Library
Apollodorus
Apollodorus. The Library. Frazer, James George, Sir, editor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.
When Hercules had been translated to the gods, his sons fled from Eurystheus and came to Ceyx.[*](Ceyx, king of Trachis, who had given shelter and hospitality to Herakles. See above, Apollod. 2.7.7. Compare Diod. 4.57, who agrees with Apollodorus as to the threats of Eurystheus and the consequent flight of the children of Herakles from Trachis to Athens. According to Hecataeus, quoted by Longinus, De sublimitate 27, king Ceyx ordered them out of the country, pleading his powerlessness to protect them. Compare Paus. 1.32.6.) But when Eurystheus demanded their surrender and threatened war, they were afraid, and, quitting Trachis, fled through Greece. Being pursued, they came to Athens, and sitting down on the altar of Mercy, claimed protection.[*](Compare Scholiast on Aristoph. Kn. 1151, who mentions that the Heraclids took refuge at the altar of Mercy. As to the altar of Mercy see below, Apollod. 3.7.1 note. Apollodorus has omitted a famous episode in the war which the Athenians waged with the Argives in defence of the children of Herakles. An oracle having declared that victory would rest with the Athenians if a highborn maiden were sacrificed to Persephone, a voluntary victim was found in the person of Macaria, daughter of Herakles, who gave herself freely to die for Athens. See Eur. Heraclid. 406ff.; Eur. Heraclid. 488ff.; Paus. 1.32.6; Zenobius, Cent. ii.61; Timaeus, Lexicon, s.v. Βάλλʼ εἰς μακαρίαν ; Scholiast on Plat. Hipp. Maj. 293a; Scholiast on Aristoph. Kn. 1151. The protection afforded by Athens to the suppliant Heraclids was a subject of patriotic pride to the Athenians. See Lys. 2.11-16; Isoc. 4.15, 16. The story was told by Pherecydes, who represented Demophon, son of Theseus, as the protector of the Heraclids at Athens. See Ant. Lib. 33. In this he may have been followed by Euripides, who in his play on the subject introduces Demophon as king of Athens and champion of the Heraclids (Eur. Heraclid. 111ff.). But, according to Paus. 1.32.6, it was not Demophon but his father Theseus who received the refugees and declined to surrender them to Eurystheus) Refusing to surrender them, the Athenians bore the brunt of war with Eurystheus, and slew his sons, Alexander, Iphimedon, Eurybius, Mentor and Perimedes. Eurystheus himself fled in a chariot, but was pursued and slain by Hyllus just as he was driving past the
After Eurystheus had perished, the Heraclids came to attack Peloponnese and they captured all the cities.[*](For the first attempted invasion of the Peloponnese by the Heraclids or sons of Herakles, see Diod. 4.58.1-4. The invasion is commonly spoken of as a return, because, though their father Herakles had been born at Thebes in Boeotia, he regarded Mycenae and Tiryns, the kingdom of his forefathers, as his true home. The word (κάθοδος) here employed by Apollodorus is regularly applied by Greek writers to the return of exiles from banishment, and in particular to the return of the Heraclids. See, for example, Strab. 8.3.30, Strab. 8.4.1, Strab. 8.5.5, Strab. 8.6.10, Strab. 8.7.1, Strab. 8.8.5, Strab. 9.1.7, Strab. 10.2.6, Strab. 13.1.3, Strab. 14.2.6; Paus. 4.3.3; Paus. 5.6.3. The corresponding verbs, κατέρχεσθαι, “to return from exile,” and κατάγειν, “to bring back from exile,” are both used by Apollodorus in these senses. See Apollod. 2.7.2-3; Apollod. 2.8.2 and Apollod. 2.8.5; Apollod. 3.10.5. The final return of the Heraclids, in conjunction with the Dorians, to the Peloponnese is dated by Thuc. 1.12.3 in the eightieth year after the capture of Troy; according to Paus. 4.3.3, it occurred two generations after that event, which tallies fairly with the estimate of Thucydides. Velleius Paterculus i.2.1 agrees with Thucydides as to the date, and adds for our further satisfaction that the return took place one hundred and twenty years after Herakles had been promoted to the rank of deity.) When a year had elapsed from their
And it chanced that a calamity also befell the army at Naupactus. For there appeared to them a soothsayer reciting oracles in a fine frenzy, whom they took for a magician sent by the Peloponnesians to be the ruin of the army. So Hippotes, son of Phylas, son of Antiochus, son of Hercules, threw a javelin at him, and hit and killed him.[*](The soothsayer was Carnus, an Acarnanian; the Dorians continued to propitiate the soul of the murdered seer after his death. See Paus. 3.13.4; Conon 26; Scholiast on Theocritus v.83.) In consequence of that, the naval force perished with the destruction of the fleet, and the land force suffered from famine, and the army disbanded. When Temenus inquired of the oracle concerning this calamity, the god said that these things were done by the soothsayer[*](That is, by the angry spirit of the murdered man.) and he ordered him to banish the slayer for ten years and to take for his guide the Three-Eyed One. So they banished Hippotes, and sought for the Three-Eyed One.[*](With this and what follows compare Paus. 5.3.5ff.; Suidas, s.v. Τριόφθαλμος ; and as to Oxylus, compare Strab. 8.3.33. Pausanias calls Oxylus the son of Haemon.) And
When they had made themselves masters of Peloponnese, they set up three altars of Paternal Zeus, and sacrificed upon them, and cast lots for the cities. So the first drawing was for Argos, the second for Lacedaemon, and the third for Messene. And they brought a pitcher of water, and resolved that each should cast in a lot. Now Temenus and the two sons of Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, threw stones; but Cresphontes, wishing to have Messene allotted to him, threw in a clod of earth. As the clod was dissolved in the water, it could not be but that the other two lots should turn up. The lot of Temenus having been drawn first, and that of the sons of Aristodemus second, Cresphontes got
And on the altars on which they sacrificed they found signs lying: for they who got Argos by the lot found a toad; those who got Lacedaemon found a serpent; and those who got Messene found a fox.[*](In the famous paintings by Polygnotus at Delphi, the painter depicted Menelaus, king of Sparta, with the device of a serpent on his shield. See Paus. 10.26.3. The great Messenian hero Aristomenes is said to have escaped by the help of a fox from the pit into which he had been thrown by the Lacedaemonians. See Paus. 4.18.6ff. I do not remember to have met with any evidence, other than that of Apollodorus, as to the association of the toad with Argos.) As to these signs the seers said that those who found the toad had better stay in the city ( seeing that the animal has no strength when it walks); that those who found the serpent would be terrible in attack, and that those who found the fox would be wily. Now Temenus, passing over his sons Agelaus, Eurypylus, and Callias, favoured his daughter Hyrnetho and her husband Deiphontes; hence his sons hired some fellows to murder their father.[*](Compare Paus. 2.19.1; Paus. 2.28.2ff., who agrees as to the names of Hyrnetho and her husband Deiphontes, but differs as to the sons of Temenus, whom he calls Cisus, Cerynes, Phalces, and Agraeus.) On the perpetration of the murder the army decided that the kingdom belonged to Hyrnetho[*](The grave of Hyrnetho was shown at Argos, but she is said to have been accidentally killed by her brother Phalces near Epidaurus, and long afterwards she was worshipped in a sacred grove of olives and other trees on the place of her death. See Paus. 2.23.3; Paus. 2.28.3-7.) and Deiphontes. Cresphontes had not long reigned over Messene when he was murdered with two of his sons;[*](Compare Paus. 4.3.7.) and Polyphontes, one of the true Heraclids, came to the
Now Asterius, prince of the Cretans, married Europa and brought up her children.[*](Compare Scholiast on Hom. Il. 12.292; Diod. 4.60.3 (who calls the king Asterius). On the place of Asterion or Asterius in Cretan mythology, see A. B. Cook, Zeus, i.543ff. ) But when they were grown up, they quarrelled with each other; for they loved a boy called Miletus, son of Apollo by Aria, daughter of Cleochus.[*](With the following legend of the foundation of Miletus compare Ant. Lib. 30; Paus. 7.2.5; Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.186.) As the boy was more friendly to Sarpedon, Minos went to war and had the better of it, and the others fled.
Asterius dying childless, Minos wished to reign over Crete, but his claim was opposed. So he alleged that he had received the kingdom from the gods,
But angry at him for not sacrificing the bull, Poseidon made the animal savage, and contrived that Pasiphae should conceive a passion for it.[*](Here Apollodorus seems to be following Euripides, who in a fragment of his drama, The Cretans, introduces Pasiphae excusing herself on the ground that her passion for the bull was a form of madness inflicted on her by Poseidon as a punishment for the impiety of her husband Minos, who had broken his vow by not sacrificing the bull to the sea-god. See W. Schubart und U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechische Dichterfragmente, ii. (Berlin, 1907), pp. 74ff. ) In her love for the bull she found an accomplice in Daedalus, an architect, who had been banished from Athens for murder.[*](See below, Apollod. 3.15.8.) He constructed a wooden cow on wheels, took it, hollowed it out in the inside, sewed it up in the hide of a cow which he had skinned, and set it in the meadow in which the bull used to graze. Then he introduced Pasiphae into it; and the bull came and coupled with it, as if it were a real cow. And she gave birth to Asterius, who was called the Minotaur. He had the face of a bull, but the rest of him was human; and Minos, in compliance with certain oracles, shut him up and guarded him in the Labyrinth. Now the Labyrinth which Daedalus constructed was a chamber “ that
But Catreus, son of Minos, had three daughters, Aerope, Clymene, and Apemosyne, and a son, Althaemenes.[*](The tragic story of the involuntary parricide of Althaemenes is similarly told by Diod. 5.59.1-4, who says that this murderer of his father and of his sister was afterwards worshipped as a hero in Rhodes.) When Catreus inquired of the oracle how his life should end, the god said that he would die by the hand of one of his children. Now Catreus hid the oracles, but Althaemenes heard of them, and fearing to be his father's murderer, he set out from Crete with his sister Apemosyne, and put in at a place in Rhodes, and having taken possession of it he called it Cretinia. And having ascended the mountain called Atabyrium, he beheld the islands round about; and descrying Crete also and calling to mind the gods of his fathers he founded an altar of Atabyrian Zeus.[*](As to Atabyrian Zeus and his sanctuary on Mount Atabyrium, Atabyrum, or Atabyris, the highest mountain in Rhodes, see Pind. O. 7.87(159)ff.; Polybius vii.27.7, ed. L. Dindorf; Appian, Mithridat. 26; Strab. 14.2.12; Diod. 5.59.2; Lactantius, Divin. Inst. i.22. Diodorus Siculus tells us that the sanctuary, crowning a lofty peak, was highly venerated down to his own time, and that the island of Crete was visible from it in the distance. Some rude remains of the temple, built of grey limestone, still exist on a summit a little lower than the highest. See H. F. Tozer, The Islands of the Aegean (Oxford, 1890), pp. 220ff.; Cecil Torr, Rhodes in Ancient Times, (Cambridge, 1885), pp. 1, 75. Atabyrian Zeus would seem to have been worshipped in the form of a bull; for it is said that there were bronze images of cattle on the mountain, which bellowed when some evil was about to befall the state, and small bronze figures of bulls are still sometimes found on the mountain. See Tzetzes, Chiliades iv.390ff.; Scholiast on Pind. O. 7.87(159); Cecil Torr, op. cit. p. 76, with plate 4. Further, we know from Greek inscriptions found in the island that there was a religious association which took its name of The Atabyriasts from the deity; and one of these inscriptions (No. 31) records a dedication of oxen or bulls (τοὺς βοῦς) to the god. See Inscriptiones Graecae Insularum Rhodi, Chalces, Carpathi, cum Saro Casi, ed. F. Hiller de Gaertringen (Berlin, 1895), Nos. 31, 161, 891. The oxen so dedicated were probably bronze images of the animals, such as are found in the island, though Dittenberger thought that they were live oxen destined for sacrifice. See his paper, De sacris Rhodiorum Commentatio altera (Halle, 1887), pp. viii.ff. The worship of Atabyrian Zeus may well have been of Phoenician origin, for we have seen that there was a Phoenician colony in Rhodes (see above, Apollod. 3.1.1 note), and the name Atabyrian is believed to be Semitic, equivalent to the Hebrew Tabor. See Encyclopaedia Biblica, s. v. “Tabor,” vol. iii. col. 4881ff. Compare A. B. Cook, Zeus, i.642ff. ) But not long afterwards he
And Catreus gave Aerope and Clymene to Nauplius to sell into foreign lands; and of these two Aerope became the wife of Plisthenes, who begat Agamemnon and Menelaus; and Clymene became the wife of Nauplius, who became the father of Oeax and Palamedes. But afterwards in the grip of old age Catreus yearned to transmit the kingdom to his son Althaemenes, and went for that purpose to Rhodes. And having landed from the ship with the heroes at a desert place of the island, he was chased by the cowherds, who imagined that they were pirates on a raid. He told them the truth, but they could not hear him for the barking of the dogs, and while they pelted him Althaemenes arrived
To Deucalion were born Idomeneus and Crete and a bastard son Molus.[*](Compare Diod. 5.79.4.) But Glaucus, while he was yet a child, in chasing a mouse fell into a jar of honey and was drowned.[*](Glaucus was a son of Minos and Pasiphae. See above, Apollod. 3.1.2. For the story of his death and resurrection, see Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 811; Apostolius, Cent. v.48; Palaephatus, De incredib. 27; Hyginus, Fab. 136; Hyginus, Ast. ii.14. Sophocles and Euripides composed tragedies on the subject. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 216ff., 558ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 56ff. ) On his disappearance Minos made a great search and consulted diviners as to how he should find him. The Curetes told him that in his herds he had a cow of three different colors, and that the man who could best describe that cow's color would also restore his son to him alive.[*](The cow or calf (for so Hyginus describes it) was said to change colour twice a day, or once every four hours, being first white, then red, and then black. The diviner Polyidus solved the riddle by comparing the colour of the animal to a ripening mulberry, which is first white, then red, and finally black. See Hyginus, Fab. 136; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 811; Sophocles, quoted by Athenaeus ii.36, p. 51 D, and Bekker's Anecdota Graeca, i. p. 361, lines 20ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, ii.60, frag. 395.) So when the diviners were assembled, Polyidus, son of Coeranus, compared the color of the cow to the fruit of the bramble, and being compelled to seek for the child he found him by means of a sort of divination.[*](He is said to have discovered the drowned boy by observing an owl which had perched on a wine-cellar and was driving away bees. See Hyginus, Fab. 136. Compare Ael., Nat. Anim. v.2, from which it would seem that Hyginus here followed the tragedy of Polyidus by Euripides.) But Minos declaring that he must recover him alive, he was shut up with the dead body. And while he was in great perplexity, he saw a serpent going towards the corpse. He threw a stone and killed it, fearing to be killed himself if