The legend, of unquestionable antiquity, here transcribed from the Iliad, is one of the most pregnant and characteristic in the Grecian mythology. It explains, according to the religious ideas familiar to the old epic poets, both the distinguishing attributes and the endless toil and endurances of Hêraklês,—the most renowned and most ubiquitous of all the semi-divine personages worshipped by the Hellênes,—a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labor for others and to obey the commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is reserved to the close of his career, when his afflicting trials are brought to a close: he is then admitted to the godhead and receives in marriage Hêbê.[209] The twelve labors, as they are called, too notorious to be here detailed, form a very small fraction of the exploits of this mighty being, which filled the Hêrakleian epics of the ancient poets. He is found not only in most parts of Hellas, but throughout all the other regions then known to the Greeks, from Gadês to the river Thermôdôn in the Euxine and to Scythia, overcoming all difficulties and vanquishing all opponents. Distinguished families are everywhere to be traced who bear his patronymic, and glory in the belief that they are his descendants. Among Achæans, Kadmeians, and Dôrians, Hêraklês is venerated: the latter especially treat him as their principal hero,—the Patron Hero-God of the race: the Hêrakleids form among all Dôrians a privileged gens, in which at Sparta the special lineage of the two kings was included.

His character lends itself to mythes countless in number as well as disparate in their character. The irresistible force remains constant, but it is sometimes applied with reckless violence against friends as well as enemies, sometimes devoted to the relief of the oppressed. The comic writers often brought him out as a coarse and stupid glutton, while the Athênian philosopher Prodikos, without at all distorting the type, extracted from it the simple, impressive, and imperishable apologue still known as the Choice of Hercules.

After the death and apotheosis of Hêraklês, his son Hyllos and his other children were expelled and persecuted by Eurystheus: the fear of his vengeance deterred both the Trachinian king Kêyx and the Thêbans from harboring them, and the Athênians alone were generous enough to brave the risk of offering them shelter. Eurystheus invaded Attica, but perished in the attempt by the hand of Hyllos, or by that of Iolaos, the old companion and nephew of Hêraklês.[210] The chivalrous courage which the Athênians had on this occasion displayed in behalf of oppressed innocence, was a favorite theme for subsequent eulogy by Attic poets and orators.

[209] Hesiod, Theogon. 951, τελέσας στονόεντας ἀέθλους. Hom. Odyss. xi. 620; Hesiod, Eœæ, Fragm. 24, Düntzer, p. 36, πονηρότατον καὶ ἄριστον.

[210] Apollod. ii. 8, 1; Hecatæ. ap. Longin. c. 27; Diodôr. iv. 57.

All the sons of Eurystheus lost their lives in the battle along with him, so that the Perseid family was now represented only by the Hêrakleids, who collected an army and endeavored to recover the possessions from which they had been expelled. The united forces of Iônians, Achæans, and Arcadians, then inhabiting Peloponnêsus, met the invaders at the isthmus, when Hyllos, the eldest of the sons of Hêraklês, proposed that the contest should be determined by a single combat between himself and any champion of the opposing army. It was agreed, that if Hyllos were victorious, the Hêrakleids should be restored to their possessions—if he were vanquished, that they should forego all claim for the space of a hundred years, or fifty years, or three generations,—for in the specification of the time, accounts differ. Echemos, the hero of Tegea in Arcadia, accepted the challenge, and Hyllos was slain in the encounter; in consequence of which the Hêrakleids retired, and resided along with the Dôrians under the protection of Ægimios, son of Dôrus.[211] As soon as the stipulated period of truce had expired, they renewed their attempt upon Peloponnêsus conjointly with the Dôrians, and with complete success: the great Dôrian establishments of Argos, Sparta, and Messênia were the result. The details of this victorious invasion will be hereafter recounted.

[211] Herodot. ix. 26; Diodôr. iv. 58.

Sikyôn, Phlios, Epidauros, and Trœzen[212] all boasted of respected eponyms and a genealogy of dignified length, not exempt from the usual discrepancies—but all just as much entitled to a place on the tablet of history as the more renowned Æolids or Hêrakleids. I omit them here because I wish to impress upon the reader’s mind the salient features and character of the legendary world,—not to load his memory with a full list of legendary names.

[212] Pausan. ii. 5, 5; 12, 5; 26, 3. His statements indicate how much the predominance of a powerful neighbor like Argos tended to alter the genealogies of these inferior towns.

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V. DEUKALION, HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN

In the Hesiodic Theogony, as well as in the “Works and Days,” the legend of Promêtheus and Epimêtheus presents an import religious, ethical, and social, and in this sense it is carried forward by Æschylus; but to neither of the characters is any genealogical function assigned. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women brought both of them into the stream of Grecian legendary lineage, representing Deukaliôn as the son of Promêtheus and Pandôra, and seemingly his wife Pyrrha as daughter of Epimêtheus.[213]

[213] Schol. ad Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 1085. Other accounts of the genealogy of Deukaliôn are given in the Schol. ad Homer. Odyss. x. 2, on the authority both of Hesiod and Akusilaus.

Deukaliôn is important in Grecian mythical narrative under two points of view. First, he is the person specially saved at the time of the general deluge: next, he is the father of Hellên, the great eponym of the Hellenic race; at least this was the more current story, though there were other statements which made Hellên the son of Zeus.

The name of Deukaliôn is originally connected with the Lokrian towns of Kynos and Opus, and with the race of the Leleges, but he appears finally as settled in Thessaly, and ruling in the portion of that country called Phthiôtis.[214] According to what seems to have been the old legendary account, it is the deluge which transferred him from the one to the other; but according to another statement, framed in more historicizing times, he conducted a body of Kurêtes and Leleges into Thessaly, and expelled the prior Pelasgian occupants.[215]

[214] Hesiodic Catalog. Fragm. xi.; Gaisf. lxx. Düntzer—

Ἤτοι γὰρ Λοκρὸς Λελέγων ἡγήσατο λαῶν, Τούς ῥά ποτε Κρονίδης Ζεὺς ἄφθιτα μήδεα εἰδὼς, Λεκτοὺς ἐκ γαίης λάας πόρε Δευκαλίωνι.

The reputed lineage of Deukaliôn continued in Phthia down to the time of Dikæarchus, if we may judge from the old Phthiot Pherekratês, whom he introduced in one of his dialogues as a disputant, and whom he expressly announced as a descendant of Deukaliôn (Cicero, Tuscul. Disp. i. 10).

[215] The latter account is given by Dionys. Halic. i. 17; the former seems to have been given by Hellanikus, who affirmed that the ark after the deluge stopped upon Mount Othrys, and not upon Mount Parnassus (Schol. Pind. ut. sup.) the former being suitable for a settlement in Thessaly.

Pyrrha is the eponymous heroine of Pyrrhæa or Pyrrha, the ancient name of a portion of Thessaly (Rhianus, Fragm. 18, p. 71, ed. Düntzer).

Hellanikus had written a work, now lost, entitled Δευκαλιώνεια: all the fragments of it which are cited have reference to places in Thessaly, Lokris and Phokis. See Preller, ad Hellanitum, p. 12 (Dörpt. 1840). Probably Hellanikus is the main source of the important position occupied by Deukaliôn in Grecian legend. Thrasybulus and Akestodôrus represented Deukaliôn as having founded the oracle of Dôdôna, immediately after the deluge (Etm. Mag. v. Δωδωναῖος).

The enormous iniquity with which earth was contaminated—as Apollodôrus says, by the then existing brazen race, or as others say, by the fifty monstrous sons of Lykaôn—provoked Zeus to send a general deluge.[216] An unremitting and terrible rain laid the whole of Greece under water, except the highest mountain-tops, whereon a few stragglers found refuge. Deukaliôn was saved in a chest or ark, which he had been forewarned by his father Promêtheus to construct. After floating for nine days on the water, he at length landed on the summit of Mount Parnassus. Zeus having sent Hermês to him, promising to grant whatever he asked, he prayed that men and companions might be sent to him in his solitude: accordingly Zeus directed both him and Pyrrha to cast stones over their heads: those cast by Pyrrha became women, those by Deukaliôn men. And thus the “stony race of men” (if we may be allowed to translate an etymology which the Greek language presents exactly, and which has not been disdained by Hesiod, by Pindar, by Epicharmus, and by Virgil) came to tenant the soil of Greece.[217] Deukaliôn on landing from the ark sacrificed a grateful offering to Zeus Phyxios, or the God of escape; he also erected altars in Thessaly to the twelve great gods of Olympus.[218]

[216] Apollodôrus connects this deluge with the wickedness of the brazen race in Hesiod, according to the practice general with the logographers of stringing together a sequence out of legends totally unconnected with each other (i. 7, 2).

[217] Hesiod, Fragm. 135. ed. Markts. ap. Strabo. vii. p. 322, where the word λάας, proposed by Heyne as the reading of the unintelligible text, appears to me preferable to any of the other suggestions. Pindar, Olymp. ix. 47. Ἄτερ δ᾽ Εὐνᾶς ὁμόδαμον Κτησάσθαν λίθινον γόνον· Λαοὶ δ᾽ ὠνόμασθεν. Virgil, Georgic i. 63. “Unde homines nati, durum genus.” Epicharmus ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. ix. 56. Hygin. f. 153. Philochorus retained the etymology, though he gave a totally different fable, nowise connected with Deukaliôn, to account for it; a curious proof how pleasing it was to the fancy of the Greek (see Schol. ad Pind. 1. c. 68).

[218] Apollod. i. 7, 2. Hellanic. Fragm. 15. Didot. Hellanikus affirmed that the ark rested on Mount Othrys, not on Mount Parnassus (Fragm. 16. Didot). Servius (ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 41) placed it on Mount Athôs—Hyginus (f. 153) on Mount Ætna.

The reality of this deluge was firmly believed throughout the historical ages of Greece: the chronologers, reckoning up by genealogies, assigned the exact date of it, and placed it at the same time as the conflagration of the world by the rashness of Phaëtôn, during the reign of Krotôpas king of Argus, the seventh from Inachus.[219] The meteorological work of Aristotle admits and reasons upon this deluge as an unquestionable fact, though he alters the locality by placing it west of Mount Pindus, near Dôdôna and the river Achelôus.[220] He at the same time treats it as a physical phenomenon, the result of periodical cycles in the atmosphere, thus departing from the religious character of the old legend, which described it as a judgment inflicted by Zeus upon a wicked race. Statements founded upon this event were in circulation throughout Greece even to a very late date. The Megarians affirmed that Megaros, their hero, son of Zeus by a local nymph, had found safety from the waters on the lofty summit of their mountain Geraneia, which had not been completely submerged. And in the magnificent temple of the Olympian Zeus at Athens, a cavity in the earth was shown, through which it was affirmed that the waters of the deluge had retired. Even in the time of Pausanias, the priests poured into this cavity holy offerings of meal and honey.[221] In this, as in other parts of Greece, the idea of the Deukalionian deluge was blended with the religious impressions of the people and commemorated by their sacred ceremonies.

[219] Tatian adv. Græc. c. 60, adopted both by Clemens and Eusebius. The Parian marble placed this deluge in the reign of Kranaos at Athens, 752 years before the first recorded Olympiad, and 1528 years before the Christian æra; Apollodôrus also places it in the reign of Kranaos, and in that of Nyctimus in Arcadia (iii. 8, 2; 14, 5).

The deluge and the ekpyrosis or conflagration are connected together also in Servius ad Virgil. Bucol. vi. 41: he refines both of them into a “mutationem temporum.”

[220] Aristot. Meteorol. i. 14. Justin rationalizes the fable by telling us that Deukaliôn was king of Thessaly, who provided shelter and protection to the fugitives from the deluge (ii. 6, 11).

[221] Pausan. i. 18, 7; 40, 1. According to the Parian marble (s. 5), Deukaliôn had come to Athens after the deluge, and had there himself founded the temple of the Olympian Zeus. The etymology and allegorization of the names of Deukaliôn and Pyrrha, given by Völcker in his ingenious Mythologie des Iapetischen Geschlechts (Giessen, 1824), p. 343, appears to me not at all convincing.

The offspring of Deukaliôn and Pyrrha were two sons, Hellên and Amphiktyôn, and a daughter, Prôtogeneia, whose son by Zeus was Aëthlius: it was however maintained by many, that Hellên was the son of Zeus and not of Deukaliôn. Hellên had by a nymph three sons, Dôrus, Xuthus, and Æolus. He gave to those who had been before called Greeks,[222] the name of Hellênes, and partitioned his territory among his three children. Æolus reigned in Thessaly; Xuthus received Peloponnêsus, and had by Creüsa as his sons, Achæus and Iôn; while Dôrus occupied the country lying opposite to the Peloponnêsus, on the northern side of the Corinthian Gulf. These three gave to the inhabitants of their respective countries the names of Æolians, Achæans and Iônians, and Dôrians.[223]

[222] Such is the statement of Apollodôrus (i. 7, 3); but I cannot bring myself to believe that the name (Γραϊκοὶ) Greeks is at all old in the legend, or that the passage of Hesiod, in which Græcus and Latinus purport to be mentioned, is genuine.

See Hesiod, Theogon. 1013, and Catalog. Fragm. xxix. ed. Göttling, with the note of Göttling; also Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterth. i. 1. p. 311, and Bernhardy, Griech. Literat. vol. i. p. 167.

[223] Apollod. i. 7, 4.

Such is the genealogy as we find it in Apollodôrus. In so far as the names and filiation are concerned, many points in it are given differently, or implicitly contradicted, by Euripidês and other writers. Though as literal and personal history it deserves no notice, its import is both intelligible and comprehensive. It expounds and symbolizes the first fraternal aggregation of Hellênic men, together with their territorial distribution and the institutions which they collectively venerated.

There were two great holding-points in common for every section of Greeks. One was the Amphiktyonic assembly, which met half-yearly, alternately at Delphi and at Thermopylæ; originally and chiefly for common religious purposes, but indirectly and occasionally embracing political and social objects along with them. The other was, the public festivals or games, of which the Olympic came first in importance; next, the Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian,—institutions which combined religious solemnities with recreative effusion and hearty sympathies, in a manner so imposing and so unparalleled. Amphiktyôn represents the first of these institutions, and Aëthlius the second. As the Amphiktyonic assembly was always especially connected with Thermopylæ and Thessaly, Amphiktyôn is made the son of the Thessalian Deukaliôn; but as the Olympic festival was nowise locally connected with Deukaliôn, Aëthlius is represented as having Zeus for his father, and as touching Deukaliôn only through the maternal line. It will be seen presently, that the only matter predicted respecting Aëthlius is, that he settled in the territory of Elis, and begat Endymiôn: this brings him into local contact with the Olympic games, and his function is then ended.

Having thus got Hellas as an aggregate with its main cementing forces, we march on to its subdivision into parts, through Æolus, Dôrus and Xuthus, the three sons of Hellen;[224] a distribution which is far from being exhaustive: nevertheless, the genealogists whom Apollodôrus follows recognize no more than three sons.

[224] How literally and implicitly even the ablest Greeks believed in eponymous persons, such as Hellên and Iôn, as the real progenitors of the races called after him, may be seen by this, that Aristotle gives this common descent as the definition of γένος (Metaphysic. iv. p. 118, Brandis):—

Γένος λέγεται, τὸ μὲν ... τὸ δὲ, ἀφ᾽ οὗ ἂν ὦσι πρώτου κινήσαντος εἰς τὸ εἶναι. Οὕτω γὰρ λέγονται οἱ μὲν, Ἕλληνες τὸ γένος, οἱ δὲ, Ἴωνες· τῷ, οἱ μὲν ἀπὸ Ἕλληνος, οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Ἴωνος, εἶναι πρώτου γεννήσαντος.

The genealogy is essentially post-Homeric; for Homer knows Hellas and the Hellênes only in connection with a portion of Achaia Phthiôtis. But as it is recognized in the Hesiodic Catalogue[225]—composed probably within the first century after the commencement of recorded Olympiads, or before 676 B. C.—the peculiarities of it, dating from so early a period, deserve much attention. We may remark, first, that it seems to exhibit to us Dôrus and Æolus as the only pure and genuine offspring of Hellên. For their brother Xuthus is not enrolled as an eponymus; he neither founds nor names any people; it is only his sons Achæus and Iôn, after his blood has been mingled with that of the Erechtheid Kreüsa, who become eponyms and founders, each of his own separate people. Next, as to the territorial distribution, Xuthus receives Peloponnêsus from his father, and unites himself with Attica (which the author of this genealogy seems to have conceived as originally unconnected with Hellên) by his marriage with the daughter of the indigenous hero, Erechtheus. The issue of this marriage, Achæus and Iôn, present to us the population of Peloponnêsus and Attica conjointly as related among themselves by the tie of brotherhood, but as one degree more distant both from Dôrians and Æolians. Æolus reigns over the regions about Thessaly, and called the people in those parts Æolians; while Dôrus occupies “the country over against Peloponnêsus on the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf,” and calls the inhabitants after himself, Dôrians.[226] It is at once evident that this designation is in no way applicable to the confined district between Parnassus and Œta, which alone is known by the name of Dôris, and its inhabitants by that of Dôrians, in the historical ages. In the view of the author of this genealogy, the Dôrians are the original occupants of the large range of territory north of the Corinthian Gulf, comprising Ætôlia, Phôkis, and the territory of the Ozolian Lokrians. And this farther harmonizes with the other legend noticed by Apollodôrus, when he states that Ætolus, son of Endymiôn, having been forced to expatriate from Peloponnêsus, crossed into the Kurêtid territory,[227] and was there hospitably received by Dôrus, Laodokus and Polypœtês, sons of Apollo and Phthia. He slew his hosts, acquired the territory, and gave to it the name of Ætôlia: his son Pleurôn married Xanthippê, daughter of Dôrus; while his other son, Kalydôn, marries Æolia, daughter of Amythaôn. Here again we have the name of Dôrus, or the Dôrians, connected with the tract subsequently termed Ætôlia. That Dôrus should in one place be called the son of Apollo and Phthia, and in another place the son of Hellên by a nymph, will surprise no one accustomed to the fluctuating personal nomenclature of these old legends: moreover the name of Phthia is easy to reconcile with that of Hellên, as both are identified with the same portion of Thessaly, even from the days of the Iliad.

[225] Hesiod, Fragm. 8. p. 278, ed. Marktsch.—

Ἕλληνος δ᾽ ἐγένοντο θεμιστόπολοι βασιλῆες Δῶρός τε, Ξοῦθός τε, καὶ Αἴολος ἱππιοχάρμης. Αἰολίδαι δ᾽ ἐγένοντο θεμιστόπολοι βασιλῆες Κρηθεὺς ἠδ᾽ Ἀθάμας καὶ Σίσυφος αἰολομήτης Σαλμωνεύς τ᾽ ἄδικος καὶ ὑπέρθυμος Περιήρης.

[226] Apollod. i. 7, 3. Ἕλληνος δὲ καὶ Νύμφης Ὀρσήϊδος (?), Δῶρος, Ξοῦθος, Αἴολος. Αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ἀφ᾽ αὑτοῦ τοὺς καλουμένους Γραϊκοὺς προσηγόρευσεν Ἕλληνας, τοῖς δὲ παισὶν ἐμέρισε τὴν χώραν. Καὶ Ξοῦθος μὲν λαβὼν τὴν Πελοπόννησον, ἐκ Κρεούσης τῆς Ἐρεχθέως Ἀχαιὸν ἐγέννησε καὶ Ἴωνα, ἀφ᾽ ὧν Ἀχαιοὶ καὶ Ἴωνες καλοῦνται. Δῶρος δὲ, ~τὴν πέραν χώραν Πελοποννήσου λαβὼν, τοὺς κατοίκους ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ Δωριεῖς ἐκάλεσεν~. Αἴολος δὲ, βασιλεύων τῶν περὶ τὴν Θετταλίαν τόπων, τοὺς ἐνοικοῦντας Αἰολεῖς προσηγόρευσε.

Strabo (viii. p. 383) and Conôn (Narr. 27), who evidently copy from the same source, represent Dôrus as going to settle in the territory property known as Dôris.

[227] Apollod. i. 7, 6. Αἰτωλὸς ... φυγὼν εἰς τὴν Κουρήτιδα χώραν, κτείνας τοὺς ὑποδεξαμένους Φθίας καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος υἱοὺς, Δῶρον καὶ Λαόδοκον καὶ Πολυποίτην, ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ τὴν χώραν Αἰτωλίαν ἐκάλεσε. Again, i. 8, 1. Πλευρὼν (son of Ætôlus) γήμας Ξανθίππην τὴν Δώρου, παῖδα ἐγέννησεν Ἀγήνορα.

This story, that the Dôrians were at one time the occupants, or the chief occupants, of the range of territory between the river Achelôus and the northern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, is at least more suitable to the facts attested by historical evidence than the legends given in Herodotus, who represents the Dôrians as originally in the Phthiôtid; then as passing under Dôrus, the son of Hellên, into the Histiæôtid, under the mountains of Ossa and Olympus; next, as driven by the Kadmeians into the regions of Pindus; from thence passing into the Dryopid territory, on Mount Œta; lastly, from thence into Peloponnêsus.[228] The received story was, that the great Dôrian establishments in Peloponnêsus were formed by invasion from the north, and that the invaders crossed the gulf from Naupaktus,—a statement which, however disputable with respect to Argos, seems highly probable in regard both to Sparta and Messênia. That the name of Dôrians comprehended far more than the inhabitants of the insignificant tetrapolis of Dôris Proper, must be assumed, if we believe that they conquered Sparta and Messênia: both the magnitude of the conquest itself, and the passage of a large portion of them from Naupaktus, harmonize with the legend as given by Apollodôrus, in which the Dôrians are represented as the principal inhabitants of the northern shore of the gulf. The statements which we find in Herodotus, respecting the early migrations of the Dôrians, have been considered as possessing greater historical value than those of the fabulist Apollodôrus. But both are equally matter of legend, while the brief indications of the latter seem to be most in harmony with the facts which we afterwards find attested by history.

[228] Herod. i. 56.

It has already been mentioned that the genealogy which makes Æolus, Xuthus and Dôrus sons of Hellên, is as old as the Hesiodic Catalogue; probably also that which makes Hellên son of Deukaliôn. Aëthlius also is an Hesiodic personage: whether Amphiktyôn be so or not, we have no proof.[229] They could not have been introduced into the legendary genealogy until after the Olympic games and the Amphiktyonic council had acquired an established ascendancy and universal reverence throughout Greece.

[229] Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 57. Τὸν δὲ Ἐνδυμίωνα Ἠσίοδος μὲν Ἀεθλίου τοῦ Διὸς καὶ Καλύκης παῖδα λέγει.... Καὶ Πείσανδρος δὲ τὰ αὐτά φησι, καὶ Ἀκουσίλαος, καὶ Φερεκύδης, καὶ Νίκανδρος ἐν δευτέρῳ Αἰτωλικῶν, καὶ Θεόπομπος ἐν Ἐποποιΐαις.

Respecting the parentage of Hellên, the references to Hesiod are very confused. Compare Schol. Homer. Odyss. x. 2, and Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 1086. See also Hellanic. Frag. 10. Didot.

Apollodôrus, and Pherekydês before him (Frag. 51. Didot), called Protôgeneia daughter of Deukaliôn; Pindar (Olymp. ix. 64) designated her as daughter of Opus. One of the stratagems mentioned by the Scholiast to get rid of this genealogical discrepancy was, the supposition that Deukaliôn had two names (διώνυμος); that he was also named Opus. (Schol. Pind. Olymp. ix. 85).

That the Deukalidæ or posterity of Deukaliôn reigned in Thessaly, was mentioned both by Hesiod and Hekatæus, ap. Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 265.

Respecting Dôrus the son of Hellên, we find neither legends nor legendary genealogy; respecting Xuthus, very little beyond the tale of Kreüsa and Iôn, which has its place more naturally among the Attic fables. Achæus however, who is here represented as the son of Xuthus, appears in other stories with very different parentage and accompaniments. According to the statement which we find in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Achæus, Phthius and Pelasgus are sons of Poseidôn and Larissa. They migrate from Peloponnêsus into Thessaly, and distribute the Thessalian territory between them, giving their names to its principal divisions: their descendants in the sixth generation were driven out of that country by the invasion of Deukaliôn at the head of the Kurêtes and the Leleges.[230] This was the story of those who wanted to provide an eponymus for the Achæans in the southern districts of Thessaly: Pausanias accomplishes the same object by different means, representing Achæus, the son of Xuthus as having gone back to Thessaly and occupied the portion of it to which his father was entitled. Then, by way of explaining how it was that there were Achæans at Sparta and at Argos, he tells us that Archander and Architelês, the sons of Archæus, came back from Thessaly to Peloponnêsus, and married two daughters of Danaus: they acquired great influence at Argos and Sparta, and gave to the people the name of Achæans after their father Achæus.[231]

[230] Dionys. H. A. R. i. 17.

[231] Pausan. vii. 1, 1-3. Herodotus also mentions (ii. 97) Archander, son of Phthius and grandson of Achæus, who married the daughter of Danaus. Larcher (Essai sur la Chronologie d’Hérodote, ch. x. p. 321) tells us that this cannot be the Danaus who came from Egypt, the father of the fifty daughters, who must have lived two centuries earlier, as may be proved by chronological arguments: this must be another Danaus, according to him.

Strabo seems to give a different story respecting the Achæans in Peloponnêsus: he says that they were the original population of the peninsula, that they came in from Phthia with Pelops, and inhabited Laconia, which was from them called Argos Achaicum, and that on the conquest of the Dôrians, they moved into Achaia properly so called, expelling the Iônians therefrom (Strabo, viii p. 365). This narrative is, I presume, borrowed from Ephorus.

Euripidês also deviates very materially from the Hesiodic genealogy in respect to these eponymous persons. In the drama called Iôn, he describes Iôn as son of Kreüsa by Apollo, but adopted by Xuthus: according to him, the real sons of Xuthus and Kreüsa are Dôrus and Achæus,[232]—eponyms of the Dôrians and Achæans in the interior of Peloponnêsus. And it is a still more capital point of difference, that he omits Hellên altogether—making Xuthus an Achæan by race, the son of Æolus, who is the son of Zeus.[233] This is the more remarkable, as in the fragments of two other dramas of Euripidês, the Melanippê and the Æolus, we find Hellên mentioned both as father of Æolus and son of Zeus.[234] To the general public even of the most instructed city of Greece, fluctuations and discrepancies in these mythical genealogies seem to have been neither surprising nor offensive.

[232] Eurip. Ion, 1590.

[233] Eurip. Ion, 64.

[234] See the Fragments of these two plays in Matthiae’s edition; compare Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. v. ii. p. 842. If we may judge from the Fragments of the Latin Melanippê of Ennius (see Fragm. 2, ed. Bothe), Hellên was introduced as one of the characters of the piece.

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VI. THE ÆOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ÆOLUS

If two of the sons of Hellên, Dôrus and Xuthus, present to us families comparatively unnoticed in mythical narrative, the third son, Æolus, richly makes up for the deficiency. From him we pass to his seven sons and five daughters, amidst a great abundance of heroic and poetical incident.

In dealing however with these extensive mythical families, it is necessary to observe, that the legendary world of Greece, in the manner in which it is presented to us, appears invested with a degree of symmetry and coherence which did not originally belong to it. For the old ballads and stories which were sung or recounted at the multiplied festivals of Greece, each on its own special theme, have been lost: the religious narratives, which the Exegêtês of every temple had present to his memory, explanatory of the peculiar religious ceremonies and local customs in his own town or Dême, have passed away: all these primitive elements, originally distinct and unconnected, are removed out of our sight, and we possess only an aggregate result, formed by many confluent streams of fable, and connected together by the agency of subsequent poets and logographers. Even the earliest agents in this work of connecting and systematizing—the Hesiodic poets—have been hardly at all preserved. Our information respecting Grecian mythology is derived chiefly from the prose logographers who followed them, and in whose works, since a continuous narrative was above all things essential to them, the fabulous personages are woven into still more comprehensive pedigrees, and the original isolation of the legends still better disguised. Hekatæus, Pherekydês, Hellanikus, and Akusilaus lived at a time when the idea of Hellas as one great whole, composed of fraternal sections, was deeply rooted in the mind of every Greek; and when the fancy of one or a few great families, branching out widely from one common stem, was more popular and acceptable than that of a distinct indigenous origin in each of the separate districts. These logographers, indeed, have themselves been lost; but Apollodôrus and the various scholiasts, our great immediate sources of information respecting Grecian mythology, chiefly borrowed from them: so that the legendary world of Greece is in fact known to us through them, combined with the dramatic and Alexandrine poets, their Latin imitators, and the still later class of scholiasts—except indeed such occasional glimpses as we obtain from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the remaining Hesiodic fragments, which exhibit but too frequently a hopeless diversity when confronted with the narratives of the logographers.

Though Æolus (as has been already stated) is himself called the son of Hellên along with Dôrus and Xuthus, yet the legends concerning the Æolids, far from being dependent upon this genealogy, are not all even coherent with it: moreover the name of Æolus in the legend is older than that of Hellên, inasmuch as it occurs both in the Iliad and Odyssey.[235] Odysseus sees in the under-world the beautiful Tyrô, daughter of Salmôneus, and wife of Krêtheus, son of Æolus.

[235] Iliad, vi. 154. Σίσυφος Αἰολίδης, etc. Again Odyss. xi. 234.—

Ἔνθ᾽ ἤτοι πρώτην Τυρὼ ἴδον ~εὐπατέρειαν~, Ἣ φάτο Σαλμωνῆος ἀμύμονος ἔκγονος εἶναι, Φῆ δὲ Κρηθῆος γυνὴ ἔμμεναι ~Αἰολίδαο~.

Æolus is represented as having reigned in Thessaly: his seven sons were Krêtheus, Sisyphus, Athamas, Salmôneus, Deiôn, Magnês and Periêrês: his five daughters, Canacê, Alcyonê, Peisidikê, Calycê and Perimêdê. The fables of this race seem to be distinguished by a constant introduction of the god Poseidôn, as well as by an unusual prevalence of haughty and presumptuous attributes among the Æolid heroes, leading them to affront the gods by pretences of equality, and sometimes even by defiance. The worship of Poseidôn must probably have been diffused and preëminent among a people with whom these legends originated.

SECTION I.—SONS OF ÆOLUS.

Salmôneus is not described in the Odyssey as son of Æolus, but he is so denominated both in the Hesiodic Catalogue, and by the subsequent logographers. His daughter Tyrô became enamoured of the river Enipeus, the most beautiful of all streams that traverse the earth: she frequented the banks assiduously, and there the god Poseidôn found means to indulge his passion for her, assuming the character of the river god himself. The fruit of this alliance were the twin brothers, Pelias and Nêleus: Tyrô afterwards was given in marriage to her uncle Krêtheus, another son of Æolus, by whom she had Æsôn, Pherês and Amythaôn—all names of celebrity in the heroic legends.[236] The adventures of Tyrô formed the subject of an affecting drama of Sophoklês, now lost. Her father had married a second wife, named Sidêrô, whose cruel counsels induced him to punish and torture his daughter on account of her intercourse with Poseidôn. She was shorn of her magnificent hair, beaten and ill-used in various ways, and confined in a loathsome dungeon. Unable to take care of her two children, she had been compelled to expose them immediately on their birth in a little boat on the river Enipeus; they were preserved by the kindness of a herdsman, and when grown up to manhood, rescued their mother, and revenged her wrongs by putting to death the iron-hearted Sidêrô.[237] This pathetic tale respecting the long imprisonment of Tyrô is substituted by Sophoklês in place of the Homeric legend, which represented her to have become the wife of Krêtheus and mother of a numerous offspring.[238]

[236] Homer, Odyss. xi. 234-257; xv. 226.

[237] Diodôrus, iv. 68. Sophoklês, Fragm. 1. Τυρώ. Σαφῶς Σιδηρὼ καὶ φέρουσα τοὔνομα. The genius of Sophoklês is occasionally seduced by this play upon the etymology of a name, even in the most impressive scenes of his tragedies. See Ajax, 425. Compare Hellanik. Fragm. p. 9, ed. Preller. There was a first and second edition of the Tyrô—τῆς δευτέρας Τυροῦς. Schol. ad Aristoph. Av. 276. See the few fragments of the lost drama in Dindorf’s Collection, p. 53. The plot was in many respects analogous to the Antiopê of Euripidês.

[238] A third story, different both from Homer and from Sophoklês, respecting Tyrô, is found in Hyginus (Fab. lx.): it is of a tragical cast, and borrowed, like so many other tales in that collection, from one of the lost Greek dramas.

Her father, the unjust Salmôneus, exhibited in his conduct the most insolent impiety towards the gods. He assumed the name and title even of Zeus, and caused to be offered to himself the sacrifices destined for that god: he also imitated the thunder and lightning, by driving about with brazen caldrons attached to his chariot and casting lighted torches towards heaven. Such wickedness finally drew upon him the wrath of Zeus, who smote him with a thunderbolt, and effaced from the earth the city which he had founded, with all its inhabitants.[239]

[239] Apollod. i. 9, 7. Σαλμωνεύς τ᾽ ἄδικος καὶ ὑπέρθυμος Περιήρης. Hesiod, Fragm. Catal. 8. Marktscheffel.

Where the city of Salmôneus was situated, the ancient investigators were not agreed; whether in the Pisatid, or in Elis, or in Thessaly (see Strabo, viii. p. 356). Euripidês in his Æolus placed him on the banks of the Alpheius (Eurip. Fragm. Æol. 1). A village and fountain in the Pisatid bore the name of Salmônê; but the mention of the river Enipeus seems to mark Thessaly as the original seat of the legend. But the naïveté of the tale preserved by Apollodôrus (Virgil in the Æneid, vi. 586, has retouched it) marks its ancient date: the final circumstance of that tale was, that the city and its inhabitants were annihilated.

Ephorus makes Salmôneus king of the Epeians and of the Pisatæ (Fragm. 15, ed. Didot).

The lost drama of Sophoklês, called Σαλμωνεὺς, was a δρᾶμα σατυρικόν See Dindorf’s Fragm. 483.

Pelias and Nêleus, “both stout vassals of the great Zeus,” became engaged in dissension respecting the kingdom of Iôlkos in Thessaly. Pelias got possession of it, and dwelt there in plenty and prosperity; but he had offended the goddess Hêrê by killing Sidêrô upon her altar, and the effects of her wrath were manifested in his relations with his nephew Jasôn.[240]

[240] Hom. Od. xi. 280. Apollod. i. 9, 9. κρατέρω θεραπόντε Διὸς, etc.

Nêleus quitted Thessaly, went into Peloponnêsus, and there founded the kingdom of Pylos. He purchased by immense marriage presents, the privilege of wedding the beautiful Chlôris, daughter of Amphiôn, king of Orchomenos, by whom he had twelve sons and but one daughter[241]—the fair and captivating Pêrô, whom suitors from all the neighborhood courted in marriage. But Nêleus, “the haughtiest of living men,”[242] refused to entertain the pretensions of any of them: he would grant his daughter only to that man who should bring to him the oxen of Iphiklos, from Phylakê in Thessaly. These precious animals were carefully guarded, as well by herdsmen as by a dog whom neither man nor animal could approach. Nevertheless, Bias, the son of Amythaôn, nephew of Nêleus, being desperately enamored of Pêrô, prevailed upon his brother Melampus to undertake for his sake the perilous adventure, in spite of the prophetic knowledge of the latter, which forewarned him that though he would ultimately succeed, the prize must be purchased by severe captivity and suffering. Melampus, in attempting to steal the oxen, was seized and put in prison; from whence nothing but his prophetic powers rescued him. Being acquainted with the language of worms, he heard these animals communicating to each other, in the roof over his head, that the beams were nearly eaten through and about to fall in. He communicated this intelligence to his guards, and demanded to be conveyed to another place of confinement, announcing that the roof would presently fall in and bury them. The prediction was fulfilled, and Phylakos, father of Iphiklos, full of wonder at this specimen of prophetic power, immediately caused him to be released. He further consulted him respecting the condition of his son Iphiklos, who was childless; and promised him the possession of the oxen on condition of his suggesting the means whereby offspring might be ensured. A vulture having communicated to Melampus the requisite information, Podarkês, the son of Iphiklos, was born shortly afterwards. In this manner Melampus obtained possession of the oxen, and conveyed them to Pylos, obtaining for his brother Bias the hand of Pêrô.[243] How this great legendary character, by miraculously healing the deranged daughters of Prœtos, procured both for himself and for Bias dominion in Argos, has been recounted in a preceding chapter.

[241] Diodôr. iv. 68.

[242] Νηλέα τε μεγάθυμον, ἀγαυότατον ζωόντων (Hom. Odyss. xv. 228).

[243] Hom. Od. xi. 278; xv. 234. Apollod. i. 9, 12. The basis of this curious romance is in the Odyssey, amplified by subsequent poets. There are points however in the old Homeric legend, as it is briefly sketched in the fifteenth book of the Odyssey, which seem to have been subsequently left out or varied. Nêleus seizes the property of Melampus during his absence; the latter, returning with the oxen from Phylakê, revenges himself upon Nêleus for the injury. Odyss. xv. 233.

Of the twelve sons of Nêleus, one at least, Periklymenos,—besides the ever-memorable Nestôr,—was distinguished for his exploits as well as for his miraculous gifts. Poseidôn, the divine father of the race, had bestowed upon him the privilege of changing his form at pleasure into that of any bird, beast, reptile, or insect.[244] He had occasion for all these resources, and he employed them for a time with success in defending his family against the terrible indignation of Hêraklês, who, provoked by the refusal of Nêleus to perform for him the ceremony of purification after his murder of Iphitus, attacked the Nêleids at Pylos. Periklymenos by his extraordinary powers prolonged the resistance, but the hour of his fate was at length brought upon him by the intervention of Athênê, who pointed him out to Hêraklês while he was perched as a bee upon the hero’s chariot. He was killed, and Hêraklês became completely victorious, overpowering Poseidôn, Hêrê, Arês, and Hadês, and even wounding the three latter, who assisted in the defence. Eleven of the sons of Nêleus perished by his hand, while Nestôr, then a youth, was preserved only by his accidental absence at Gerêna, away from his father’s residence.[245]

[244] Hesiod, Catalog. ap. Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. i. 156; Ovid, Metam. xii. p. 556; Eustath. ad Odyss. xi. p. 284. Poseidôn carefully protects Antilochus son of Nestôr, in the Iliad, xiii. 554-563.

[245] Hesiod, Catalog. ap. Schol. Ven. ad Iliad. ii. 336; and Steph. Byz. v. Γερηνία; Homer, Il. v. 392; xi. 693; Apollodôr. ii. 7, 3; Hesiod, Scut. Herc. 360; Pindar, Ol. ix. 32.

According to the Homeric legend, Nêleus himself was not killed by Hêraklês: subsequent poets or logographers, whom Apollodôrus follows, seem to have thought it an injustice, that the offence given by Nêleus himself should have been avenged upon his sons and not upon himself; they therefore altered the legend upon this point, and rejected the passage in the Iliad as spurious (see Schol. Ven. ad Iliad. xi. 682).

The refusal of purification by Nêleus to Hêraklês is a genuine legendary cause: the commentators, who were disposed to spread a coating of history over these transactions, introduced another cause,—Nêleus, as king of Pylos, had aided the Orchomenians in their war against Hêraklês and the Thêbans (see Sch. Ven. ad Iliad. xi. 689).

The neighborhood of Pylos was distinguished for its ancient worship both of Poseidôn and of Hadês: there were abundant local legends respecting them (see Strabo, viii. pp. 344, 345).

The proud house of the Nêleids was now reduced to Nestôr; but Nestôr singly sufficed to sustain its eminence. He appears not only as the defender and avenger of Pylos against the insolence and rapacity of his Epeian neighbors in Elis, but also as aiding the Lapithæ in their terrible combat against the Centaurs, and as companion of Thêseus, Peirithöus, and the other great legendary heroes who preceded the Trojan war. In extreme old age his once marvellous power of handling his weapons has indeed passed away, but his activity remains unimpaired, and his sagacity as well as his influence in counsel is greater than ever. He not only assembles the various Grecian chiefs for the armament against Troy, perambulating the districts of Hellas along with Odysseus, but takes a vigorous part in the siege itself, and is of preëminent service to Agamemnôn. And after the conclusion of the siege, he is one of the few Grecian princes who returns to his original dominions, and is found, in a strenuous and honored old age, in the midst of his children and subjects,—sitting with the sceptre of authority on the stone bench before his house at Pylos,—offering sacrifice to Poseidôn, as his father Nêleus had done before him,—and mourning only over the death of his favorite son Antilochus, who had fallen, along with so many brave companions in arms, in the Trojan war.[246]

[246] About Nestôr, Iliad, i. 260-275; ii. 370; xi. 670-770; Odyss. iii. 5, 110, 409.

After Nestôr the line of the Nêleids numbers undistinguished names,—Bôrus, Penthilus, and Andropompus,—three successive generations down to Melanthus, who on the invasion of Peloponnêsus by the Herakleids, quitted Pylos and retired to Athens, where he became king, in a manner which I shall hereafter recount. His son Kodrus was the last Athênian king; and Nêleus, one of the sons of Kodrus, is mentioned as the principal conductor of what is called the Ionic emigration from Athens to Asia Minor.[247] It is certain that during the historical age, not merely the princely family of the Kodrids in Milêtus, Ephesus, and other Ionic cities, but some of the greatest families even in Athens itself, traced their heroic lineage through the Nêleids up to Poseidôn: and the legends respecting Nestôr and Periklymenos would find especial favor amidst Greeks with such feelings and belief. The Kodrids at Ephesus, and probably some other Ionic towns, long retained the title and honorary precedence of kings, even after they had lost the substantial power belonging to the office. They stood in the same relation, embodying both religious worship and supposed ancestry, to the Nêleids and Poseidôn, as the chiefs of the Æolic colonies to Agamemnôn and Orestês. The Athenian despot Peisistratus was named after the son of Nestôr in the Odyssey; and we may safely presume that the heroic worship of the Nêleids was as carefully cherished at the Ionic Milêtus as at the Italian Metapontum.[248]

[247] Hellanik. Fragm. 10, ed. Didot; Pausan. vii. 2, 3; Herodot. v. 65; Strabo, xiv. p. 633. Hellanikus, in giving the genealogy from Nêleus to Melanthus, traces it through Periklymenos and not through Nestôr: the words of Herodotus imply that he must have included Nestôr.

[248] Herodot. v. 67; Strabo, vi. p. 264; Mimnermus, Fragm. 9, Schneidewin.

Having pursued the line of Salmôneus and Nêleus to the end of its lengendary career, we may now turn back to that of another son of Æolus, Krêtheus,—a line hardly less celebrated in respect of the heroic names which it presents. Alkêstis, the most beautiful of the daughters of Pelias,[249] was promised by her father in marriage to the man that could bring him a lion and a boar tamed to the yoke and drawing together. Admêtus, son of Pherês, the eponymus of Pheræ in Thessaly, and thus grandson of Krêtheus, was enabled by the aid of Apollo to fulfil this condition, and to win her;[250] for Apollo happened at that time to be in his service as a slave (condemned to this penalty by Zeus for having put to death the Cyclôpes), in which capacity he tended the herds and horses with such success, as to equip Eumêlus (the son of Admêtus) to the Trojan war with the finest horses in the Grecian army. Though menial duties were imposed upon him, even to the drudgery of grinding in the mill,[251] he yet carried away with him a grateful and friendly sentiment towards his mortal master, whom he interfered to rescue from the wrath of the goddess Artemis, when she was indignant at the omission of her name in his wedding sacrifices. Admêtus was about to perish by a premature death, when Apollo, by earnest solicitation to the Fates, obtained for him the privilege that his life should be prolonged, if he could find any person to die a voluntary death in his place. His father and his mother both refused to make this sacrifice for him, but the devoted attachment of his wife Alkêstis disposed her to embrace with cheerfulness the condition of dying to preserve her husband. She had already perished, when Hêraklês, the ancient guest and friend of Admêtus, arrived during the first hour of lamentation; his strength and daring enabled him to rescue the deceased Alkêstis even from the grasp of Thanatos (Death), and to restore her alive to her disconsolate husband.[252]

[249] Iliad, ii. 715.

[250] Apollodôr. i. 9, 15; Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 711.

[251] Euripid. Alkêst. init. Welcker; Griechisch. Tragœd. (p. 344) on the lost play of Sophoklês called Admêtus or Alkêstis; Hom. Iliad., ii. 766; Hygin. Fab. 50-51 (Sophoklês, Fr. Inc. 730; Dind. ap. Plutarch. Defect. Orac. p. 417). This tale of the temporary servitude of particular gods, by order of Zeus as a punishment for misbehavior, recurs not unfrequently among the incidents of the mythical world. The poet Panyasis (ap. Clem. Alexand. Adm. ad Gent. p. 23)—

Τλῆ μὲν Δημήτηρ, τλῆ δὲ κλυτὸς Ἀμφιγυήεις, Τλῆ δὲ Ποσειδάων, τλῆ δ᾽ ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπολλὼν Ἀνδρὶ παρὰ θνητῷ θητεύσεμεν εἰς ἐνιαυτόν· Τλῆ δὲ καὶ ὀβριμόθυμος Ἄρης ὑπὸ πατρὸς ἀνάγκης.

The old legend followed out the fundamental idea with remarkable consistency: Laômedôn, as the temporary master of Poseidôn and Apollo, threatens to bind them hand and foot, to sell them in the distant islands, and to cut off the ears of both, when they come to ask for their stipulated wages (Iliad, xxi. 455). It was a new turn given to the story by the Alexandrine poets, when they introduced the motive of love, and made the servitude voluntary on the part of Apollo (Kallimachus, Hymn. Apoll. 49; Tibullus, Elegii. 3, 11-30).

[252] Eurip. Alkêstis, Arg.; Apollod. i. 9, 15. To bring this beautiful legend more into the color of history, a new version of it was subsequently framed: Hêraklês was eminently skilled in medicine, and saved the life of Alkêstis when she was about to perish from a desperate malady (Plutarch. Amator c. 17. vol. iv. p. 53, Wytt.).

The son of Pelias, Akastus, had received and sheltered Pêleus when obliged to fly his country in consequence of the involuntary murder of Eurytiôn. Krêthêis, the wife of Akastus, becoming enamored of Pêleus, made to him advances which he repudiated. Exasperated at his refusal, and determined to procure his destruction, she persuaded her husband that Pêleus had attempted her chastity: upon which Akastus conducted Pêleus out upon a hunting excursion among the woody regions of Mount Pêlion, contrived to steal from him the sword fabricated and given by Hêphæstos, and then left him, alone and unarmed, to perish by the hands of the Centaurs or by the wild beasts. By the friendly aid of the Centaur Cheirôn, however, Pêleus was preserved, and his sword restored to him: returning to the city, he avenged himself by putting to death both Akastus and his perfidious wife.[253]

[253] The legend of Akastus and Pêleus was given in great detail in the Catalogue of Hesiod (Catalog. Fragm. 20-21, Marktscheff.); Schol. Pindar Nem. iv. 95. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 224; Apollod. iii. 13, 2.

But amongst all the legends with which the name of Pelias is connected, by far the most memorable is that of Jasôn and the Argonautic expedition. Jasôn was son of Æsôn, grandson of Krêtheus, and thus great-grandson of Æolus. Pelias, having consulted the oracle respecting the security of his dominion at Iôlkos, had received in answer a warning to beware of the man who should appear before him with only one sandal. He was celebrating a festival in honor of Poseidôn, when it so happened that Jasôn appeared before him with one of his feet unsandaled: he had lost one sandal in wading through the swollen current of the river Anauros. Pelias immediately understood that this was the enemy against whom the oracle had forewarned him. As a means of averting the danger, he imposed upon Jasôn the desperate task of bringing back to Iôlkos the Golden Fleece,—the fleece of that ram which had carried Phryxos from Achaia to Kolchis, and which Phryxos had dedicated in the latter country as an offering to the god Arês. The result of this injunction was the memorable expedition—of the ship Argô and her crew called the Argonauts, composed of the bravest and noblest youths of Greece—which cannot be conveniently included among the legends of the Æolids, and is reserved for a separate chapter.

The voyage of the Argô was long protracted, and Pelias, persuaded that neither the ship nor her crew would ever return, put to death both the father and mother of Jasôn, together with their infant son. Æsôn, the father, being permitted to choose the manner of his own death, drank bull’s blood while performing a sacrifice to the gods. At length, however, Jasôn did return, bringing with him not only the golden fleece, but also Mêdea, daughter of Æêtês, king of Kolchis, as his wife,—a woman distinguished for magical skill and cunning, by whose assistance alone the Argonauts had succeeded in their project. Though determined to avenge himself upon Pelias, Jasôn knew he could only succeed by stratagem: he remained with his companions at a short distance from Iôlkos, while Mêdea, feigning herself a fugitive from his ill-usage, entered the town alone, and procured access to the daughters of Pelias. By exhibitions of her magical powers she soon obtained unqualified ascendency over their minds. For example, she selected from the flocks of Pelias a ram in the extremity of old age, cut him up and boiled him in a caldron with herbs, and brought him out in the shape of a young and vigorous lamb:[254] the daughters of Pelias were made to believe that their old father could in like manner be restored to youth. In this persuasion they cut him up with their own hands and cast his limbs into the caldron, trusting that Mêdea would produce upon him the same magical effect. Mêdea pretended that an invocation to the moon was a necessary part of the ceremony: she went up to the top of the house as if to pronounce it, and there lighting the fire-signal concerted with the Argonauts, Jasôn and his companions burst in and possessed themselves of the town. Satisfied with having thus revenged himself, Jasôn yielded the principality of Iôlkos to Akastus, son of Pelias, and retired with Mêdea to Corinth. Thus did the goddess Hêrê gratify her ancient wrath against Pelias: she had constantly watched over Jasôn, and had carried the “all-notorious” Argô through its innumerable perils, in order that Jasôn might bring home Mêdea to accomplish the ruin of his uncle.[255] The misguided daughters of Pelias departed as voluntary exiles to Arcadia: Akastus his son celebrated splendid funeral games in honor of his deceased father.[256]

[254] This incident was contained in one of the earliest dramas of Euripidês, the Πελίαδες, now lost. Moses of Chorênê (Progymnasm. ap. Maii ad Euseb. p. 43), who gives an extract from the argument, says that the poet “extremos mentiendi fines attingit.”

The Ῥιζότομοι of Sophoklês seems also to have turned upon the same catastrophe (see Fragm. 479, Dindorf.).

[255] The kindness of Hêrê towards Jasôn seems to be older in the legend than her displeasure against Pelias; at least it is specially noticed in the Odyssey, as the great cause of the escape of the ship Argô: Ἀλλ᾽ Ἥρη παρέπεμψεν, ἐπεὶ φίλος ἦεν Ἰήσων. (xii. 70). In the Hesiodic Theogony Pelias stands to Jasôn in the same relation as Eurystheus to Hêraklês,—a severe taskmaster as well as a wicked and insolent man,—ὑβριστὴς Πελίης καὶ ἀτάσθαλος, ὀβριμόεργος. (Theog. 995). Apollônius Rhodius keeps the wrath of Hêrê against Pelias in the foreground, i. 14; iii. 1134; iv. 242; see also Hygin, f. 13.

There is great diversity in the stories given of the proximate circumstances connected with the death of Pelias: Eurip. Mêd. 491; Apollodôr. i. 9, 27; Diodôr. iv. 50-52; Ovid, Metam. vii. 162, 203, 297, 347; Pausan. viii. 11, 2; Schol. ad Lycoph. 175.

In the legend of Akastus and Pêleus as recounted above, Akastus was made to perish by the hand of Pêleus. I do not take upon me to reconcile these contradictions.

Pausanias mentions that he could not find in any of the poets, so far as he had read, the names of the daughters of Pelias, and that the painter Mikôn had given to them names (ὀνόματα δ᾽ αὐταῖς ποιητὴς μὲν ἔθετο οὐδεὶς, ὅσα γ᾽ ἐπελεξάμεθα ἡμεῖς, etc., Pausan. viii. 11, 1). Yet their names are given in the authors whom Diodôrus copied; and Alkêstis, at any rate, was most memorable. Mikôn gave the names Asteropeia and Antinoê, altogether different from those in Diodôrus. Both Diodôrus and Hyginus exonerate Alkêstis from all share in the death of her father (Hygin. f. 24).

The old poem called the Νόστοι (see Argum. ad Eurip. Mêd., and Schol. Aristophan. Equit. 1321) recounted, that Mêdea had boiled in a caldron the old Æsôn, father of Jasôn, with herbs and incantations, and that she had brought him out young and strong. Ovid copies this (Metam. vii. 162-203). It is singular that Pherêkydês and Simonidês said that she had performed this process upon Jasôn himself (Schol. Aristoph. l. c.). Diogenes (ap. Stobæ. Florileg. t. xxix. 92) rationalizes the story, and converts Mêdea from an enchantress into an improving and regenerating preceptress. The death of Æsôn, as described in the text, is given from Diodôrus and Apollodôrus. Mêdea seems to have been worshipped as a goddess in other places besides Corinth (see Athenagor. Legat. pro Christ. 12; Macrobius, i. 12, p. 247, Gronov.).

[256] These funeral games in honor of Pelias were among the most renowned of the mythical incidents: they were celebrated in a special poem by Stesichorus, and represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia. Kastôr, Meleager, Amphiaraos, Jasôn, Pêleus, Mopsos, etc. contended in them (Pausan. v. 17. 4; Stesichori Fragm. 1. p. 54, ed. Klewe; Athên. iv. 172). How familiar the details of them were to the mind of a literary Greek is indirectly attested by Plutarch, Sympos. v. 2, vol. iii. p. 762, Wytt.

Jasôn and Mêdea retired from Iôlkos to Corinth, where they resided ten years: their children were—Medeius, whom the Centaur Cheirôn educated in the regions of Mount Pêlion,[257]—and Mermerus and Pherôs, born at Corinth. After they had resided there ten years in prosperity, Jasôn set his affections on Glaukê, daughter of Kreôn[258] king of Corinth; and as her father was willing to give her to him in marriage, he determined to repudiate Mêdea, who received orders forthwith to leave Corinth. Stung with this insult and bent upon revenge, Mêdea prepared a poisoned robe, and sent it as a marriage present to Glaukê: it was unthinkingly accepted and put on, and the body of the unfortunate bride was burnt up and consumed. Kreôn, her father, who tried to tear from her the burning garment, shared her fate and perished. The exulting Mêdea escaped by means of a chariot with winged serpents furnished to her by her grandfather Hêlios: she placed herself under the protection of Ægêus at Athens, by whom she had a son named Mêdus. She left her young children in the sacred enclosure of the Akræan Hêrê, relying on the protection of the altar to ensure their safety; but the Corinthians were so exasperated against her for the murder of Kreôn and Glaukê, that they dragged the children away from the altar and put them to death. The miserable Jasôn perished by a fragment of his own ship Argô, which fell upon him while he was asleep under it,[259] being hauled on shore, according to the habitual practice of the ancients.

[257] Hesiod, Theogon. 998.

[258] According to the Schol. ad Eurip. Mêd. 20, Jasôn marries the daughter of Hippotês the son of Kreôn, who is the son of Lykæthos. Lykæthos, after the departure of Bellerophôn from Corinth, reigned twenty-seven years; then Kreôn reigned thirty-five years; then came Hippotês.

[259] Apollodôr. i. 9, 27; Diodôr. iv. 54. The Mêdea of Euripidês, which has fortunately been preserved to us, is too well known to need express reference. He makes Mêdea the destroyer of her own children, and borrows from this circumstance the most pathetic touches of his exquisite drama. Parmeniskôs accused him of having been bribed by the Corinthians to give this turn to the legend; and we may regard the accusation as a proof that the older and more current tale imputed the murder of the children to the Corinthians (Schol. Eurip. Mêd. 275, where Didymos gives the story out of the old poem of Kreophylos). See also Ælian, V. H. v. 21; Pausan. ii. 3, 6.

The most significant fact in respect to the fable is, that the Corinthians celebrated periodically a propitiatory sacrifice to Hêrê Akræa and to Mermerus and Pherês, as an atonement for the sin of having violated the sanctuary of the altar. The legend grew out of this religious ceremony, and was so arranged as to explain and account for it (see Eurip. Mêd. 1376, with the Schol. Diodôr. iv. 55).

Mermerus and Pherês were the names given to the children of Mêdea and Jasôn in the old Naupaktian Verses; in which, however, the legend must have been recounted quite differently, since they said that Jasôn and Mêdea had gone from Iôlkos, not to Corinth, but to Corcyra; and that Mermerus had perished in hunting on the opposite continent of Epirus. Kinæthôn again, another ancient genealogical poet, called the children of Mêdea and Jasôn Eriôpis and Mêdos (Pausan. ii. 3, 7). Diodôrus gives them different names (iv. 34). Hesiod, in the Theogony, speaks only of Medeius as the son of Jasôn.

Mêdea does not appear either in the Iliad or Odyssey: in the former, we find Agamêdê, daughter of Augeas, “who knows all the poisons (or medicines) which the earth nourishes” (Iliad, xi. 740); in the latter, we have Circê, sister of Æêtês, father of Mêdea, and living in the Ææan island (Odyss. x. 70). Circê is daughter of the god Hêlios, as Mêdea is his grand-daughter,—she is herself a goddess. She is in many points the parallel of Mêdea; she forewarns and preserves Odysseus throughout his dangers, as Mêdea aids Jasôn: according to the Hesiodic story, she has two children by Odysseus, Agrius and Latinus (Theogon. 1001).

Odysseus goes to Ephyrê to Ilos the son of Mermerus, to procure poison for his arrows: Eustathius treats this Mermerus as the son of Mêdea (see Odyss. i. 270, and Eust.). As Ephyrê is the legendary name of Corinth, we may presume this to be a thread of the same mythical tissue.

The first establishment at Ephyrê, or Corinth, had been founded by Sisyphus, another of the sons of Æolus, brother of Salmôneus and Krêtheus.[260] The Æolid Sisyphus was distinguished as an unexampled master of cunning and deceit. He blocked up the road along the isthmus, and killed the strangers who came along it by rolling down upon them great stones from the mountains above. He was more than a match even for the arch thief Autolycus, the son of Hermês, who derived from his father the gift of changing the color and shape of stolen goods, so that they could no longer be recognized: Sisyphus, by marking his sheep under the foot, detected Autolycus when he stole them, and obliged him to restore the plunder. His penetration discovered the amour of Zeus with the nymph Ægina, daughter of the river-god Asôpus. Zeus had carried her off to the island of Œnônê (which subsequently bore the name of Ægina); upon which Asôpus, eager to recover her, inquired of Sisyphus whither she was gone: the latter told him what had happened, on condition that he should provide a spring of water on the summit of the Acro-Corinthus. Zeus, indignant with Sisyphus for this revelation, inflicted upon him in Hadês the punishment of perpetually heaving up a hill a great and heavy stone, which, so soon as it attained the summit, rolled back again in spite of all his efforts, with irresistible force into the plain.[261]

[260] See Euripid. Æol.—Fragm. 1, Dindorf; Dikæarch. Vit. Græc. p. 22.

[261] Respecting Sisyphus, see Apollodôr. i. 9, 3; iii. 12, 6. Pausan. ii. 5, 1. Schol. ad Iliad. i. 180. Another legend about the amour of Sisyphus with Tyrô, is in Hygin. fab. 60, and about the manner in which he overreached even Hadês (Pherekydês ap. Schol. Iliad. vi. 153). The stone rolled by Sisyphus in the under-world appears in Odyss. xi. 592. The name of Sisyphus was given during the historical age to men of craft and stratagem, such as Derkyllidês (Xenoph. Hellenic. iii. 1, 8). He passed for the real father of Odysseus, though Heyne (ad Apollodôr. i. 9, 3) treats this as another Sisyphus, whereby he destroys the suitableness of the predicate as regards Odysseus. The duplication and triplication of synonymous personages is an ordinary resource for the purpose of reducing the legends into a seeming chronological sequence.

Even in the days of Eumêlus a religious mystery was observed respecting the tombs of Sisyphus and Nêleus,—the latter had also died at Corinth,—no one could say where they were buried (Pausan. ii. 2, 2).

Sisyphus even overreached Persephonê, and made his escape from the under-world (Theognis, 702).

In the application of the Æolid genealogy to Corinth, Sisyphus, the son of Æolus, appears as the first name: but the old Corinthian poet Eumêlus either found or framed an heroic genealogy for his native city independent both of Æolus and Sisyphus. According to this genealogy, Ephyrê, daughter of Oceanus and Têthys, was the primitive tenant of the Corinthian territory, Asôpus of the Sikyônian: both were assigned to the god Hêlios, in adjusting a dispute between him and Poseidôn, by Briareus. Hêlios divided the territory between his two sons Æêtês and Alôeus: to the former he assigned Corinth, to the latter Sikyôn. Æêtês, obeying the admonition of an oracle, emigrated to Kolchis, leaving his territory under the rule of Bunos, the son of Hermês, with the stipulation that it should be restored whenever either he or any of his descendants returned. After the death of Bunos, both Corinth and Sikyôn were possessed by Epôpeus, son of Alôeus, a wicked man. His son Marathôn left him in disgust and retired into Attica, but returned after his death and succeeded to his territory, which he in turn divided between his two sons Corinthos and Sikyôn, from whom the names of the two districts were first derived. Corinthos died without issue, and the Corinthians then invited Mêdea from Iôlkos as the representative of Æêtês: she with her husband Jasôn thus obtained the sovereignty of Corinth.[262] This legend of Eumêlus, one of the earliest of the genealogical poets, so different from the story adopted by Neophrôn or Euripidês, was followed certainly by Simonidês and seemingly by Theopompus.[263] The incidents in it are imagined and arranged with a view to the supremacy of Mêdea; the emigration of Æêtês and the conditions under which he transferred his sceptre, being so laid out as to confer upon Mêdea an hereditary title to the throne. The Corinthians paid to Mêdea and to her children solemn worship, either divine or heroic, in conjunction with Hêrê Akræa,[264] and this was sufficient to give to Mêdea a prominent place in the genealogy composed by a Corinthian poet, accustomed to blend together gods, heroes and men in the antiquities of his native city. According to the legend of Eumêlus, Jasôn became (through Mêdea) king of Corinth; but she concealed the children of their marriage in the temple of Hêrê, trusting that the goddess would render them immortal. Jasôn, discovering her proceedings, left her and retired in disgust to Iôlkos; Mêdea also, being disappointed in her scheme, quitted the place, leaving the throne in the hands of Sisyphus, to whom, according to the story of Theopompus, she had become attached.[265] Other legends recounted, that Zeus had contracted a passion for Mêdea, but that she had rejected his suit from fear of the displeasure of Hêrê; who, as a recompense for such fidelity, rendered her children immortal:[266] moreover Mêdea had erected, by special command of Hêrê, the celebrated temple of Aphroditê at Corinth. The tenor of these fables manifests their connection with the temple of Hêrê: and we may consider the legend of Mêdea as having been originally quite independent of that of Sisyphus, but fitted on to it, in seeming chronological sequence, so as to satisfy the feelings of those Æolids of Corinth who passed for his descendants.

[262] Pausan. ii. 1, 1; 3, 10. Schol. ad Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 74. Schol. Lycoph. 174-1024. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 1212.

[263] Simonid. ap. Schol. ad Eurip. Mêd. 10-20; Theopompus, Fragm. 340, Didot; though Welcker (Der Episch. Cycl. p. 29) thinks that this does not belong to the historian Theopompus. Epimenidês also followed the story of Eumêlus in making Æêtês a Corinthian (Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. iii. 242).

[264] Περὶ δὲ τῆς εἰς Κόρινθον μετοικήσεως, Ἵππυς ἐκτίθεται καὶ Ἑλλάνικος· ὅτι δὲ βεβασίλευκε τῆς Κορίνθου ἡ Μήδεια, Εὔμηλος ἱστορεῖ καὶ Σιμωνίδης· Ὅτι δὲ καὶ ἀθάνατος ἦν ἡ Μήδεια, Μουσαῖος ἐν τῷ περὶ Ἰσθμίων ἱστορεῖ, ἅμα καὶ περὶ τῶν τῆς Ἀκραίας Ἥρας ἑορτῶν ἐκτιθείς. (Schol. Eurip. Mêd. 10). Compare also v. 1376 of the play itself, with the Scholia and Pausan. ii. 3, 6. Both Alkman and Hesiod represented Mêdea as a goddess (Athenagoras, Legatia pro Christianis, p. 54, ed. Oxon.).

[265] Pausan. ii. 3, 10; Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 74.

[266] Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 32-74; Plutarch, De Herodot. Malign. p. 871.

Sisyphus had for his sons Glaukos and Ornytiôn. From Glaukos sprang Bellerophôn, whose romantic adventures commence with the Iliad, and are further expanded by subsequent poets: according to some accounts he was really the son of Poseidôn, the prominent deity of the Æolid family.[267] The youth and beauty of Bellerophôn rendered him the object of a strong passion on the part of the Anteia, wife of Prœtos king of Argos. Finding her advances rejected, she contracted a violent hatred towards him, and endeavored by false accusations to prevail upon her husband to kill him. Prœtos refused to commit the deed under his own roof, but despatched him to his son-in-law the king of Lykia in Asia Minor, putting into his hands a folded tablet full of destructive symbols. Conformably to these suggestions, the most perilous undertakings were imposed upon Bellerophôn. He was directed to attack the monster Chimæra and to conquer the warlike Solymi as well as the Amazons: as he returned victorious from these enterprises, an ambuscade was laid for him by the bravest Lykian warriors, all of whom he slew. At length the Lykian king recognized him “as the genuine son of a god,” and gave him his daughter in marriage together with half of his kingdom. The grand-children of Bellerophôn, Glaukos and Sarpêdôn,—the latter a son of his daughter Laodameia by Zeus,—combat as allies of Troy against the host of Agamemnon.[268] Respecting the winged Pegasus, Homer says nothing; but later poets assigned to Bellerophôn this miraculous steed, whose parentage is given in the Hesiodic Theogony, as the instrument both of his voyage and of his success.[269] Heroic worship was paid at Corinth to Bellerophôn, and he seems to have been a favorite theme of recollection not only among the Corinthians themselves, but also among the numerous colonists whom they sent out to other regions.[270]

[267] Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 98. and Schol. ad 1; Schol. ad Iliad, vi. 155; this seems to be the sense of Iliad, vi. 191.

The lost drama called Iobatês of Sophoklês, and the two by Euripidês called Sthenebœa and Bellerophôn, handled the adventures of this hero. See the collection of the few fragments remaining in Dindorf, Fragm. Sophok. 280; Fragm. Eurip. p. 87-108; and Hygin. fab. 67.

Welcker (Griechische Tragöd. ii. p. 777-800) has ingeniously put together all that can be divined respecting the two plays of Euripidês.

Völcker seeks to make out that Bellerophôn is identical with Poseidôn Hippios,—a separate personification of one of the attributes of the god Poseidôn. For this conjecture he gives some plausible grounds (Mythologie des Japetisch. Geschlechts, p. 129 seq.).

[268] Iliad, vi. 155-210.

[269] Hesiod, Theogon. 283.

[270] Pausan. ii. 2, 4. See Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 90, addressed to Xenophôn the Corinthian, and the Adoniazusæ of the Syracusan Theocritus, a poem in which common Syracusan life and feeling are so graphically depicted, Idyll xv. 91.—

Συρακοσίαις ἐπιτάσσεις; Ὡς δ᾽ εἰδῇς καὶ τοῦτο, Κορίνθιαι εἶμες ἄνωθεν Ὡς καὶ ὁ Βελλερόφων· Πελοποννασιστὶ λαλεῦμες.

From Ornytiôn, the son of Sisyphus, we are conducted through a series of three undistinguished family names,—Thoas, Damophôn, and the brothers Propodas and Hyanthidas,—to the time of the Dôrian occupation of Corinth[271], which will be hereafter recounted.

[271] Pausan. ii. 4, 3.

We now pass from Sisyphus and the Corinthian fables to another son of Æolus, Athamas, whose family history is not less replete with mournful and tragical incidents, abundantly diversified by the poets. Athamas, we are told, was king of Orchomenos; his wife Nephelê was a goddess, and he had by her two children, Phryxus and Hellê. After a certain time he neglected Nephelê, and took to himself as a new wife Inô, the daughter of Kadmus, by whom he had two sons, Learchus and Melikertês. Inô, looking upon Phryxus with the hatred of a step-mother, laid a snare for his life. She persuaded the women to roast the seed-wheat, which, when sown in this condition, yielded no crop, so that famine overspread the land. Athamas sent to Delphi to implore counsel and a remedy: he received for answer, through the machinations of Inô with the oracle, that the barrenness of the fields could not be alleviated except by offering Phryxus as a sacrifice to Zeus. The distress of the people compelled him to execute this injunction, and Phryxus was led as a victim to the altar. But the power of his mother Nephelê snatched him from destruction, and procured for him from Hermês a ram with a fleece of gold, upon which he and his sister Hellê mounted and were carried across the sea. The ram took the direction of the Euxine sea and Kolchis: when they were crossing the Hellespont, Hellê fell off into the narrow strait, which took its name from that incident. Upon this, the ram, who was endued with speech, consoled the terrified Phryxus, and ultimately carried him safe to Kolchis: Æêtês, king of Kolchis son of the god Hêlios and brother of Circê, received Phryxus kindly, and gave him his daughter Chalciopê in marriage. Phryxus sacrificed the ram to Zeus Phyxios, and suspended the golden fleece in the sacred grove of Arês.

Athamas—according to some both Athamas and Inô—were afterwards driven mad by the anger of the goddess Hêrê; insomuch that the father shot his own son Learchus, and would also have put to death his other son Melikertês, if Inô had not snatched him away. She fled with the boy, across the Megarian territory and Mount Geraneia, to the rock Moluris, overhanging the Sarônic Gulf: Athamas pursued her, and in order to escape him she leaped into the sea. She became a sea-goddess under the title of Leukothea; while the body of Melikertês was cast ashore on the neighboring territory of Schœnus, and buried by his uncle Sisyphus, who was directed by the Nereïds to pay to him heroic honors under the name of Palæmôn. The Isthmian games, one of the great periodical festivals of Greece, were celebrated in honor of the god Poseidôn, in conjunction with Palæmôn as a hero. Athamas abandoned his territory, and became the first settler of a neighboring region called from him Athmantia, or the Athamantian plain. [272]

[272] Eurip. Mêd. 1250, with the Scholia, according to which story Inô killed both her children:—

Ἴνω μανεῖσαν ἐκ θεῶν, ὅθ᾽ ἡ Διὸς Δάμαρ νιν ἐξέπεμψε δώματων ἄλῃ.

Compare Valckenaer, Diatribe in Eurip.; Apollodôr. i. 9, 1-2; Schol. ad Pindar. Argum. ad Isthm. p. 180. The many varieties of the fable of Athamas and his family may be seen in Hygin. fab. 1-5; Philostephanus ap. Schol. Iliad, vii. 86: it was a favorite subject with the tragedians, and was handled by Æschylus, Sophoklês and Euripidês in more than one drama (see Welcker, Griechische Tragöd. vol. i. p. 312-332; vol. ii. p. 612). Heyne says that the proper reading of the name is Phrixus, not Phryxus,—incorrectly, I think: Φρύξος connects the name both with the story of roasting the wheat (φρύγειν), and also with the country Φρυγία, of which it was pretended that Phryxus was the Eponymus. Inô, or Leukothea, was worshipped as a heroine at Megara as well as at Corinth (Pausan. i. 42, 3): the celebrity of the Isthmian games carried her worship, as well as that of Palæmôn, throughout most parts of Greece (Cicero, De Nat. Deor. iii. 16). She is the only personage of this family noticed either in the Iliad or Odyssey: in the latter poem she is a sea-goddess, who has once been a mortal, daughter of Kadmus; she saves Odysseus from imminent danger at sea by presenting to him her κρήδεμνον (Odyss. v. 433; see the refinements of Aristidês, Orat. iii. p. 27). The voyage of Phryxus and Hellê to Kolchis was related in the Hesiodic Eoiai: we find the names of the children of Phryxus by the daughter of Æêtês quoted from that poem (Schol. ad Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 1123) both Hesiod and Pherekydês mentioned the golden fleece of the ram (Eratosthen. Catasterism. 19; Pherekyd. Fragm. 53, Didot).

Hekatæus preserved the romance of the speaking ram (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 256) but Hellanikus dropped the story of Hellê having fallen into the sea: according to him she died at Pactyê in the Chersonesus (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 1144).

The poet Asius seems to have given the genealogy of Athamas by Themistô much in the same manner as we find it in Apollodôrus (Pausan. ix. 23, 3).

According to the ingenious refinements of Dionysius and Palæphatus (Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. ii. 1144; Palæphat. de Incred. c. 31) the ram of Phryxus was after all a man named Krios, a faithful attendant who aided in his escape; others imagined a ship with a ram’s head at the bow.

The legend of Athamas connects itself with some sanguinary religious rites and very peculiar family customs, which prevailed at Alos, in Achaia Phthiôtis, down to a time[273] later than the historian Herodotus, and of which some remnant existed at Orchomenos even in the days of Plutarch. Athamas was worshipped at Alos as a hero, having both a chapel and a consecrated grove, attached to the temple of Zeus Laphystios. On the family of which he was the heroic progenitor, a special curse and disability stood affixed. The eldest of the race was forbidden to enter the prytaneion or government-house; and if he was found within the doors of the building, the other citizens laid hold of him on his going out, surrounded him with garlands, and led him in solemn procession to be sacrificed as a victim at the altar of Zeus Laphystios. The prohibition carried with it an exclusion from all the public meetings and ceremonies, political as well as religious, and from the sacred fire of the state: many of the individuals marked out had therefore been bold enough to transgress it. Some had been seized on quitting the building and actually sacrificed; others had fled the country for a long time to avoid a similar fate.

[273] Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 38. p. 299. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 655.

The guides who conducted Xerxês and his army through southern Thessaly detailed to him this existing practice, coupled with the local legend, that Athamas, together with Inô, had sought to compass the death of Phryxus, who however had escaped to Kolchis; that the Achæans had been enjoined by an oracle to offer up Athamas himself as an expiatory sacrifice to release the country from the anger of the gods; but that Kytissoros, son of Phryxus, coming back from Kolchis, had intercepted the sacrifice of Athamas,[274] whereby the anger of the gods remained still unappeased, and an undying curse rested upon the family.[275]

[274] Of the Athamas of Sophoklês, turning upon this intended, but not consummated sacrifice, little is known, except from a passage of Aristophanês and the Scholia upon it (Nubes, 258).—

ἐπὶ τί στέφανον; οἴμοι, Σώκρατες, ὥσπερ με τὸν Ἀθάμανθ᾽ ὅπως μὴ θύσετε.

Athamas was introduced in this drama with a garland on his head, on the point of being sacrificed as an expiation for the death of his son Phryxus, when Hêraklês interposes and rescues him.

[275] Herodot. vii. 197. Plato, Minôs, p. 315.

That such human sacrifices continued to a greater or less extent, even down to a period later than Herodotus, among the family who worshipped Athamas as their heroic ancestor, appears certain: mention is also made of similar customs in parts of Arcadia, and of Thessaly, in honor of Pêleus and Cheirôn.[276] But we may reasonably presume, that in the period of greater humanity which Herodotus witnessed, actual sacrifice had become very rare. The curse and the legend still remained, but were not called into practical working, except during periods of intense national suffering or apprehension, during which the religious sensibilities were always greatly aggravated. We cannot at all doubt, that during the alarm created by the presence of the Persian king with his immense and ill-disciplined host, the minds of the Thessalians must have been keenly alive to all that was terrific in their national stories, and all that was expiatory in their religious solemnities. Moreover, the mind of Xerxês himself was so awe-struck by the tale, that he reverenced the dwelling-place consecrated to Athamas. The guides who recounted to him the romantic legend, gave it as the historical and generating cause of the existing rule and practice: a critical inquirer is forced (as has been remarked before) to reverse the order of precedence, and to treat the practice as having been the suggesting cause of its own explanatory legend.

[276] Plato, Minôs, c. 5. Καὶ οἱ τοῦ Ἀθάμαντος ἔκγονοι, οἵας θυσίας θύουσιν, Ἕλληνες ὄντες. As a testimony to the fact still existing or believed to exist, this dialogue is quite sufficient, though not the work of Plato.

Μόνιμος δ᾽ ἱστορεῖ, ἐν τῇ τῶν θαυμασίων συναγωγῇ, ἐν Πέλλῃ τῆς Θετταλίας Ἀχαιὸν ἄνθρωπον Πηλεῖ καὶ Χείρωνι καταθύεσθαι. (Clemens Alexand. Admon. ad Gent. p. 27, Sylb.) Respecting the sacrifices at the temple of Zeus Lykæus in Arcadia, see Plato, Republ. viii. p. 565. Pausanias (viii. p. 38, 5) seems to have shrunk, when he was upon the spot, even from inquiring what they were—a striking proof of the fearful idea which he had conceived of them. Plutarch (De Defectu Oracul. c. 14) speaks of τὰς πάλαι ποιουμένας ἀνθρωποθυσίας. The Schol. ad Lycophron. 229, gives a story of children being sacrificed to Melikertês at Tenedos; and Apollodôrus (ad Porphyr. de Abstinentiâ, ii. 55, see Apollod. Fragm. 20, ed. Didot) said that the Lacedæmonians had sacrificed a man to Arês—καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους φησὶν ὁ Ἀπολλόδωρος τῷ Ἄρει θύειν ἄνθρωπον. About Salamis in Cyprus, see Lactantius, De Falsâ Religione, i. c. 21. “Apud Cypri Salaminem, humanam hostiam Jovi Teucrus immolavit, idque sacrificium posteris tradidit: quod est nuper Hadriano imperante sublatum.”

Respecting human sacrifices in historical Greece, consult a good section in K. F. Hermann’s Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer der Griechen (sect. 27). Such sacrifices had been a portion of primitive Grecian religion, but had gradually become obsolete everywhere—except in one or two solitary cases, which were spoken of with horror. Even in these cases, too, the reality of the fact, in later times, is not beyond suspicion.

The family history of Athamas, and the worship of Zeus Laphystios, are expressly connected by Herodotus with Alos in Achæa Phthiôtis—one of the towns enumerated in the Iliad as under the command of Achilles. But there was also a mountain called Laphystion, and a temple and worship of Zeus Laphystios between Orchomenos and Korôneia, in the northern portion of the territory known in the historical ages as Bœotia. Here also the family story of Athamas is localized, and Athamas is presented to us as king of the districts of Korôneia, Haliartus and Mount Laphystion: he is thus interwoven with the Orchomenian genealogy.[277] Andreus (we are told), son of the river Pêneios, was the first person who settled in the region: from him it received the name Andrêis. Athamas, coming subsequently to Andreus, received from him the territory of Korôneia and Haliartus with Mount Laphystion: he gave in marriage to Andreus, Euippê, daughter of his son Leucôn, and the issue of this marriage was Eteoklês, said to be the son of the river Kêphisos. Korônos and Haliartus, grandsons of the Corinthian Sisyphus, were adopted by Athamas, as he had lost all his children: but when his grandson Presbôn, son of Phryxus, returned to him from Kolchis, he divided his territory in such manner that Korônos and Haliartus became the founders of the towns which bore their names. Almôn, the son of Sisyphus, also received from Eteoklês a portion of territory, where he established the village Almônes.[278]

[277] Pausan. ix. 34, 4.

[278] Pausan. ix. 34, 5.

With Eteoklês began, according to a statement in one of the Hesiodic poems, the worship of the Charites or Graces, so long and so solemnly continued at Orchomenos in the periodical festival of the Charitêsia, to which many neighboring towns and districts seem to have contributed.[279] He also distributed the inhabitants into two tribes—Eteokleia and Kêphisias. He died childless, and was succeeded by Almos, who had only two daughters, Chrysê and Chrysogeneia. The son of Chrysê by the god Arês was Phlegyas, the father and founder of the warlike and predatory Phlegyæ, who despoiled every one within their reach, and assaulted not only the pilgrims on their road to Delphi, but even the treasures of the temple itself. The offended god punished them by continued thunder, by earthquakes, and by pestilence, which extinguished all this impious race, except a scanty remnant who fled into Phokis.

[279] Ephorus, Fragm. 68, Marx.

Chrysogeneia, the other daughter of Almos, had for issue, by the god Poseidôn, Minyas: the son of Minyas was Orchomenos. From these two was derived the name both of Minyæ for the people, and of Orchomenos for the town.[280] During the reign of Orchomenos, Hyêttus came to him from Argos, having become an exile in consequence of the death of Molyros: Orchomenos assigned to him a portion of land, where he founded the village called Hyêttus.[281] Orchomenos, having no issue, was succeeded by Klymenos, son of Presbôn, of the house of Athamas: Klymenos was slain by some Thêbans during the festival of Poseidôn at Onchêstos; and his eldest son, Erginus, to avenge his death, attacked the Thêbans with his utmost force;—an attack, in which he was so successful, that the latter were forced to submit, and to pay him an annual tribute.

[280] Pausan. ix. 36, 1-3. See also a legend, about the three daughters of Minyas, which was treated by the Tanagræan poetess Korinna, the contemporary of Pindar (Antonin. Liberalis, Narr. x.).

[281] This exile of Hyêttus was recounted in the Eoiai. Hesiod, Fragm. 148, Markt.

The Orchomenian power was now at its height: both Minyas and Orchomenos had been princes of surpassing wealth, and the former had built a spacious and durable edifice which he had filled with gold and silver. But the success of Erginus against Thêbes was soon terminated and reversed by the hand of the irresistible Hêraklês, who rejected with disdain the claim of tribute, and even mutilated the envoys sent to demand it: he not only emancipated Thêbes, but broke down and impoverished Orchomenos.[282] Erginus in his old age married a young wife, from which match sprang the illustrious heroes, or gods, Trophônius and Agamêdês; though many (amongst whom is Pausanius himself) believed Trophônius to be the son of Apollo.[283] Trophônius, one of the most memorable persons in Grecian mythology, was worshipped as a god in various places, but with especial sanctity as Zeus Trophônius at Lebadeia: in his temple at this town, the prophetic manifestations outlasted those of Delphi itself.[284] Trophônius and Agamêdês, enjoying matchless renown as architects, built[285] the temple of Delphi, the thalamus of Amphitryôn at Thêbes, as well as the inaccessible vault of Hyrieus at Hyria, in which they are said to have left one stone removable at pleasure, so as to reserve for themselves a secret entrance. They entered so frequently, and stole so much gold and silver, that Hyrieus, astonished at his losses, at length spread a fine net, in which Agamêdês was inextricably caught: Trophônius cut off his brother’s head and carried it away, so that the body, which alone remained, was insufficient to identify the thief. Like Amphiaraos, whom he resembles in more than one respect, Trophônius was swallowed up by the earth near Lebadeia.[286]

[282] Pausan. ix. 37, 2. Apollod. ii. 4, 11. Diodôr. iv. 10. The two latter tell us that Erginus was slain. Klymenê is among the wives and daughters of the heroes seen by Odysseus in Hadês: she is termed by the Schol. daughter of Minyas (Odyss. xi. 325).

[283] Pausan. ix. 37, 1-3. Λέγεται δὲ ὁ Τροφώνιος Ἀπόλλωνος εἶναι, καὶ οὐκ Ἐργίνου· καὶ ἐγώ τε πείθομαι, καὶ ὅστις παρὰ Τροφώνιον ἦλθε δὴ μαντευσόμενος.

[284] Plutarch, De Defectu Oracul. c. 5, p. 411. Strabo, ix. p. 414. The mention of the honeyed cakes, both in Aristophanês (Nub. 508) and Pausanias (ix. 39, 5), indicates that the curious preliminary ceremonies, for those who consulted the oracle of Trophônius, remained the same after a lapse of 550 years. Pausanias consulted it himself. There had been at one time an oracle of Teiresias at Orchomenos: but it had become silent at an early period (Plutarch. Defect. Oracul. c. 44, p. 434).

[285] Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 296. Pausan. ix. 11, 1.

[286] Pausan. ix. 37, 3. A similar story, but far more romantic and amplified, is told by Herodotus (ii. 121), respecting the treasury vault of Rhampsinitus, king of Egypt. Charax (ap. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 508) gives the same tale, but places the scene in the treasury-vault of Augeas, king of Elis, which he says was built by Trophônius, to whom he assigns a totally different genealogy. The romantic adventures of the tale rendered it eminently fit to be interwoven at some point or another of legendary history, in any country.

From Trophônius and Agamêdês the Orchomenian genealogy passes to Ascalaphos and Ialmenos, the sons of Arês by Astyochê, who are named in the Catalogue of the Iliad as leaders of the thirty ships from Orchomenos against Troy. Azeus, the grandfather of Astyochê in the Iliad, is introduced as the brother of Erginus[287] by Pausanias, who does not carry the pedigree lower.

[287] Pausan. ix. 38, 6; 29, 1.

The genealogy here given out of Pausanias is deserving of the more attention, because it seems to have been copied from the special history of Orchomenos by the Corinthian Kallippus, who again borrowed from the native Orchomenian poet, Chersias: the works of the latter had never come into the hands of Pausanias. It illustrates forcibly the principle upon which these mythical genealogies were framed, for almost every personage in the series is an Eponymus. Andreus gave his name to the country, Athamas to the Athamantian plain; Minyas, Orchomenos, Korônus, Haliartus, Almos and Hyêttos, are each in like manner connected with some name of people, tribe, town or village; while Chrysê and Chrysogeneia have their origin in the reputed ancient wealth of Orchomenos. Abundant discrepancies are found, however, in respect to this old genealogy, if we look to other accounts. According to one statement, Orchomenos was the son of Zeus by Isionê, daughter of Danaus; Minyas was the son of Orchomenos (or rather of Poseidôn) by Hermippê, daughter of Bœôtos; the sons of Minyas were Presbôn, Orchomenos, Athamas and Diochthôndas.[288] Others represented Minyas as son of Poseidôn by Kallirrhoê, an Oceanic nymph,[289] while Dionysius called him son of Arês, and Aristodêmus, son of Aleas: lastly, there were not wanting authors who termed both Minyas and Orchomenos sons of Eteoklês.[290] Nor do we find in any one of these genealogies the name of Amphiôn, the son of Iasus, who figures so prominently in the Odyssey as king of Orchomenos, and whose beautiful daughter Chlôris is married to Nêleus. Pausanias mentions him, but not as king, which is the denomination given to him in Homer.[291]

[288] Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. i. 230. Compare Schol. ad Lycophron. 873.

[289] Schol. Pindar, Olymp. xiv. 5.

[290] Schol. Pindar, Isthm. i. 79. Other discrepancies in Schol. Vett. ad Iliad. ii. Catalog. 18.

[291] Odyss. xi. 283. Pausan. ix. 36, 3.

The discrepancies here cited are hardly necessary in order to prove that these Orchomenian genealogies possess no historical value. Yet some probable inferences appear deducible from the general tenor of the legends, whether the facts and persons of which they are composed be real or fictitious.

Throughout all the historical age, Orchomenos is a member of the Bœôtian confederation. But the Bœôtians are said to have been immigrants into the territory which bore their name from Thessaly; and prior to the time of their immigration, Orchomenos and the surrounding territory appear as possessed by the Minyæ, who are recognized in that locality both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey,[292] and from whom the constantly recurring Eponymus, King Minyas, is borrowed by the genealogists. Poetical legend connects the Orchomenian Minyæ on the one side, with Pylos and Tryphylia in Peloponnêsus; on the other side, with Phthiôtis and the town of Iôlkos in Thessaly; also with Corinth,[293] through Sisyphus and his sons. Pherekydês represented Nêleus, king of Pylos, as having also been king of Orchomenos.[294] In the region of Triphylia, near to or coincident with Pylos, a Minyeian river is mentioned by Homer; and we find traces of residents called Minyæ even in the historical times, though the account given by Herodotus of the way in which they came thither is strange and unsatisfactory.[295]

[292] Iliad, ii. 5, 11. Odyss. xi. 283. Hesiod, Fragm. Eoiai, 27, Düntz. Ἴξεν δ᾽ Ὀρχόμενον Μινυήϊον. Pindar, Olymp. xiv. 4. Παλαιγόνων Μινυᾶν ἐπίσκοποι. Herodot. i. 146. Pausanias calls them Minyæ even in their dealings with Sylla (ix. 30, 1). Buttmann, in his Dissertation (Über die Minyæ der Ältesten Zeit, in the Mythologus, Diss. xxi. p. 218), doubts whether the name Minyæ was ever a real name; but all the passages make against his opinion.

[293] Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 1186. i. 230. Σκήψιος δὲ Δημήτρός φησι τοὺς περὶ τὴν Ἰωλκὸν οἰκοῦντας Μινύας καλεῖσθαι; and i. 763. Τὴν γὰρ Ἰωλκὸν οἱ Μίνυαι ᾤκουν, ὥς φησι Σιμωνίδης ἐν Συμμικτοῖς: also Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 512. Steph. Byz. v. Μινύα. Orchomenos and Pylos run together in the mind of the poet of the Odyssey, xi. 458.

[294] Pherekyd. Fragm. 56, Didot. We see by the 55th Fragment of the same author, that he extended the genealogy of Phryxos to Pheræ in Thessaly.

[295] Herodot. iv. 145. Strabo, viii. 337-347. Hom. Iliad, xi. 721. Pausan. v. 1, 7. ποταμὸν Μινυήϊον, near Elis.

Before the great changes which took place in the inhabitants of Greece from the immigration of the Thesprôtians into Thessaly, of the Bœôtians into Bœôtia, and of the Dôrians and Ætôlians into Peloponnêsus, at a date which we have no means of determining, the Minyæ and tribes fraternally connected with them seem to have occupied a large portion of the surface of Greece, from Iôlkos in Thessaly to Pylos in the Peloponnêsus. The wealth of Orchomenos is renowned even in the Iliad;[296] and when we study its topography in detail, we are furnished with a probable explanation both of its prosperity and its decay. Orchomenos was situated on the northern bank of the lake Kôpaïs, which receives not only the river Kêphisos from the valleys of Phôkis, but also other rivers from Parnassus and Helicôn. The waters of the lake find more than one subterranean egress—partly through natural rifts and cavities in the limestone mountains, partly through a tunnel pierced artificially more than a mile in length—into the plain on the north-eastern side, from whence they flow into the Eubœan sea near Larymna:[297] and it appears that, so long as these channels were diligently watched and kept clear, a large portion of the lake was in the condition of alluvial land, preëminently rich and fertile. But when the channels came to be either neglected, or designedly choked up by an enemy, the water accumulated to such a degree, as to occupy the soil of more than one ancient town, to endanger the position of Kôpæ, and to occasion the change of the site of Orchomenos itself from the plain to the declivity of Mount Hyphanteion. An engineer, Kratês, began the clearance of the obstructed water-courses in the reign of Alexander the Great, and by his commission—the destroyer of Thêbes being anxious to reëstablish the extinct prosperity of Orchomenos. He succeeded so far as partially to drain and diminish the lake, whereby the site of more than one ancient city was rendered visible: but the revival of Thêbes by Kassander, after the decease of Alexander, arrested the progress of the undertaking, and the lake soon regained its former dimensions, to contract which no farther attempt was made.[298]

[296] Iliad, ix. 381.

[297] See the description of these channels or Katabothra in Colonel Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, vol. ii. c. 15, p. 281-293, and still more elaborately in Fiedler, Reise durch alle Theile des Königreichs Griechenlands, Leipzig, 1840. He traced fifteen perpendicular shafts sunk for the purpose of admitting air into the tunnel, the first separated from the last by about 5900 feet: they are now of course overgrown and stopped up (vol. i. p. 115).

Forchhammer states the length of this tunnel as considerably greater than what is here stated. He also gives a plan of the Lake Kôpaïs with the surrounding region, which I have placed at the end of the second volume of this History. See also infra, vol. ii. ch. iii. p. 391.

[298] We owe this interesting fact to Strabo, who is however both concise and unsatisfactory, viii. p. 406-407. It was affirmed that there had been two ancient towns, named Eleusis and Athênæ, originally founded by Cecrôps, situated on the lake, and thus overflowed (Steph. Byz. v. Ἀθῆναι Diogen. Laërt. iv. 23. Pausan. ix. 24, 2). For the plain or marsh near Orchomenos, see Plutarch, Sylla, c. 20-22.

According to the Thêban legend,[299] Hêraklês, after his defeat of Erginus had blocked up the exit of the waters, and converted the Orchomenian plain into a lake. The spreading of these waters is thus connected with the humiliation of the Minyæ; and there can be little hesitation in ascribing to these ancient tenants of Orchomenos, before it became bœotized, the enlargement and preservation of these protective channels. Nor could such an object have been accomplished, without combined action and acknowledged ascendency on the part of that city over its neighbors, extending even to the sea at Larymna, where the river Kôphisos discharges itself. Of its extended influence, as well as of its maritime activity, we find a remarkable evidence in the ancient and venerated Amphiktyony at Kalauria. The little island so named, near the harbor of Trœzên, in Peloponnêsus, was sacred to Poseidôn, and an asylum of inviolable sanctity. At the temple of Poseidôn, in Kalauria, there had existed, from unknown date, a periodical sacrifice, celebrated by seven cities in common—Hermionê, Epidaurus, Ægina, Athens, Prasiæ, Nauplia, and the Minyeian Orchomenos. This ancient religious combination dates from the time when Nauplia was independent of Argos, and Prasiæ of Sparta: Argos and Sparta, according to the usual practice in Greece, continued to fulfil the obligation each on the part of its respective dependent.[300] Six out of the seven states are at once sea-towns, and near enough to Kalauria to account for their participation in this Amphiktyony. But the junction of Orchomenos, from its comparative remoteness, becomes inexplicable, except on the supposition that its territory reached the sea, and that it enjoyed a considerable maritime traffic—a fact which helps to elucidate both its legendary connection with Iôlkos, and its partnership in what is called the Iônic emigration.[301] The mythical genealogy, whereby Ptôos, Schœneus and Erythrios are enumerated among the sons of Athamas, goes farther to confirm the idea that the towns and localities on the south-east of the lake recognized a fraternal origin with the Orchomenian Minyæ, not less than Korôneia and Haliartus on the south-west.[302]

[299] Diodôr. iv. 18. Pausan. ix. 38, 5.

[300] Strabo, viii. p. 374. Ἦν δὲ καὶ Ἀμφικτυονία τις περὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦτο, ἕπτα πόλεων αἳ μετεῖχον τῆς θυσίας· ἦσαν δὲ Ἑρμιὼν, Ἐπίδαυρος, Αἴγινα, Ἀθῆναι, Πρασιεῖς, Ναυπλιεῖς, Ὀρχόμενος ὁ Μινύειος. Ὑπὲρ μὲν οὖν τῶν Ναυπλιέων Ἀργεῖοι, ὑπὲρ Πρασιέων δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, ξυνετέλουν.

[301] Pausan. ix. 17, 1; 26, 1.

[302] See Müller, Orchomenos und die Minyer, p. 214. Pausan. ix. 23, 3; 24, 3. The genealogy is as old as the poet Asios.

The great power of Orchomenos was broken down, and the city reduced to a secondary and half-dependent position by the Bœôtians of Thêbes; at what time, and under what circumstances, history has not preserved. The story, that the Thêban hero, Hêraklês, rescued his native city from servitude and tribute to Orchomenos, since it comes from a Kadmeian and not from an Orchomenian legend, and since the details of it were favorite subjects of commemoration in the Thêbian temples,[303] affords a presumption that Thêbes was really once dependent on Orchomenos. Moreover the savage mutilations inflicted by the hero on the tribute-seeking envoys, so faithfully portrayed in his surname Rhinokoloustês, infuse into the mythe a portion of that bitter feeling which so long prevailed between Thêbes and Orchomenos, and which led the Thêbans, as soon as the battle of Leuctra had placed supremacy in their hands, to destroy and depopulate their rival.[304] The ensuing generation saw the same fate retorted upon Thêbes, combined with the restoration of Orchomenos. The legendary grandeur of this city continued, long after it had ceased to be distinguished for wealth and power, imperishably recorded both in the minds of the nobler citizens and in the compositions of the poets; the emphatic language of Pausanias shows how much he found concerning it in the old epic.[305]

[303] Herod. i. 146. Pausan. vii. 2, 2.

[304] Theocrit. xvi. 104.—

Ὦ ᾿Ετεόκλειοι θύγατρες θεαὶ, αἱ Μινύειον ᾿Ορχόμενον φιλέοισαι, ἀπεχθόμενόν ποκα Θήβαις.

The scholiast gives a sense to these words much narrower than they really bear. See Diodôr. xv. 79; Pausan. ix. 15. In the oration which Isokratês places in the mouth of a Platæan, complaining of the oppressions of Thêbes, the ancient servitude and tribute to Orchomenos is cast in the teeth of the Thêbans (Isokrat. Orat. Plataic. vol. iii. p. 32, Auger).

[305] Pausan. ix. 34, 5. See also the fourteenth Olympic Ode of Pindar, addressed to the Orchomenian Asopikus. The learned and instructive work of K. O. Müller, Orchomenos und die Minyer, embodies everything which can be known respecting this once-memorable city; indeed the contents of the work extends much farther than its title promises.

SECTION II.—DAUGHTERS OF ÆOLUS.

With several of the daughters of Æolus memorable mythical pedigrees and narratives are connected. Alcyonê married Kêyx, the son of Eôsphoros, but both she and her husband displayed in a high degree the overweening insolence common in the Æolic race. The wife called her husband Zeus, while he addressed her as Hêrê, for which presumptuous act Zeus punished them by changing both into birds.[306]

[306] Apollodôr. i. 7, 4. A. Kêyx,—king of Trachin,—the friend of Hêraklês and protector of the Hêrakleids to the extent of his power (Hesiod, Scut. Hercul. 355-473: Apollodôr. ii. 7, 5; Hekatæ. Fragm. 353, Didot.).

Canacê had by the god Poseidôn several children, amongst whom were Epôpeus and Alôeus.[307] Alôeus married Imphimêdea, who became enamored of the god Poseidôn, and boasted of her intimacy with him. She had by him two sons, Otos and Ephialtês, the huge and formidable Alôids,—Titanic beings, nine fathoms in height and nine cubits in breadth, even in their boyhood, before they had attained their full strength. These Alôids defied and insulted the gods in Olympus; they paid their court to Hêrê and Artemis, and they even seized and bound Arês, confining him in a brazen chamber for thirteen months. No one knew where he was, and the intolerable chain would have worn him to death, had not Eribœa, the jealous stepmother of the Alôids, revealed the place of his detention to Hermês, who carried him surreptitiously away when at the last extremity; nor could Arês obtain any atonement for such an indignity. Otos and Ephialtês even prepared to assault the gods in heaven, piling up Ossa on Olympus and Pêlion on Ossa, in order to reach them. And this they would have accomplished had they been allowed to grow to their full maturity; but the arrows of Apollo put a timely end to their short-lived career.[308]

[307] Canacê, daughter of Æolus, is a subject of deep tragical interest both in Euripidês and Ovid. The eleventh Heroic Epistle of the latter, founded mainly on the lost tragedy of the former called Æolus, purports to be from Canacê to Macareus, and contains a pathetic description of the ill-fated passion between a brother and sister: see the fragments of the Æolus in Dindorf’s collection. In the tale of Kaunos and Byblis, both children of Milêtos, the results of an incestuous passion are different but hardly less melancholy (Parthenios, Narr. xi.).

Makar, the son of Æolus, is the primitive settler of the island of Lesbos (Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 37): moreover in the Odyssey, Æolus son of Hippotês, the dispenser of the winds, has six sons and six daughters, and marries the former to the latter (Odyss. x. 7). The two persons called Æolus are brought into connection genealogically (see Schol. ad Odyss. l. c., and Diodôr. iv. 67), but it seems probable that Euripidês was the first to place the names of Macareus and Canacê in that relation which confers upon them their poetical celebrity. Sostratus (ap. Stobæum, t. 614, p. 404) can hardly be considered to have borrowed from any older source than Euripidês. Welcker (Griech. Tragöd. vol. ii. p. 860) puts together all that can be known respecting the structure of the lost drama of Euripidês.

[308] Iliad, v. 386; Odyss. xi. 306; Apollodôr. i. 7, 4. So Typhôeus, in the Hesiodic Theogony, the last enemy of the gods, is killed before he comes to maturity (Theog. 837). For the different turns given to this ancient Homeric legend, see Heyne, ad Apollodôr. l. c, and Hyginus, f. 28. The Alôids were noticed in the Hesiodic poems (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 482). Odysseus does not see them in Hadês, as Heyne by mistake says; he sees their mother Iphimêdea. Virgil (Æn. vi. 582) assigns to them a place among the sufferers of punishment in Tartarus.

Eumêlus, the Corinthian poet, designated Alôeus as son of the god Hêlios and brother of Æêtês, the father of Mêdea (Eumêl. Fragm. 2, Marktscheffel). The scene of their death was subsequently laid in Naxos (Pindar, Pyth. iv. 88): their tombs were seen at Anthêdôn in Bœôtia (Pausan. ix. 22, 4). The very curious legend alluded to by Pausanias from Hegesinoos, the author of an Atthis,—to the effect that Otos and Ephialtês were the first to establish the worship of the Muses in Helicôn, and that they founded Ascra along with Œoklos, the son of Poseidôn,—is one which we have no means of tracing farther (Pausan. ix. 29, I).

The story of the Alôids, as Diodôrus gives it (v. 51, 52), diverges on almost every point: it is evidently borrowed from some Naxian archæologist, and the only information which we collect from it is, that Otos and Ephialtês received heroic honors at Naxos. The views of O. Müller (Orchomenos, p. 387) appear to me unusually vague and fanciful.

Ephialtês takes part in the combat of the giants against the gods (Apollodôr. t. 6, 2), where Heyne remarks, as in so many other cases, “Ephialtês hic non confundendus cum altero Alôei filio;” an observation just indeed, if we are supposed to be dealing with personages and adventures historically real, but altogether misleading in regard to these legendary characters; for here the general conception of Ephialtês and his attributes is in both cases the same; but the particular adventures ascribed to him cannot be made to consist, as facts, one with the other.

The genealogy assigned to Calycê, another daughter of Æolus, conducts us from Thessaly to Elis and Ætôlia. She married Aëthlius (the son of Zeus by Prôtogeneia, daughter of Deukaliôn and sister of Hellên), who conducted a colony out of Thessaly and settled in the territory of Elis. He had for his son Endymiôn, respecting whom the Hesiodic Catalogue and the Eoiai related several wonderful things. Zeus granted him the privilege of determining the hour of his own death, and even translated him into heaven, which he forfeited by daring to pay court to Hêrê: his vision in this criminal attempt was cheated by a cloud, and he was cast out into the under-world.[309] According to other stories, his great beauty caused the goddess Sêlêne to become enamored of him, and to visit him by night during his sleep:—the sleep of Endymiôn became a proverbial expression for enviable, undisturbed, and deathless repose.[310] Endymiôn had for issue (Pausanias gives us three different accounts, and Apollodôrus a fourth, of the name of his wife) Epeios, Ætôlus, Pæôn, and a daughter Eurykydê. He caused his three sons to run a race on the stadium at Olympia, and Epeios, being victorious, was rewarded by becoming his successor in the kingdom: it was after him that the people were denominated Epeians.

[309] Hesiod, Akusilaus and Pherekydês, ap. Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. iv, 57. Ἴν δ᾽ αὐτῷ θανάτου ταμίης. The Scholium is very full of matter, and exhibits many of the diversities in the tale of Endymiôn: see also Apollodôr i. 7, 5; Pausan. v. 1, 2; Conôn. Narr. 14.

[310] Theocrit. iii. 49; xx. 35; where, however, Endymiôn is connected with Latmos in Caria (see Schol. ad loc.).

Both the story here mentioned, and still more, the etymological signification of the names Aëthlius and Endymiôn, seem plainly to indicate (as has before been remarked) that this genealogy was not devised until after the Olympic games had become celebrated and notorious throughout Greece.

Epeios had no male issue, and was succeeded by his nephew Eleios, son of Euykydê by the god Poseidôn: the name of the people was then changed from Epeians to Eleians. Ætôlus, the brother of Epeios, having slain Apis, son of Phorôneus, was compelled to flee from the country: he crossed the Corinthian gulf and settled in the territory then called Kurêtis, but to which he gave the name of Ætôlia.[311]

[311] Pausan. v. 1. 3-6; Apollodôr. i. 7, 6.

The son of Eleios,—or, according to other accounts, of the god Hêlios, of Poseidôn, or of Phorbas,[312]—is Augeas, whom we find mentioned in the Iliad as king of the Epeians or Eleians. Nestôr gives a long and circumstantial narrative of his own exploits at the head of his Pylian countrymen against his neighbors the Epeians and their king Augeas, whom he defeated with great loss, slaying Mulios, the king’s son-in-law, and acquiring a vast booty.[313] Augeas was rich in all sorts of rural wealth, and possessed herds of cattle so numerous, that the dung of the animals accumulated in the stable or cattle enclosures beyond all power of endurance. Eurystheus, as an insult to Hêraklês, imposed upon him the obligation of cleansing this stable: the hero, disdaining to carry off the dung upon his shoulders, turned the course of the river Alpheios through the building, and thus swept the encumbrance away.[314] But Augeas, in spite of so signal a service, refused to Hêraklês the promised reward, though his son Phyleus protested against such treachery, and when he found that he could not induce his father to keep faith, retired in sorrow and wrath to the island of Dulichiôn.[315] To avenge the deceit practised upon him, Hêraklês invaded Elis; but Augeas had powerful auxiliaries, especially his nephews, the two Molionids (sons of Poseidôn by Molionê, the wife of Aktôr), Eurytos and Kteatos. These two miraculous brothers, of transcendent force, grew together,—having one body, but two heads and four arms.[316] Such was their irresistible might, that Hêraklês was defeated and repelled from Elis: but presently the Eleians sent the two Molionid brothers as Theôri (sacred envoys) to the Isthmian games, and Hêraklês, placing himself in ambush at Kleônæ, surprised and killed them as they passed through. For this murderous act the Eleians in vain endeavored to obtain redress both at Corinth and at Argos; which is assigned as the reason for the self-ordained exclusion, prevalent throughout all the historical age, that no Eleian athlête would ever present himself as a competitor at the Isthmian games.[317] The Molionids being thus removed, Hêraklês again invaded Elis, and killed Augeas along with his children,—all except Phyleus, whom he brought over from Dulichiôn, and put in possession of his father’s kingdom. According to the more gentle narrative which Pausanias adopts, Augeas was not killed, but pardoned at the request of Phyleus.[318] He was worshipped as a hero[319] even down to the time of that author.

[312] Apollodôr. ii. 5, 5; Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 172. In all probability, the old legend made Augeas the son of the god Hêlios: Hêlios, Augeas and Agamêdê are a triple series parallel to the Corinthian genealogy, Hêlios, Æêtês and Mêdia; not to mention that the etymology of Augeas connects him with Hêlios. Theocritus (xx. 55) designates him as the son of the god Hêlios, through whose favor his cattle are made to prosper and multiply with such astonishing success (xx. 117).

[313] Iliad, xi. 670-760; Pherekyd. Fragm. 57, Didot.

[314] Diodôr. iv. 13. Ὕβρεως ἕνεκεν Εὐρυσθεὺς προσέταξε καθᾶραι· ὁ δὲ Ἡρακλῆς τὸ μὲν τοῖς ὤμοις ἐξενεγκεῖν αὐτὴν ἀπεδοκίμασεν, ἐκκλίνων τὴν ἐκ τῆς ὕβρεως αἰσχύνην, etc. (Pausan. v. 1. 7; Apollodôr. ii. 5, 5).

It may not be improper to remark that this fable indicates a purely pastoral condition, or at least a singularly rude state of agriculture; and the way in which Pausanias recounts it goes even beyond the genuine story: ὡς καὶ τὰ πολλὰ τῆς χώρας αὐτῷ ἤδη διατελεῖν ἀργὰ ὄντα ὑπὸ τῶν βοσκημάτων τῆς κόπρου. The slaves of Odysseus however know what use to make of the dung heaped before his outer fence (Odyss. xvii. 299); not so the purely carnivorous and pastoral Cyclôps (Odyss. ix. 329). The stabling into which the cattle go from their pasture, is called κόπρος in Homer,—Ἐλθούσας ἐς κόπρον, ἐπὴν βοτανῆς κορέσωνται (Odyss. x. 411): compare Iliad, xviii. 575—Μυκηθμῷ δ᾽ ἀπὸ κόπρου ἐπεσσεύοντο πέδονδε.

The Augeas of Theocritus has abundance of wheat-land and vineyard, as well as cattle: he ploughs his land three or four times, and digs his vineyard diligently (xx. 20-32).

[315] The wrath and retirement of Phyleus is mentioned in the Iliad (ii. 633), but not the cause of it.

[316] These singular properties were ascribed to them both in the Hesiodic poems and by Pherekydês (Schol. Ven. ad II. xi. 715-750, et ad II. xxiii. 638), but not in the Iliad. The poet Ibykus (Fragm. 11, Schneid. ap. Athenæ. ii. 57) calls them ἅλικας ἰσοκεφάλους, ἐνιγυίους, Ἀμφοτέρους γεγαῶτας ἐν ὠέῳ ἀργυρέῳ.

There were temples and divine honors to Zeus Moliôn (Lactantius. de Falsâ Religione, i. 22).

[317] Pausan. v. 2, 4. The inscription cited by Pausanias proves that this was the reason assigned by the Eleian athlêtes themselves for the exclusion; but there were several different stories.

[318] Apollodôr. ii. 7, 2. Diodôr. iv. 33. Pausan. v. 2, 2; 3, 2. It seems evident from these accounts that the genuine legend represented Hêraklês as having been defeated by the Molionids: the unskilful evasions both of Apollodôrus and Diodôrus betray this. Pindar (Olymp. xi. 25-50) gives the story without any flattery to Hêraklês.

[319] Pausan. v. 4, 1.

It was on occasion of this conquest of Elis, according to the old mythe which Pindar has ennobled in a magnificent ode, that Hêraklês first consecrated the ground of Olympia, and established the Olympic games. Such at least was one of the many fables respecting the origin of that memorable institution.[320]

[320] The Armenian copy of Eusebius gives a different genealogy respecting Elis and Pisa: Aëthlius, Epeius, Endymiôn, Alexinus; next Œnomaus and Pêlops, then Hêraklês. Some counted ten generations, others three, between Hêraklês and Iphitus, who renewed the discontinued Olympic games (see Armen. Euseb. copy c. xxxii. p. 140).

Phyleus, after having restored order in Elis, retired again to Dulichiôn, and left the kingdom to his brother Agasthenês, which again brings us into the Homeric series. For Polyxenos, son of Agasthenês, is one of the four commanders of the Epeian forty ships in the Iliad, in conjunction with the two sons of Eurytos and Kteatos, and with Diôrês son of Amarynceus. Megês, the son of Phyleus, commands the contingent from Dulichiôn and the Echinades.[321] Polyxenos returns safe from Troy, is succeeded by his son Amphimachos,—named after the Epeian chief who had fallen before Troy,—and he again by another Eleios, in whose time the Dôrians and the Hêrakleids invade Peloponnêsus.[322] These two names, barren of actions or attributes, are probably introduced by the genealogists whom Pausanias followed, to fill up the supposed interval between the Trojan war and the Dôrian invasion.

[321] Iliad, ii. 615-630.

[322] Pausan. v. 3, 4.

We find the ordinary discrepancies in respect to the series and the members of this genealogy. Thus some called Epeios son of Aëthlius, others son of Endymiôn:[323] a third pedigree, which carries the sanction of Aristotle and is followed by Conôn, designated Eleios, the first settler of Elis, as son of Poseidôn and Eurypylê, daughter of Endymiôn, and Epeios and Alexis as the two sons of Eleios.[324] And Pindar himself, in his ode to Epharmostus the Locrian, introduces with much emphasis another king of the Epeians named Opus, whose daughter, pregnant by Zeus, was conveyed by that god to the old and childless king Locrus: the child when born, adopted by Locrus and named Opus, became the eponymous hero of the city so called in Locris.[325] Moreover Hekatæus the Milesian not only affirmed (contrary both to the Iliad and the Odyssey) that the Epeians and the Eleians were different people, but also added that the Epeians had assisted Hêraklês in his expedition against Augeas and Elis; a narrative very different from that of Apollodôrus and Pausanias, and indicating besides that he must have had before him a genealogy varying from theirs.[326]

[323] Schol. Pindar, Olymp. ix. 86.

[324] Schol. Ven. ad II. xi. 687; Conôn, Narrat. xv. ap. Scriptt. Mythogr. West p. 130.

[325] Pindar, Olymp. ix. 62: Schol. ibid. 86. Ὀποῦντος ἠν θυγάτηρ Ἠλείων βασιλέως, ἣν Ἀριστοτέλης Καμβύσην καλεῖ.

[326] Ἑκαταῖος δὲ ὁ Μιλήσιος ἑτέρους λέγει τῶν Ἠλείων τοὺς Ἐπείους· τῷ γοῦν Ἡρακλεῖ συστρατεῦσαι τοὺς Ἐπείους καὶ συνανελεῖν αὐτῷ τόν τε Αὐγέαν καὶ τὴν Ἦλιν (Hekat. ap. Strab. viii. p. 341).

It has already been mentioned that Ætôlus, son of Endymiôn, quitted Peloponnêsus in consequence of having slain Apis.[327] The country on the north of the Corinthian gulf, between the rivers Euênus and Achelôus, received from him the name of Ætôlia instead of that of Kurêtis: he acquired possession of it after having slain Dôrus, Laodokus and Polypœtes, sons of Apollo and Phthia, by whom he had been well received. He had by his wife Pronoê (the daughter of Phorbas) two sons, Pleurôn and Kalydôn, and from them the two chief towns in Ætôlia were named.[328] Pleurôn married Xanthippê, daughter of Dôrus, and had for his son Agênôr, from whom sprang Portheus, or Porthaôn, and Demonikê: Euênos and Thestius were children of the latter by the god Arês.[329]

[327] Ephorus said that Ætôlus had been expelled by Salmôneus king of the Epeians and Pisatæ (ap. Strabo. viii. p. 357): he must have had before him a different story and different genealogy from that which is given in the text.

[328] Apollodôr. i. 7, 6. Dôrus, son of Apollo and Phthia, killed by Ætôlus, after having hospitably received him, is here mentioned. Nothing at all is known of this; but the conjunction of names is such as to render it probable that there was some legend connected with them: possibly the assistance given by Apollo to the Kurêtes against the Ætôlians, and the death of Meleager by the hand of Apollo, related both in the Eoiai and the Minyas (Pausan. x. 31, 2), may have been grounded upon it. The story connects itself with what is stated by Apollodôrus about Dôrus son of Hellên (see supra, p. 136).

[329] According to the ancient genealogical poet Asius, Thestius was son of Agênôr the son of Pleurôn (Asii Fragm. 6, p. 413, ed. Marktsch.). Compare the genealogy of Ætôlia and the general remarks upon it, in Brandstäter, Geschichte des Ætol. Landes, etc., Berlin, 1844, p. 23 seq.

Portheus had three sons, Agrius, Melas and Œneus: among the offspring of Thestius were Althæa and Lêda,[330]—names which bring us to a period of interest in the legendary history. Lêda marries Tyndareus and becomes mother of Helena and the Dioskuri: Althæa marries Œneus, and has, among other children, Meleager and Deianeira; the latter being begotten by the god Dionysus, and the former by Arês.[331] Tydeus also is his son, the father of Diomêdês: warlike eminence goes hand in hand with tragic calamity among the members of this memorable family.

[330] Respecting Lêda, see the statements of Ibykus, Pherekydês, Hellanikus, etc. (Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. i. 146). The reference to the Corinthiaca of Eumêlus is curious: it is a specimen of the matters upon which these old genealogical poems dwelt.

[331] Apollodôr. i. 8, 1; Euripidês, Meleager, Frag. 1. The three sons of Portheus are named in the Iliad (xiv. 116) as living at Pleurôn and Kalydôn. The name Œneus doubtless brings Dionysus into the legend.

We are fortunate enough to find the legend of Althæa and Meleager set forth at considerable length in the Iliad, in the speech addressed by Phœnix to appease the wrath of Achilles. Œneus, king of Kalydôn, in the vintage sacrifices which he offered to the gods, omitted to include Artemis: the misguided man either forgot her or cared not for her;[332] and the goddess, provoked by such an insult, sent against the vineyards of Œneus a wild boar, of vast size and strength, who tore up the trees by the root and laid prostrate all their fruit. So terrible was this boar, that nothing less than a numerous body of men could venture to attack him: Meleager, the son of Œneus, however, having got together a considerable number of companions, partly from the Kurêtes of Pleurôn, at length slew him. But the anger of Artemis was not yet appeased, and she raised a dispute among the combatants respecting the possession of the boar’s head and hide,—the trophies of victory. In this dispute, Meleager slew the brother of his mother Althæa, prince of the Kurêtes of Pleurôn: these Kurêtes attacked the Ætôlians of Kalydôn in order to avenge their chief. So long as Meleager contended in the field the Ætôlians had the superiority. But he presently refused to come forth, indignant at the curses imprecated upon him by his mother: for Althæa, wrung with sorrow for the death of her brother, flung herself upon the ground in tears, beat the earth violently with her hands, and implored Hadês and Persephonê to inflict death upon Meleager,—a prayer which the unrelenting Erinnys in Erebus heard but too well. So keenly did the hero resent this behavior of his mother, that he kept aloof from the war; and the Kurêtes not only drove the Ætôlians from the field, but assailed the walls and gates of Kalydôn, and were on the point of overwhelming its dismayed inhabitants. There was no hope of safety except in the arm of Meleager; but Meleager lay in his chamber by the side of his beautiful wife Kleopatra, the daughter of Idas, and heeded not the necessity. While the shouts of expected victory were heard from the assailants at the gates, the ancient men of Ætôlia and the priests of the gods earnestly besought Meleager to come forth,[333] offering him his choice of the fattest land in the plain of Kalydôn. His dearest friends, his father Œneus, his sisters, and even his mother herself added their supplications, but he remained inflexible. At length the Kurêtes penetrated into the town and began to burn it: at this last moment, Kleopatra his wife addressed to him her pathetic appeal, to avert from her and from his family the desperate horrors impending over them all. Meleager could no longer resist: he put on his armor, went forth from his chamber, and repelled the enemy. But when the danger was over, his countrymen withheld from him the splendid presents which they had promised, because he had rejected their prayers, and had come forth only when his own haughty caprice dictated.[334]

[332] Ἢ λάθετ᾽, ἢ οὐκ ἐνόησεν· ἀάσατο δὲ μέγα θυμῷ. (Iliad, ix. 533). The destructive influence of Atê is mentioned before, v. 502. The piety of Xenophôn reproduces this ancient circumstance,—Οἴνεως δ᾽ ἐν γήρᾳ ἐπιλαθομένου τῆς θεοῦ, etc. (De Venat. c. i.)

[333] These priests formed the Chorus in the Meleager of Sophoklês (Schol. ad Iliad. ib. 575).

[334] Iliad, ix. 525-595.

Such is the legend of Meleager in the Iliad: a verse in the second book mentions simply the death of Meleager, without farther details, as a reason why Thoas appeared in command of the Ætôlians before Troy.[335] Though the circumstance is indicated only indirectly, there seems little doubt that Homer must have conceived the death of the hero as brought about by the maternal curse: the unrelenting Erinnys executed to the letter the invocations of Althæa, though she herself must have been willing to retract them.

[335] Iliad, ii. 642.

Later poets both enlarged and altered the fable. The Hesiodic Eoiai, as well as the old poem called the Minyas, represented Meleager as having been slain by Apollo, who aided the Kurêtes in the war; and the incident of the burning brand, though quite at variance with Homer, is at least as old as the tragic poet Phrynichus, earlier than Æschylus.[336] The Mœræ, or Fates, presenting themselves to Althæa shortly after the birth of Meleager, predicted that the child would die so soon as the brand then burning on the fire near at hand should be consumed. Althæa snatched it from the flames and extinguished it, preserving it with the utmost care, until she became incensed against Meleager for the death of her brother. She then cast it into the fire, and as soon as it was consumed the life of Meleager was brought to a close.

[336] Pausan. x. 31. 2. The Πλευρώνιαι, a lost tragedy of Phrynichus.

We know, from the sharp censure of Pliny, that Sophoklês heightened the pathos of this subject by his account of the mournful death of Meleager’s sisters, who perished from excess of grief. They were changed into the birds called Meleagrides, and their never-ceasing tears ran together into amber.[337] But in the hands of Euripidês—whether originally through him or not,[338] we cannot tell—Atalanta became the prominent figure and motive of the piece, while the party convened to hunt the Kalydônian boar was made to comprise all the distinguished heroes from every quarter of Greece. In fact, as Heyne justly remarks, this event is one of the four aggregate dramas of Grecian heroic life,[339] along with the Argonautic expedition, the siege of Thêbes, and the Trojan war. To accomplish the destruction of the terrific animal which Artemis in her wrath had sent forth, Meleager assembled not merely the choice youth among the Kurêtes and Ætôlians (as we find in the Iliad), but an illustrious troop, including Kastôr and Pollux, Idas and Lynkeus, Pêleus and Telamôn, Thêseus and Peirithous, Ankæus and Kêpheus, Jasôn, Amphiaraus, Admêtus, Eurytiôn and others. Nestôr and Phœnix, who appear as old men before the walls of Troy, exhibited their early prowess as auxiliaries to the suffering Kalydônians.[340] Conspicuous amidst them all stood the virgin Atalanta, daughter of the Arcadian Schœneus; beautiful and matchless for swiftness of foot, but living in the forest as a huntress and unacceptable to Aphroditê.[341] Several of the heroes were slain by the boar, others escaped by various stratagems: at length Atalanta first shot him in the back, next Amphiaraus in the eye, and, lastly, Meleager killed him. Enamoured of the beauty of Atalanta, Meleager made over to her the chief spoils of the animal, on the plea that she had inflicted the first wound. But his uncles, the brothers of Thestius, took them away from her, asserting their rights as next of kin,[342] if Meleager declined to keep the prize for himself: the latter, exasperated at this behavior, slew them. Althæa, in deep sorrow for her brothers and wrath against her son, is impelled to produce the fatal brand which she had so long treasured up, and consign it to the flames.[343] The tragedy concludes with the voluntary death both of Althæa and Kleopatra.

[337] Plin. H. N. xxxvii. 2, 11.

[338] There was a tragedy of Æschylus called Ἀταλάντη, of which nothing remains (Bothe, Æschyli Fragm. ix. p. 18).

Of the more recent dramatic writers, several selected Atalanta as their subject (See Brandstäter, Geschichte Ætoliens, p. 65).

[339] There was a poem of Stesichorus, Συόθηραι (Stesichor. Fragm. 15. p. 72).

[340] The catalogue of these heroes is in Apollodôr. i. 8, 2; Ovid, Metamor. viii. 300; Hygin. fab. 173. Euripidês, in his play of Meleager, gave an enumeration and description of the heroes (see Fragm. 6 of that play, ed. Matth.). Nestôr, in this picture of Ovid, however, does not appear quite so invincible as in his own speeches in the Iliad. The mythographers thought it necessary to assign a reason why Hêraklês was not present at the Kalydônian adventure: he was just at that time in servitude with Omphalê in Lydia (Apollod. ii. 6, 3). This seems to have been the idea of Ephorus, and it is much in his style of interpretation (see Ephor. Fragm. 9. ed. Didot.).

[341] Euripid. Meleag. Fragm. vi. Matt.—

Κύπριδος δὲ μίσημ᾽, Ἀρκὰς Ἀταλάντη, κύνας Καὶ τόξ᾽ ἔχουσα, etc.

There was a drama “Meleager” both of Sophoklês and Euripidês: of the former hardly any fragments remain,—a few more of the latter.

[342] Hyginus, fab. 229.

[343] Diodôr, iv. 34. Apollôdorus (i. 8; 2-4) gives first the usual narrative, including Atalanta; next, the Homeric narrative with some additional circumstances, but not including either Atalanta or the fire-brand on which Meleager’s life depended. He prefaces the latter with the words οἱ δέ φασι, etc. Antoninus Liberalis gives this second narrative only, without Atalanta, from Nicander (Narrat. 2).

The Latin scenic poet, Attius, had devoted one of his tragedies to this subject, taking the general story as given by Euripidês: “Remanet gloria apud me: exuvias dignavi Atalantæ dare,” seems to be the speech of Meleager. (Attii Fragm. 8, ap. Poet. Scen. Lat. ed. Bothe, p. 215). The readers of the Æneid will naturally think of the swift and warlike virgin Camilla, as the parallel of Atalanta.

Interesting as the Arcadian huntress, Atalanta, is in herself, she is an intrusion, and not a very convenient intrusion, into the Homeric story of the Kalydônian boar-hunt, wherein another female Kleopatra, already occupied the foreground.[344] But the more recent version became accredited throughout Greece, and was sustained by evidence which few persons in those days felt any inclination to controvert. For Atalanta carried away with her the spoils and head of the boar into Arcadia; and there for successive centuries hung the identical hide and the gigantic tusks of three feet in length, in the temple of Athênê Alea at Tegea. Kallimachus mentions them as being there preserved, in the third century before the Christian æra;[345] but the extraordinary value set upon them is best proved by the fact that the emperor Augustus took away the tusks from Tegea, along with the great statue of Athênê Alea, and conveyed them to Rome, to be there preserved among the public curiosities. Even a century and a half afterwards, when Pausanias visited Greece, the skin worn out with age was shown to him, while the robbery of the tusks had not been forgotten. Nor were these relics of the boar the only memento preserved at Tegea of the heroic enterprise. On the pediment of the temple of Athênê Alea, unparalleled in Peloponnêsus for beauty and grandeur, the illustrious statuary Skopas had executed one of his most finished reliefs, representing the Kalydônian hunt. Atalanta and Meleager were placed in the front rank of the assailants, and Ankæus, one of the Tegean heroes, to whom the tusks of the boar had proved fatal,[346] was represented as sinking under his death-wound into the arms of his brother Epochos. And Pausanias observes, that the Tegeans, while they had manifested the same honorable forwardness as other Arcadian communities in the conquest of Troy, the repulse of Xerxês, and the battle of Dipæ against Sparta—might fairly claim to themselves, through Ankæus and Atalanta, that they alone amongst all Arcadians had participated in the glory of the Kalydônian boar-hunt.[347] So entire and unsuspecting is the faith both of the Tegeans and of Pausanias in the past historical reality of this romantic adventure. Strabo indeed tries to transform the romance into something which has the outward semblance of history, by remarking that the quarrel respecting the boar’s head and hide cannot have been the real cause of war between the Kurêtes and the Ætôlians; the true ground of dispute (he contends) was probably the possession of a portion of territory.[348] His remarks on this head are analogous to those of Thucydidês and other critics, when they ascribe the Trojan war, not to the rape of Helen, but to views of conquest or political apprehensions. But he treats the general fact of the battle between the Kurêtes and the Ætôlians, mentioned in the Iliad, as something unquestionably real and historical—recapitulating at the same time a variety of discrepancies on the part of different authors, but not giving any decision of his own respecting their truth or falsehood.

[344] The narrative of Apollodôrus reads awkwardly—Μελέαγρος ἔχων γυναῖκα Κλεοπάτραν, βουλόμενος δὲ καὶ ἐξ Ἀταλάντης τεκνοποιήσασθαι, etc. (i. 8, 2).

[345] Kallimachus, Hymn. ad Dian. 217.—

Οὔ μιν ἐπικλητοὶ Καλυδώνιοι ἀγρευτῆρες Μέμφονται κάπροιο· τὰ γὰρ σημήϊα νίκης Ἀρκαδίην εἰσῆλθεν, ἔχει δ᾽ ἔτι θηρὸς ὀδόντας.

[346] See Pherekyd. Frag. 81, ed. Didot.

[347] Pausan. viii. 45, 4; 46, 1-3; 47, 2. Lucian, adv. Indoctum, c. 14. t. iii. p. 111, Reiz.

The officers placed in charge of the public curiosities or wonders at Rome (οἱ ἐπὶ τοῖς θαύμασιν) affirmed that one of the tusks had been accidentally broken in the voyage from Greece: the other was kept in the temple of Bacchus in the Imperial Gardens.

It is numbered among the memorable exploits of Thêseus that he vanquished and killed a formidable and gigantic sow, in the territory of Krommyôn near Corinth. According to some critics, this Krommyônian sow was the mother of the Kalydônian boar (Strabo, viii. p. 380).

[348] Strabo, x. p. 466. Πολέμου δ᾽ ἐμπεσόντος τοῖς Θεστιάδαις πρὸς Οἰνέα καὶ Μελέαγρον, ὁ μὲν Ποιητὴς, ἀμφὶ συὸς κεφαλῇ καὶ δέρματι, κατὰ τὴν περὶ τοῦ κάπρου μυθολογίαν· ὡς δὲ τὸ εἰκὸς, περὶ μέρους τῆς χώρας, etc. This remark is also similar to Mr. Payne Knight’s criticism on the true causes of the Trojan war, which were (he tells us) of a political character, independent of Helen and her abduction (Prolegom. ad Homer. c. 53).

In the same manner as Atalanta was intruded into the Kalydônian hunt, so also she seems to have been introduced into the memorable funeral games celebrated after the decease of Pelias at Iôlkos, in which she had no place at the time when the works on the chest of Kypselus were executed.[349] But her native and genuine locality is Arcadia; where her race-course, near to the town of Methydrion, was shown even in the days of Pausanias.[350] This race-course had been the scene of destruction for more than one unsuccessful suitor. For Atalanta, averse to marriage, had proclaimed that her hand should only be won by the competitor who could surpass her in running: all who tried and failed were condemned to die, and many were the persons to whom her beauty and swiftness, alike unparalleled, had proved fatal. At length Meilaniôn, who had vainly tried to win her affections by assiduous services in her hunting excursions, ventured to enter the perilous lists. Aware that he could not hope to outrun her except by stratagem, he had obtained by the kindness of Aphroditê, three golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, which he successively let fall near to her while engaged in the race. The maiden could not resist the temptation of picking them up, and was thus overcome: she became the wife of Meilaniôn and the mother of the Arcadian Parthenopæus, one of the seven chiefs who perished in the siege of Thêbes.[351]

[349] Compare Apollodôr. iii. 9, 2, and Pausan. v. 17, 4. She is made to wrestle with Pêleus at these funeral games, which seems foreign to her character.

[350] Pausan. viii. 35, 8.

[351] Respecting the varieties in this interesting story, see Apollod. iii. 9, 2; Hygin. f. 185; Ovid, Metam. x. 560-700; Propert. i. 1, 20; Ælian, V. H. xiii. i. Μειλανίωνος σωφρονέστερος. Aristophan. Lysistrat. 786 and Schol. In the ancient representation on the chest of Kypselus (Paus. v. 19, 1), Meilaniôn was exhibited standing near Atalanta, who was holding a fawn: no match or competition in running was indicated.

There is great discrepancy in the naming and patronymic description of the parties in the story. Three different persons are announced as fathers of Atalanta, Schœneus, Jasus and Mænalos; the successful lover in Ovid (and seemingly in Euripidês also) is called Hippomenês, not Meilaniôn. In the Hesiodic poems Atalanta was daughter of Schœneus; Hellanikus called her daughter of Jasus. See Apollodôr. l. c.; Kallimach. Hymn to Dian. 214, with the note of Spanheim; Schol. Eurip. Phœniss. 150; Schol. Theocr. Idyll. iii. 40; also the ample commentary of Bachet de Meziriac, Sur les Epîtres d’Ovide, vol. i. p. 366. Servius (ad Virg. Eclog. vi. 61; Æneid, iii. 113) calls Atalanta a native of Scyros.

Both the ancient scholiasts (see Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 769) and the modern commentators, Spanheim and Heyne, seek to escape this difficulty by supposing two Atalantas,—an Arcadian and a Bœôtian: assuming the principle of their conjecture to be admissible, they ought to suppose at least three.

Certainly, if personages of the Grecian mythes are to be treated as historically real, and their adventures as so many exaggerated and miscolored facts, it will be necessary to repeat the process of multiplying entities to an infinite extent. And this is one among the many reasons for rejecting the fundamental supposition.

But when we consider these personages as purely legendary, so that an historical basis can neither be affirmed nor denied respecting them, we escape the necessity of such inconvenient stratagems. The test of identity is then to be sought in the attributes, not in the legal description,—in the predicates, not in the subject. Atalanta, whether born of one father or another, whether belonging to one place or another, is beautiful, cold, repulsive, daring, swift of foot and skilful with the bow,—these attributes constitute her identity. The Scholiast on Theocritus (iii. 40), in vindicating his supposition that there were two Atalantas, draws a distinction founded upon this very principle: he says that the Bœôtian Atalanta was τοξοτὶς, and the Arcadian Atalanta δρομαία. But this seems an over-refinement: both the shooting and the running go to constitute an accomplished huntress.

In respect to Parthenopæus, called by Euripidês and by so many others the son of Atalanta, it is of some importance to add, that Apollodôrus, Aristarchus, and Antimachus, the author of the Thebaid, assigned to him a pedigree entirely different,—making him an Argeian, the son of Talaos and Lysimachê, and brother of Adrastus. (Apollodôr. i. 9, 13; Aristarch. ap. Schol. Soph. Œd. Col. 1320; Antimachus ap. Schol. Æschyl. Sep. Theb. 532; and Schol. Supplem. ad Eurip. Phœniss. t. viii. p. 461, ed. Matth. Apollodôrus is in fact inconsistent with himself in another passage).

We have yet another female in the family of Œneus, whose name the legend has immortalized. His daughter Deianeira was sought in marriage by the river Achelôus, who presented himself in various shapes, first as a serpent and afterwards as a bull. From the importunity of this hateful suitor she was rescued by the arrival of Hêraklês, who encountered Achelôus, vanquished him and broke off one of his horns, which Achelôus ransomed by surrendering to him the horn of Amaltheia, endued with the miraculous property of supplying the possessor with abundance of any food or drink which he desired. Hêraklês was rewarded for his prowess by the possession of Deianeira, and he made over the horn of Amaltheia as his marriage-present to Œneus.[352] Compelled to leave the residence of Œneus in consequence of having in a fit of anger struck the youthful attendant Eunomus, and involuntarily killed him,[353] Hêraklês retired to Trachin, crossing the river Euênus at the place where the Centaur Nessus was accustomed to carry over passengers for hire. Nessus carried over Deianeira, but when he had arrived on the other side, began to treat her with rudeness, upon which Hêraklês slew him with an arrow tinged by the poison of the Lernæan hydra. The dying Centaur advised Deianeira to preserve the poisoned blood which flowed from his wound, telling her that it would operate as a philtre to regain for her the affections of Hêraklês, in case she should ever be threatened by a rival. Some time afterwards the hero saw and loved the beautiful Iolê, daughter of Eurytos, king of Œchalia: he stormed the town, killed Eurytos, and made Iolê his captive. The misguided Deianeira now had recourse to her supposed philtre: she sent as a present to Hêraklês a splendid tunic, imbued secretly with the poisoned blood of the Centaur. Hêraklês adorned himself with the tunic on the occasion of offering a solemn sacrifice to Zeus on the promontory of Kênæon in Eubœa: but the fatal garment, when once put on, clung to him indissolubly, burnt his skin and flesh, and occasioned an agony of pain from which he was only relieved by death. Deianeira slew herself in despair at this disastrous catastrophe.[354]

[352] Sophokl. Trachin. 7. The horn of Amaltheia was described by Pherekydês (Apollod. ii. 7, 5); see also Strabo, x. p. 458 and Diodôr. iv. 35, who cites an interpretation of the fables (οἱ εἰκάζοντες ἐξ αὐτῶν τἀληθές) to the effect that it was symbolical of an embankment of the unruly river by Hêraklês, and consequent recovery of very fertile land.

[353] Hellanikus (ap. Athen. ix. p. 410) mentioning this incident, in two different works, called the attendant by two different names.

[354] The beautiful drama of the Trachiniæ has rendered this story familiar: compare Apollod. ii. 7, 7. Hygin. f. 36. Diodôr. iv. 36-37.

The capture of Œchalia (Οἰχαλίας ἅλωσις) was celebrated in a very ancient epic poem by Kreophylos, of the Homeric and not of the Hesiodic character: it passed with many as the work of Homer himself. (See Düntzer, Fragm. Epic. Græcor. p. 8. Welcker, Der Epische Cyclus, p. 229). The same subject was also treated in the Hesiodic Catalogue, or in the Eoiai (see Hesiod, Fragm. 129, ed. Marktsch.): the number of the children of Eurytos was there enumerated.

This exploit seems constantly mentioned as the last performed by Hêraklês, and as immediately preceding his death or apotheosis on Mount Œta: but whether the legend of Deianeira and the poisoned tunic be very old, we cannot tell.

The tale of the death of Iphitos, son of Eurytos, by Hêraklês, is as ancient as the Odyssey (xxi. 19-40): but it is there stated, that Eurytos dying left his memorable bow to his son Iphitos (the bow is given afterwards by Iphitos to Odysseus, and is the weapon so fatal to the suitors),—a statement not very consistent with the story that Œchalia was taken and Eurytos slain by Hêraklês. It is plain that these were distinct and contradictory legends. Compare Soph. Trachin. 260-285 (where Iphitos dies before Eurytos), not only with the passage just cited from the Odyssey, but also with Pherekydês, Fragm. 34, Didot.

Hyginus (f. 33) differs altogether in the parentage of Deianeira: he calls her daughter of Dexamenos: his account of her marriage with Hêraklês is in every respect at variance with Apollodôrus. In the latter, Mnêsimachê is the daughter of Dexamenos; Hêraklês rescues her from the importunities of the Centaur Eurytiôn (ii. 5, 5).

We have not yet exhausted the eventful career of Œneus and his family—ennobled among the Ætôlians especially, both by religious worship and by poetical eulogy—and favorite themes not merely in some of the Hesiodic poems, but also in other ancient epic productions, the Alkmæênis and the Cyclic Thêbais.[355] By another marriage, Œneus had for his son Tydeus, whose poetical celebrity is attested by the many different accounts given both of the name and condition of his mother. Tydeus, having slain his cousins, the sons of Melas, who were conspiring against Œneus, was forced to become an exile, and took refuge at Argos with Adrastus, whose daughter Deipylê he married. The issue of this marriage was Diomêdês, whose brilliant exploits in the siege of Troy were not less celebrated than those of his father at the siege of Thêbes. After the departure of Tydeus, Œneus was deposed by the sons of Agrios, and fell into extreme poverty and wretchedness, from which he was only rescued by his grandson Diomêdês, after the conquest of Troy.[356] The sufferings of this ancient warrior, and the final restoration and revenge by Diomêdês, were the subject of a lost tragedy of Euripidês, which even the ridicule of Aristophanês demonstrates to have been eminently pathetic.[357]

[355] See the references in Apollod. i, 8, 4-5. Pindar, Isthm. iv. 32. Μελέταν δὲ σοφισταῖς Διὸς ἕκατι πρόσβαλον σεβιζόμενοι Ἐν μὲν Αἰτωλῶν θυσίαισι φαενναῖς Οἰνεΐδαι κρατεροὶ, etc.

[356] Hekat. Fragm. 341, Didot. In this story Œneus is connected with the first discovery of the vine and the making of wine (οἶνος): compare Hygin. f. 129, and Servius ad Virgil. Georgic. i. 9.

[357] See Welcker (Griechisch. Tragöd. ii. p. 583) on the lost tragedy called Œneus.

Though the genealogy just given of Œneus is in part Homeric, and seems to have been followed generally by the mythographers, yet we find another totally at variance with it in Hekatæus, which he doubtless borrowed from some of the old poets: the simplicity of the story annexed to it seems to attest its antiquity. Orestheus, son of Deukaliôn, first passed into Ætôlia, and acquired the kingdom: he was father of Phytios, who was father of Œneus. Ætôlus was son of Œneus.[358]

[358] Timoklês, Comic. ap. Athenæ. vii. p. 223.—

Γέρων τις ἀτυχεῖ; κατέμαθεν τὸν Οἰνέα.

Ovid. Heroid. ix. 153.—

“Heu! devota domus! Solio sedet Agrios alto Œnea desertum nuda senecta premit.”

The account here given is in Hyginus (f. 175): but it is in many points different both from Apollodôrus (i. 8, 6; Pausan. ii. 25) and Pherekydês (Fragm. 83, Didot). It seems to be borrowed from the lost tragedy of Euripidês. Compare Schol. ad Aristoph. Acharn. 417. Antonin. Liberal. c. 37. In the Iliad, Œneus is dead before the Trojan war (ii. 641).

The account of Ephorus again is different (ap. Strabo. x. p. 462); he joins Alkmæôn with Diomêdês: but his narrative has the air of a tissue of quasi-historical conjectures, intended to explain the circumstance that the Ætôlian Diomêdês is king of Argos during the Trojan war.

Pausanias and Apollodôrus affirm that Œneus was buried at Œnoê between Argos and Mantineia, and they connect the name of this place with him. But it seems more reasonable to consider him as the eponymous hero of Œniadæ in Ætôlia.

The original migration of Ætolus from Elis to Ætôlia—and the subsequent establishment in Elis of Oxylus, his descendant in the tenth generation, along with the Dôrian invaders of Peloponnêsus—were commemorated by two inscriptions, one in the agora of Elis, the other in that of the Ætôlian chief town, Thermum, engraved upon the statues of Ætôlus and Oxylus,[359] respectively.

[359] Ephor. Fragm. 29. Didot ap. Strab. x.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VII. THE PELOPIDS

Among the ancient legendary genealogies, there was none which figured with greater splendor, or which attracted to itself a higher degree of poetical interest and pathos, than that of the Pelopids—Tantalus, Pelops, Atreus and Thyestês, Agamemnôn and Menelaus and Ægisthus, Helen and Klytæmnêstra, Orestês and Elektra and Hermionê. Each of these characters is a star of the first magnitude in the Grecian hemisphere: each name suggests the idea of some interesting romance or some harrowing tragedy: the curse which taints the family from the beginning inflicts multiplied wounds at every successive generation. So, at least, the story of the Pelopids presents itself, after it had been successively expanded and decorated by epic, lyric and tragic poets. It will be sufficient to touch briefly upon events with which every reader of Grecian poetry is more or less familiar, and to offer some remarks upon the way in which they were colored and modified by different Grecian authors.

Pelops is the eponym or name-giver of the Peloponnêsus: to find an eponym for every conspicuous local name was the invariable turn of Grecian retrospective fancy. The name Peloponnêsus is not to be found either in the Iliad or the Odyssey, nor any other denomination which can be attached distinctly and specially to the entire peninsula. But we meet with the name in one of the most ancient post-Homeric poems of which any fragments have been preserved—the Cyprian Verses—a poem which many (seemingly most persons) even of the contemporaries of Herodotus ascribed to the author of the Iliad, though Herodotus contradicts the opinion.[360] The attributes by which the Pelopid Agamemnôn and his house are marked out and distinguished from the other heroes of the Iliad, are precisely those which Grecian imagination would naturally seek in an eponymus—superior wealth, power, splendor and regality. Not only Agamemnôn himself, but his brother Menelaus, is “more of a king” even than Nestôr or Diomêdês. The gods have not given to the king of the “much-golden” Mykênæ greater courage, or strength, or ability, than to various other chiefs; but they have conferred upon him a marked superiority in riches, power and dignity, and have thus singled him out as the appropriate leader of the forces.[361] He enjoys this preëminence as belonging to a privileged family and as inheriting the heaven-descended sceptre of Pelops, the transmission of which is described by Homer in a very remarkable way. The sceptre was made “by Hêphæstos, who presented it to Zeus; Zeus gave it to Hermês, Hermês to the charioteer Pelops; Pelops gave it to Atreus, the ruler of men; Atreus at his death left it to Thyestês, the rich cattle-owner; Thyestês in his turn left it to his nephew Agamemnôn to carry, that he might hold dominion over many islands and over all Argos.”[362]

[360] Hesiod. ii. 117. Fragment. Epicc. Græc. Düntzer, ix. Κύπρια, 8.—

Αἶψα τε Λυγκεὺς Ταΰγετον προσέβαινε ποσὶν ταχέεσσι πεποιθὼς, Ἀκρότατον δ᾽ ἀναβὰς διεδέρκετο νῆσον ἅπασαν Τανταλίδεω Πέλοπος.

Also the Homeric Hymn. Apoll. 419, 430, and Tyrtæus, Fragm. 1.—

(~Εὐνομία~)—Εὐρεῖαν Πέλοπος νῆσον ἀφικόμεθα.

The Schol. ad Iliad, ix. 246, intimates that the name Πελοπόννησος occurred in one or more of the Hesiodic epics.

[361] Iliad, ix. 37. Compare ii. 580. Diomêdês addresses Agamemnôn—

Σοὶ δὲ διάνδιχα δῶκε Κρόνου παῖς ἀγκυλομήτεω· Σκήπτρῳ μέν τοι δῶκε τετιμῆσθαι περὶ πάντων· Ἀλκὴν δ᾽ οὔ τοι δῶκεν, ὅ,τε κράτος ἐστὶ μέγιστον.

A similar contrast is drawn by Nestôr (Il. i. 280) between Agamemnôn and Achilles. Nestôr says to Agamemnôn (Il. ix. 69)—

Ἀτρείδη, σὺ μὲν ἄρχε· σὺ γὰρ ~βασιλεύτατός~ ἐσσι.

And this attribute attaches to Menelaus as well as to his brother. For when Diomêdês is about to choose his companion for the night expedition into the Trojan camp, Agamemnôn thus addresses him (x. 232):

Τὸν μὲν δὴ ἕταρόν γ᾽ αἱρήσεαι, ὅν κ᾽ ἐθέλῃσθα Φαινομένων τὸν ἄριστον, ἐπεὶ μεμάασί γε πολλοί· Μηδὲ σύ γ᾽ αἰδόμενος σῇσι φρεσὶ, τὸν μὲν ἀρείω Καλλείπειν, σὺ δὲ χείρον᾽ ὀπάσσεαι αἰδοῖ εἴκων Ἐς γενεὴν ὁρόων, εἰ καὶ βασιλεύτερός ἐστιν. Ὡς ἔφατ᾽, ἔδδεισε δὲ περὶ ξανθῷ Μενελάῳ.

[362] Iliad, ii. 101.

We have here the unrivalled wealth and power of the “king of men, Agamemnôn,” traced up to his descent from Pelops, and accounted for, in harmony with the recognized epical agencies, by the present of the special sceptre of Zeus through the hands of Hermês; the latter being the wealth-giving god, whose blessing is most efficacious in furthering the process of acquisition, whether by theft or by accelerated multiplication of flocks and herds.[363] The wealth and princely character of the Atreids were proverbial among the ancient epic poets. Paris not only carries away Hellen, but much property along with her:[364] the house of Menelaus, when Têlemachus visits it in the Odyssey, is so resplendent with gold and silver and rare ornament,[365] as to strike the beholder with astonishment and admiration. The attributes assigned to Tantalus, the father of Pelops, are in conformity with the general idea of the family—superhuman abundance and enjoyments, and intimate converse with the gods, to such a degree that his head is turned, and he commits inexpiable sin. But though Tantalus himself is mentioned, in one of the most suspicious passages of the Odyssey (as suffering punishment in the under-world), he is not announced, nor is any one else announced, as father of Pelops, unless we are to construe the lines in the Iliad as implying that the latter was son of Hermês. In the conception of the author of the Iliad, the Pelopids are, if not of divine origin, at least a mortal breed specially favored and ennobled by the gods—beginning with Pelops, and localized at Mykênæ. No allusion is made to any connection of Pelops either with Pisa or with Lydia.

[363] Iliad, xiv. 491. Hesiod. Theog. 444. Homer, Hymn. Mercur. 526-568, Ὄλβου καὶ πλούτου δώσω περικάλλεα ῥάβδον. Compare Eustath. ad Iliad. xvi. 182.

[364] Iliad, iii. 72; vii. 363. In the Hesiodic Eoiai was the following couplet (Fragm. 55. p. 43, Düntzer):—

Ἁλκὴν μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκεν Ὀλύμπιος Αἰακίδῃσιν, Νοῦν δ᾽ Ἀμυθαονίδαις, πλοῦτον δ᾽ ἔπορ᾽ Ἀτρείδῃσι.

Again, Tyrtæus, Fragm. 9, 4.—

Οὐδ᾽ εἰ Τανταλίδεω Πέλοπος βασιλεύτερος εἴη, etc.

[365] Odyss. iv. 45-71.

The legend which connected Tantalus and Pelops with Mount Sipylus may probably have grown out of the Æolic settlements at Magnêsia and Kymê. Both the Lydian origin and the Pisatic sovereignty of Pelops are adapted to times later than the Iliad, when the Olympic games had acquired to themselves the general reverence of Greece, and had come to serve as the religious and recreative centre of the Peloponnêsus—and when the Lydian and Phrygian heroic names, Midas and Gygês, were the types of wealth and luxury, as well as of chariot driving, in the imagination of a Greek. The inconsiderable villages of the Pisatid derived their whole importance from the vicinity of Olympia: they are not deemed worthy of notice in the Catalogue of Homer. Nor could the genealogy which connected the eponym of the entire peninsula with Pisa have obtained currency in Greece unless it had been sustained by preëstablished veneration for the locality of Olympia. But if the sovereign of the humble Pisa was to be recognized as forerunner of the thrice-wealthy princes of Mykênæ, it became necessary to assign some explanatory cause of his riches. Hence the supposition of his being an immigrant, son of a wealthy Lydian named Tantalus, who was the offspring of Zeus and Ploutô. Lydian wealth and Lydian chariot-driving rendered Pelops a fit person to occupy his place in the legend, both as ruler of Pisa and progenitor of the Mykenæan Atreids. Even with the admission of these two circumstances there is considerable difficulty, for those who wish to read the legends as consecutive history, in making the Pelopids pass smoothly and plausibly from Pisa to Mykênæ.

I shall briefly recount the legends of this great heroic family as they came to stand in their full and ultimate growth, after the localization of Pelops at Pisa had been tacked on as a preface to Homer’s version of the Pelopid genealogy.

Tantalus, residing near Mount Sipylus in Lydia, had two children, Pelops and Niobê. He was a man of immense possessions and preëminent happiness, above the lot of humanity: the gods communicated with him freely, received him at their banquets, and accepted of his hospitality in return. Intoxicated with such prosperity, Tantalus became guilty of gross wickedness. He stole nectar and ambrosia from the table of the gods, and revealed their secrets to mankind: he killed and served up to them at a feast his own son Pelops. The gods were horror-struck when they discovered the meal prepared for them: Zeus restored the mangled youth to life, and as Dêmêtêr, then absorbed in grief for the loss of her daughter Persephonê, had eaten a portion of the shoulder, he supplied an ivory shoulder in place of it. Tantalus expiated his guilt by exemplary punishment. He was placed in the under-world, with fruit and water seemingly close to him, yet eluding his touch as often as he tried to grasp them and leaving his hunger and thirst incessant and unappeased.[366] Pindar, in a very remarkable passage, finds this old legend revolting to his feelings: he rejects the tale of the flesh of Pelops having been served up and eaten, as altogether unworthy of the gods.[367]

[366] Diodôr. iv. 77. Hom. Odyss. xi. 582. Pindar gives a different version of the punishment inflicted on Tantalus: a vast stone was perpetually impending over his head, and threatening to fall (Olymp. i. 56; Isthm. vii. 20).

[367] Pindar, Olymp. i. 45. Compare the sentiment of Iphigeneia in Euripidês, Iph. Taur. 387.

Niobê, the daughter of Tantalus, was married to Amphiôn, and had a numerous and flourishing offspring of seven sons and seven daughters. Though accepted as the intimate friend and companion of Lêtô, the mother of Apollo and Artemas,[368] she was presumptuous enough to triumph over that goddess, and to place herself on a footing of higher dignity, on account of the superior number of her children. Apollo and Artemas avenged this insult by killing all the sons and all the daughters: Niobê, thus left a childless and disconsolate mother, wept herself to death, and was turned into a rock, which the later Greeks continued always to identify on Mount Sipylus.[369]

[368] Sapphô (Fragm. 82, Schneidewin)—

Λατὼ καὶ Νιόβα μάλα μὲν φίλαι ἦσαν ἑταῖραι.

Sapphô assigned to Niobê eighteen children (Aul. Gell. N. A. iv. Δ. xx. 7); Hesiod gave twenty; Homer twelve (Apollod. iii. 5).

The Lydian historian Xanthus gave a totally different version both of the genealogy and of the misfortunes of Niobê (Parthen. Narr. 33).

[369] Ovid, Metam. vi. 164-311. Pausan. i. 21, 5; viii. 2, 3.

Some authors represented Pelops as not being a Lydian, but a king of Paphlagônia; by others it was said that Tantalus, having become detested from his impieties, had been expelled from Asia by Ilus the king of Troy,—an incident which served the double purpose of explaining the transit of Pelops to Greece, and of imparting to the siege of Troy by Agamemnôn the character of retribution for wrongs done to his ancestor.[370] When Pelops came over to Greece, he found Œnomaus, son of the god Arês and Harpinna, in possession of the principality of Pisa, immediately bordering on the district of Olympia. Œnomaus, having been apprized by an oracle that death would overtake him if he permitted his daughter Hippodameia to marry, refused to give her in marriage except to some suitor who should beat him in a chariot-race from Olympia to the isthmus of Corinth;[371] the ground here selected for the legendary victory of Pelops deserves attention, inasmuch as it is a line drawn from the assumed centre of Peloponnêsus to its extremity, and thus comprises the whole territory with which Pelops is connected as eponym. Any suitor overmatched in the race was doomed to forfeit his life; and the fleetness of the Pisan horses, combined with the skill of the charioteer Myrtilus, had already caused thirteen unsuccessful competitors to perish by the lance of Œnomaus.[372] Pelops entered the lists as a suitor: his prayers moved the god Poseidôn to supply him with a golden chariot and winged horses; or according to another story, he captivated the affections of Hippodameia herself, who persuaded the charioteer Myrtilus to loosen the wheels of Œnomaus before he started, so that the latter was overturned and perished in the race. Having thus won the hand of Hippodameia, Pelops became Prince of Pisa.[373] He put to death the charioteer Myrtilus, either from indignation at his treachery to Œnomaus,[374] or from jealousy on the score of Hippodameia: but Myrtilus was the son of Hermês, and though Pelops erected a temple in the vain attempt to propitiate that god, he left a curse upon his race which future calamities were destined painfully to work out.[375]

[370] Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 358, and Schol.; Ister. Fragment. 59, Dindorf; Diodôr. iv. 74.

[371] Diodôr. iv. 74.

[372] Pausanias (vi. 21, 7) had read their names in the Hesiodic Eoiai.

[373] Pindar, Olymp. i. 140. The chariot race of Pelops and Œnomaus was represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia: the horses of the former were given as having wings (Pausan. v. 17, 4). Pherekydês gave the same story (ap. Schol. ad Soph. Elect. 504).

[374] It is noted by Herodotus and others as a remarkable fact, that no mules were ever bred in the Eleian territory: an Eleian who wished to breed a mule sent his mare for the time out of the region. The Eleians themselves ascribed this phænomenon to a disability brought on the land by a curse from the lips of Œnomaus (Herod. iv. 30; Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. p. 303).

[375] Paus. v. 1, 1; Sophok. Elektr. 508; Eurip. Orest. 985, with Schol., Plato, Kratyl. p. 395.

Pelops had a numerous issue by Hippodameia: Pittheus, Trœzen and Epidaurus, the eponyms of the two Argolic cities so called, are said to have been among them: Atreus and Thyestês were also his sons, and his daughter Nikippê married Sthenelus of Mykênæ, and became the mother of Eurystheus.[376] We hear nothing of the principality of Pisa afterwards: the Pisatid villages became absorbed into the larger aggregate of Elis, after a vain struggle to maintain their separate right of presidency over the Olympic festival. But the legend ran that Pelops left his name to the whole peninsula: according to Thucydidês, he was enabled to do this because of the great wealth which he had brought with him from Lydia into a poor territory. The historian leaves out all the romantic interest of the genuine legends—preserving only this one circumstance, which, without being better attested than the rest, carries with it, from its commonplace and prosaic character, a pretended historical plausibility.[377]

[376] Apollod. ii. 4, 5. Pausan. ii. 30, 8; 26, 3; v. 8, 1. Hesiod. ap. Schol. ad Iliad. xx. 116.

[377] Thucyd. i. 5.

Besides his numerous issue by Hippodameia, Pelops had an illegitimate son named Chrysippus, of singular grace and beauty, towards whom he displayed so much affection as to rouse the jealousy of Hippodameia and her sons. Atreus and Thyestês conspired together to put Chrysippus to death, for which they were banished by Pelops and retired to Mykênæ,[378]—an event which brings us into the track of the Homeric legend. For Thucydidês, having found in the death of Chrysippus a suitable ground for the secession of Atreus from Pelops, conducts him at once to Mykênæ, and shows a train of plausible circumstances to account for his having mounted the throne. Eurystheus, king of Mykênæ, was the maternal nephew of Atreus: when he engaged in any foreign expedition, he naturally entrusted the regency to his uncle; the people of Mykênæ thus became accustomed to be governed by him, and he on his part made efforts to conciliate them, so that when Eurystheus was defeated and slain in Attica, the Mykênæan people, apprehensive of an invasion from the Hêrakleids, chose Atreus as at once the most powerful and most acceptable person for his successor.[379] Such was the tale which Thucydidês derived “from those who had learnt ancient Peloponnêsian matters most clearly from their forefathers.” The introduction of so much sober and quasi-political history, unfortunately unauthenticated, contrasts strikingly with the highly poetical legends of Pelops and Atreus, which precede and follow it.

[378] We find two distinct legends respecting Chrysippus: his abduction by Laius king of Thêbes, on which the lost drama of Euripidês called Chrysippus turned (see Welcker, Griech. Tragödien, ii. p. 536), and his death by the hands of his half-brothers. Hyginus (f. 85) blends the two together.

[379] Thucyd. i. 9. λέγουσι δὲ οἱ τὰ Πελοποννησίων σαφέστατα μνήμῃ παρὰ τῶν πρότερον δεδεγμένοι. According to Hellanikus, Atreus the elder son returns to Pisa after the death of Pelops with a great army, and makes himself master of his father’s principality (Hellanik. ap Schol. ad Iliad, ii. 105). Hellanikus does not seem to have been so solicitous as Thucydidês to bring the story into conformity with Homer. The circumstantial genealogy given in Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 5. makes Atreus and Thyestês reside during their banishment at Makestus in Triphylia: it is given without any special authority, but may perhaps come from Hellanikus.

Atreus and Thyestês are known in the Iliad only as successive possessors of the sceptre of Zeus, which Thyestês at his death bequeathes to Agamemnôn. The family dissensions among this fated race commence, in the Odyssey, with Agamemnôn the son of Atreus, and Ægisthus the son of Thyestês. But subsequent poets dwelt upon an implacable quarrel between the two fathers. The cause of the bitterness was differently represented: some alleged that Thyestês had intrigued with the Krêtan Aeropê, the wife of his brother; other narratives mentioned that Thyestês procured for himself surreptitiously the possession of a lamb with a golden fleece, which had been designedly introduced among the flocks of Atreus by the anger of Hermês, as a cause of enmity and ruin to the whole family.[380] Atreus, after a violent burst of indignation, pretended to be reconciled, and invited Thyestês to a banquet, in which he served up to him the limbs of his own son, and the father ignorantly partook of the fatal meal. Even the all-seeing Hêlios is said to have turned back his chariot to the east in order that he might escape the shocking spectacle of this Thyestêan banquet: yet the tale of Thyestêan revenge—the murder of Atreus perpetrated by Ægisthus, the incestuous offspring of Thyestês by his daughter Pelopia—is no less replete with horrors.[381]

[380] Æschyl. Agamem. 1204, 1253, 1608; Hygin. 86; Attii Fragm. 19. This was the story of the old poem entitled Alkmæônis; seemingly also of Pherekydês, though the latter rejected the story that Hermês had produced the golden lamb with the special view of exciting discord between the two brothers, in order to avenge the death of Myrtilus by Pelops (see Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 996).

A different legend, alluded to in Soph. Aj. 1295 (see Schol. ad loc.), recounted that Aeropê had been detected by her father Katreus in unchaste commerce with a low-born person; he entrusted her in his anger to Nauplius, with directions to throw her into the sea: Nauplius however not only spared her life, but betrothed her to Pleisthenês, father of Agamemnôn and son of Atreus.

The tragedy entitled Atreus of the Latin poet Attius, seems to have brought out, with painful fidelity, the harsh and savage features of this family legend (see Aul. Gell. xiii. 2, and the fragments of Attius now remaining, together with the tragedy called Thyestês, of Seneca).

[381] Hygin. fab. 87-88.

Homeric legend is never thus revolting. Agamemnôn and Menelaus are known to us chiefly with their Homeric attributes, which have not been so darkly overlaid by subsequent poets as those of Atreus and Thyestês. Agamemnôn and Menelaus are affectionate brothers: they marry two sisters, the daughters of Tyndareus king of Sparta, Klytæmnêstra and Helen; for Helen, the real offspring of Zeus, passes as the daughter of Tyndareus.[382] The “king of men” reigns at Mykênæ; Menelaus succeeds Tyndareus at Sparta. Of the rape of Helen, and the siege of Troy consequent upon it, I shall speak elsewhere: I now touch only upon the family legends of the Atreids. Menelaus, on his return from Troy with the recovered Helen, is driven by storms far away to the distant regions of Phœnicia and Egypt, and is exposed to a thousand dangers and hardships before he again sets foot in Peloponnêsus. But at length he reaches Sparta, resumes his kingdom, and passes the rest of his days in uninterrupted happiness and splendor: being moreover husband of the godlike Helen and son-in-law of Zeus, he is even spared the pangs of death. When the fulness of his days is past he is transported to the Elysian fields, there to dwell along with “the golden-haired Rhadamanthus” in a delicious climate and in undisturbed repose.[383]

[382] So we must say, in conformity to the ideas of antiquity: compare Homer, Iliad, xvi. 176 and Herodot. vi. 53.

[383] Hom. Odyss. iii. 280-300; iv. 83-560.

Far different is the fate of the king of men, Agamemnôn. During his absence, the unwarlike Ægisthus, son of Thyestês, had seduced his wife Klytæmnêstra, in spite of the special warning of the gods, who, watchful over this privileged family, had sent their messenger Hermês expressly to deter him from the attempt.[384] A venerable bard had been left by Agamemnôn as the companion and monitor of his wife, and so long as that guardian was at hand, Ægisthus pressed his suit in vain. But he got rid of the bard by sending him to perish in a desert island, and then won without difficulty the undefended Klytæmnêstra. Ignorant of what had passed, Agamemnôn returned from Troy victorious and full of hope to his native country; but he had scarcely landed when Ægisthus invited him to a banquet, and there with the aid of the treacherous Klytæmnêstra, in the very hall of festivity and congratulation, slaughtered him and his companions “like oxen tied to the manger.” His concubine Kassandra, the prophetic daughter of Priam, perished along with him by the hand of Klytæmnêstra herself.[385] The boy Orestês, the only male offspring of Agamemnôn, was stolen away by his nurse, and placed in safety at the residence of the Phokian Strophius.

[384] Odyss. i. 38; iii. 310.—ἀνάλκιδος Αἰγίσθοιο.

[385] Odyss. iii. 260-275; iv. 512-537; xi. 408. Deinias in his Argolica, and other historians of that territory, fixed the precise day of the murder of Agamemnôn,—the thirteenth of the month Gamêliôn (Schol. ad Sophokl. Elektr. 275).

For seven years Ægisthus and Klytæmnêstra reigned in tranquillity at Mykênæ on the throne of the murdered Agamemnôn. But in the eighth year the retribution announced by the gods overtook them: Orestês, grown to manhood, returned and avenged his father by killing Ægisthus, according to Homer; subsequent poets add, his mother also. He recovered the kingdom of Mykênæ, and succeeded Menelaus in that of Sparta. Hermionê, the only daughter of Menelaus and Helen, was sent into the realm of the Myrmidons in Thessaly, as the bride of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, according to the promise made by her father during the siege of Troy.[386]

[386] Odyss. iii. 306; iv. 9

Here ends the Homeric legend of the Pelopids, the final act of Orestês being cited as one of unexampled glory.[387] Later poets made many additions: they dwelt upon his remorse and hardly-earned pardon for the murder of his mother, and upon his devoted friendship for Pylades; they wove many interesting tales, too, respecting his sisters Iphigeneia and Elektra and his cousin Hermionê,—names which have become naturalized in every climate and incorporated with every form of poetry.

[387] Odyss. i. 299.

These poets did not at all scruple to depart from Homer, and to give other genealogies of their own, with respect to the chief persons of the Pelopid family. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Agamemnôn is son of Atreus: in the Hesiodic Eoiai and in Stesichorus, he is son of Pleisthenês the son of Atreus.[388] In Homer, he is specially marked as reigning at Mykênæ; but Stesichorus, Simonidês and Pindar[389] represented him as having both resided and perished at Sparta or at Amyklæ. According to the ancient Cyprian Verses, Helen was represented as the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis: in one of the Hesiodic poems she was introduced as an Oceanic nymph, daughter of Oceanus and Têthys.[390] The genealogical discrepancies, even as to the persons of the principal heroes and heroines, are far too numerous to be cited, nor is it necessary to advert to them, except as they bear upon the unavailing attempt to convert such legendary parentage into a basis of historical record or chronological calculation.

[388] Hesiod. Fragm. 60. p. 44, ed. Düntzer; Stesichor. Fragm. 44, Kleine. The Scholiast ad Soph. Elektr. 539, in reference to another discrepancy between Homer and the Hesiodic poems about the children of Helen, remarks that we ought not to divert our attention from that which is moral and salutary to ourselves in the poets (τὰ ἠθικὰ καὶ χρήσιμα ἡμῖν τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι), in order to cavil at their genealogical contradictions.

Welcker in vain endeavors to show that Pleisthenês was originally introduced as the father of Atreus, not as his son (Griech. Tragöd. p. 678).

[389] Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 46. Ὅμηρος ἐν Μυκήναις φησὶ τὰ βασιλεῖα τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος· Στησίχορος δὲ καὶ Σιμωνίδης, ἐν Λακεδαιμονίᾳ. Pindar, Pyth. xi. 31; Nem. viii. 21. Stêsichorus had composed an Ὀρέστεια, copied in many points from a still more ancient lyric Oresteia by Xanthus: compare Athen. xii. p. 513, and Ælian, V. H. iv. 26.

[390] Hesiod, ap. Schol. ad Pindar, Nem. x. 150.

The Homeric poems probably represent that form of the legend, respecting Agamemnôn and Orestês, which was current and popular among the Æolic colonists. Orestês was the great heroic chief of the Æolic emigration; he, or his sons, or his descendants, are supposed to have conducted the Achæans to seek a new home, when they were no longer able to make head against the invading Dôrians: the great families at Tenedos and other Æolic cities even during the historical æra, gloried in tracing back their pedigrees to this illustrious source.[391] The legends connected with the heroic worship of these mythical ancestors form the basis of the character and attributes of Agamemnôn and his family, as depicted in Homer, in which Mykênæ appears as the first place in Peloponnêsus, and Sparta only as the second: the former the special residence of “the king of men;” the latter that of his younger and inferior brother, yet still the seat of a member of the princely Pelopids, and moreover the birth-place of the divine Helen. Sparta, Argos and Mykênæ are all three designated in the Iliad by the goddess Hêrê as her favorite cities;[392] yet the connection of Mykênæ with Argos, though the two towns were only ten miles distant, is far less intimate than the connection of Mykênæ with Sparta. When we reflect upon the very peculiar manner in which Homer identifies Hêrê with the Grecian host and its leader,—for she watches over the Greeks with the active solicitude of a mother, and her antipathy against the Trojans is implacable to a degree which Zeus cannot comprehend,[393]—and when we combine this with the ancient and venerated Hêræon, or temple of Hêrê, near Mykênæ, we may partly explain to ourselves the preëminence conferred upon Mykênæ in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Hêræon was situated between Argos and Mykênæ; in later times its priestesses were named and its affairs administered by the Argeians: but as it was much nearer to Mykênæ than to Argos, we may with probability conclude that it originally belonged to the former, and that the increasing power of the latter enabled them to usurp to themselves a religious privilege which was always an object of envy and contention among the Grecian communities. The Æolic colonists doubtless took out with them in their emigration the divine and heroic legends, as well as the worship and ceremonial rites, of the Hêræon; and in those legends the most exalted rank would be assigned to the close-adjoining and administering city.

[391] See the ode of Pindar addressed to Aristagoras of Tenedos (Nem. xi. 35; Strabo, xiii. p. 582). There were Penthilids at Mitylênê, from Penthilus, son of Orestês (Aristot. Polit v. 8, 13, Schneid.).

[392] Iliad, iv. 52. Compare Euripid. Hêrakleid. 350

[393] Iliad, iv. 31. Zeus says to Hêrê,—

Δαιμονίη, τί νύ σε Πρίαμος, Πριάμοιό τε παῖδες Τόσσα κακὰ ῥέζεσκον ὅτ᾽ ἀσπερχὲς μενεαίνεις Ἰλίου ἐξαλάπαξαι ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον; Εἰ δὲ σύ γ᾽, εἰσελθοῦσα πύλας καὶ τείχεα μακρὰ, Ὠμὸν βεβρώθοις Πρίαμον Πριάμοιό τε παῖδας, Ἄλλους τε Τρῶας, τότε κεν χόλον ἐξακέσαιο.

Again, xviii. 358,—

ἦ ῥά νυ σεῖο Ἐξ αὐτῆς ἐγένοντο καρηκομόωντες Ἀχαιοί.

Mykênæ maintained its independence even down to the Persian invasion. Eighty of its heavy-armed citizens, in the ranks of Leonidas at Thermopylæ, and a number not inferior at Platæa, upheld the splendid heroic celebrity of their city during a season of peril, when the more powerful Argos disgraced itself by a treacherous neutrality. Very shortly afterwards Mykênæ was enslaved and its inhabitants expelled by the Argeians. Though this city so long maintained a separate existence, its importance had latterly sunk to nothing, while that of the Dôrian Argos was augmented very much, and that of the Dôrian Sparta still more.

The name of Mykênæ is imperishably enthroned in the Iliad and Odyssey; but all the subsequent fluctuations of the legend tend to exalt the glory of other cities at its expense. The recognition of the Olympic games as the grand religious festival of Peloponnêsus gave vogue to that genealogy which connected Pelops with Pisa or Elis and withdrew him from Mykênæ. Moreover, in the poems of the great Athenian tragedians, Mykênæ is constantly confounded and treated as one with Argos. If any one of the citizens of the former, expelled at the time of its final subjugation by the Argeians, had witnessed at Athens a drama of Æschylus, Sophoklês, or Euripidês, or the recital of an ode of Pindar, he would have heard with grief and indignation the city of his oppressors made a partner in the heroic glories of his own.[394] But the great political ascendency acquired by Sparta contributed still farther to degrade Mykênæ, by disposing subsequent poets to treat the chief of the Grecian armament against Troy as having been a Spartan. It has been already mentioned that Stêsichorus, Simonidês and Pindar adopted this version of the legend: we know that Zeus Agamemnôn, as well as the hero Menelaus, was worshipped at the Dôrian Sparta,[395] and the feeling of intimate identity, as well as of patriotic pride, which had grown up in the minds of the Spartans connected with the name of Agamemnôn, is forcibly evinced by the reply of the Spartan Syagrus to Gelôn of Syracuse at the time of the Persian invasion of Greece. Gelôn was solicited to lend his aid in the imminent danger of Greece before the battle of Salamis: he offered to furnish an immense auxiliary force, on condition that the supreme command should be allotted to him. “Loudly indeed would the Pelopid Agamemnôn cry out (exclaimed Syagrus in rejecting this application), if he were to learn that the Spartans had been deprived of the headship by Gelôn and the Syracusans.”[396] Nearly a century before this event, in obedience to the injunctions of the Delphian oracle, the Spartans had brought back from Tegea to Sparta the bones of “the Lacônian Orestês,” as Pindar denominates him:[397] the recovery of these bones was announced to them as the means of reversing a course of ill-fortune, and of procuring victory in their war against Tegea.[398] The value which they set upon this acquisition, and the decisive results ascribed to it, exhibit a precise analogy with the recovery of the bones of Theseus from Skyros by the Athenian Cimôn shortly after the Persian invasion.[399] The remains sought were those of a hero properly belonging to their own soil, but who had died in a foreign land, and of whose protection and assistance they were for that reason deprived. And the superhuman magnitude of the bones, which were contained in a coffin seven cubits long, is well suited to the legendary grandeur of the son of Agamemnôn.

[394] See the preface of Dissen to the tenth Nem. of Pindar.

[395] Clemens Alexandr. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 24. Ἀγαμέμνονα γοῦν τινα Δία ἐν Σπάρτῃ τιμᾶσθαι Στάφυλος ἱστορεῖ. See also Œnomaus ap. Euseb. Præparat. Evangel. v. 28.

[396] Herodot. vii. 159. Ἦ κε μέγ᾽ οἰμώξειεν ὁ Πελοπίδης Ἀγαμέμνων, πυθόμενος Σπαρτιήτας ἀπαραιρῆσθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ὑπὸ Γέλωνός τε καὶ τῶν Συρακουσίων: compare Homer, Iliad, vii. 125. See what appears to be an imitation of the same passage in Josephus, De Bello Judaico, iii. 8, 4. Ἦ μεγάλα γ᾽ ἂν στενάξειαν οἱ πάτριοι νόμοι, etc.

[397] Pindar. Pyth. xi. 16.

[398] Herodot. i 68.

[399] Plutarch. Thêseus, c. 36, Cimôn, c. 8; Pausan. iii. 3, 6.

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III. LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS…

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