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Reigning over the Egyptians Epaphus married Memphis, daughter of Nile, founded and named the city of Memphis after her, and begat a daughter Libya, after whom the region of Libya was called.[*](Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 894.) Libya had by Poseidon twin sons, Agenor and Belus.[*](Compare Tzetzes, Chiliades vii.349ff. ) Agenor departed to Phoenicia and reigned there, and there he became the ancestor of the great stock; hence we shall defer our account of him.[*](See below, Apollod. 3.1.) But Belus remained in Egypt, reigned over the country, and married Anchinoe, daughter of Nile, by whom he had twin

sons, Egyptus and Danaus,[*](The following account of Egyptus and Danaus, including the settlement of Danaus and his daughters at Argos, is quoted verbally, with a few omissions and changes, by the Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.42, who mentions the second book of Apollodorus as his authority. Compare Aesch. Supp. 318ff.; Scholiast on Eur. Hec. 886, and Scholiast on Eur. Or. 872; Hyginus, Fab. 168; Serv. Verg. A. 10.497.) but according to Euripides, he had also Cepheus and Phineus. Danaus was settled by Belus in Libya, and Egyptus in Arabia; but Egyptus subjugated the country of the Melampods and named it Egypt < after himself>. Both had children by many wives; Egyptus had fifty sons, and Danaus fifty daughters. As they afterwards quarrelled concerning the kingdom, Danaus feared the sons of Egyptus, and by the advice of Athena he built a ship, being the first to do so, and having put his daughters on board he fled. And touching at Rhodes he set up the image of Lindian Athena.[*](Compare Hdt. 2.182; Marmor Parium 15-17, pp. 544, 546, ed. C. Müller (Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, vol. i); Diod. 5.58.1; Strab. 14.2.11; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii iii.8. As to the worship of the goddess, see Cecil Torr, Rhodes in Ancient Times (Cambridge, 1885), pp. 74ff., 94 sq. In recent years a chronicle of the temple of Lindian Athena has been discovered in Rhodes: it is inscribed on a marble slab. See Chr. Blinkenberg, La Chronique du temple Lindien (Copenhagen, 1912).) Thence he came to Argos and the reigning king Gelanor surrendered the kingdom to him;[*](Compare Paus. 2.16.1, Paus. 2.19.3. ) < and having made himself master of the country he named the inhabitants Danai after himself>. But the country being waterless, because Poseidon had dried up even the springs out of anger at Inachus for testifying that the land belonged to Hera,[*](Compare Paus. 2.15.5. ) Danaus sent his daughters to draw water. One of them, Amymone, in her search for water threw a dart at a deer and hit a sleeping satyr, and he, starting up, desired to force her; but Poseidon appearing on the scene, the satyr fled, and Amymone lay with Poseidon, and he revealed to her the springs at Lerna.[*](Compare Eur. Ph. 187ff.; Lucian, Dial. Marin. vi.; Philostratus, Imagines, i.8; Scholiast on Hom. Il. iv.171; Prop. iii.18.47ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 169. There was a stream called Amymone at Lerna. See Strab. 8.6.8; Paus. 2.37.1, Paus. 2.37.4; Hyginus, Fab. 169.)

But the sons of Egyptus came to Argos, and exhorted Danaus to lay aside his enmity, and begged to marry his daughters. Now Danaus distrusted their professions and bore them a grudge on account of his exile; nevertheless he consented to the marriage and allotted the damsels among them.[*](For the marriage of the sons of Egyptus with the daughters of Danaus, and its tragic sequel, see Zenobius, Cent. ii.6; Scholiast on Eur. Hec. 886 and Or. 872; Scholiast on Hom. Il. iv.171; Hyginus, Fab. 168; Serv. Verg. A. 10.497. With the list of names of the bridal pairs as recorded by Apollodorus, compare the list given by Hyginus, Fab. 170.) First, they picked out Hypermnestra as the eldest to be the wife of Lynceus, and Gorgophone to be the wife of Proteus; for Lynceus and Proteus had been borne to Egyptus by a woman of royal blood, Argyphia; but of the rest Busiris, Enceladus, Lycus, and Daiphron obtained by lot the daughters that had been borne to Danaus by Europe, to wit, Automate, Amymone, Agave, and Scaea. These daughters were borne to Danaus by a queen; but Gorgophone and Hypermnestra were borne to him

by Elephantis. And Istrus got Hippodamia; Chalcodon got Rhodia; Agenor got Cleopatra; Chaetus got Asteria; Diocorystes got Hippodamia; Alces got Glauce; Alcmenor got Hippomedusa; Hippothous got Gorge; Euchenor got Iphimedusa; Hippolytus got Rhode. These ten sons were begotten on an Arabian woman; but the maidens were begotten on Hamadryad nymphs, some being daughters of Atlantia, and others of Phoebe. Agaptolemus got Pirene; Cercetes got Dorium; Eurydamas got Phartis; Aegius got Mnestra; Argius got Evippe; Archelaus got Anaxibia; Menemachus got Nelo. These seven sons were begotten on a Phoenician woman, and the maidens on an Ethiopian woman. The sons of Egyptus by Tyria got as their wives, without drawing lots, the daughters of Danaus by Memphis in virtue of the similarity of their names; thus Clitus got Clite; Sthenelus got Sthenele; Chrysippus got Chrysippe. The twelve sons of Egyptus by the Naiad nymph Caliadne cast lots for the daughters of Danaus by the Naiad nymph Polyxo: the sons were Eurylochus, Phantes, Peristhenes, Hermus, Dryas, Potamon, Cisseus, Lixus, Imbrus, Bromius, Polyctor, Chthonius; and the damsels were Autonoe, Theano, Electra, Cleopatra, Eurydice, Glaucippe, Anthelia, Cleodore, Evippe, Erato, Stygne, Bryce. The sons of Egyptus by Gorgo, cast lots for the daughters of Danaus by Pieria, and Periphas got Actaea, Oeneus got Podarce, Egyptus got Dioxippe, Menalces got Adite, Lampus got Ocypete, Idmon got Pylarge. The youngest sons of Egyptus were these: Idas got Hippodice; Daiphron got Adiante ( the mother who bore these damsels was Herse); Pandion got Callidice; Arbelus got Oeme; Hyperbius got Celaeno; Hippocorystes got Hyperippe; the mother of these men was Hephaestine, and the mother of these damsels was Crino. When they had got their brides by lot, Danaus made a feast and gave his daughters daggers; and they slew their bridegrooms as they slept, all but Hypermnestra; for she saved Lynceus because he had respected her virginity:[*](Compare Pind. N. 7.1.6(10), with the Scholiast; Paus. 2.19.6, Paus. 2.20.7, Paus. 2.21.1; Hor. Carm. 3.11.30ff.; Ovid, Her. xiv.) wherefore Danaus shut her up and kept her under ward. But the rest of the daugters of Danaus buried the heads of their bridegrooms in Lerna [*](Compare Zenobius, Cent. iv.86. According to Paus. 2.24.2) the heads of the sons of Egyptus were buried on the Larisa, the acropolis of Argos, and the headless trunks were buried at Lerna.) and paid funeral honors to their bodies in front of the city; and Athena and Hermes purified them at the command of Zeus. Danaus afterwards united Hypermnestra to Lynceus; and bestowed his other daughters on the victors in an athletic contest.[*](Compare Pind. P. 9.112(195), with the Scholiasts; Paus. 3.12.2. The legend may reflect an old custom of racing for a bride. See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii.299ff. It is said that Danaus instituted games which were celebrated every fifth (or, as we should say, every fourth) year, and at which the prize of the victor in the footrace was a shield. See Hyginus, Fab. 170.) Amymone had a son Nauplius by Poseidon.[*](Compare Strab. 8.6.2; Paus. 2.38.2, Paus. 4.35.2.>) This Nauplius lived to a great age, and sailing the sea he used by beacon lights to lure to death such as he fell in with.[*](See below, Apollod. E. E.6.7-11.) It came to pass, therefore, that he himself died by that very death. But before his death he married a wife; according to the tragic poets, she was Clymene, daughter of Catreus; but according to the author of The Returns,[*](Nostoi, an epic poem describing the return of the Homeric heroes from Troy. See Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, pp. 52ff.; D. B. Monro, in his edition of Homer, Odyssey, Bks. xiii.- xxiv. pp. 378-382.) she was Philyra; and according to Cercops she was Hesione. By her he had Palamedes, Oeax, and Nausimedon.

Lynceus reigned over Argos after Danaus and begat a son Abas by Hypermnestra; and Abas had twin sons Acrisius and Proetus[*](With this and what follows compare Paus. 2.16.2, Paus. 2.25.7.) by Aglaia, daughter of Mantineus. These two quarrelled with each other while they were still in the womb, and when they were grown up they waged war for the kingdom,[*](So the twins Esau and Jacob quarrelled both in the womb and in after life (Genesis, xxv.21ff.). Compare Rendel Harris, Boanerges, pp. 279ff. who argues that Proetus was the elder twin, who, as in the case of Esau and Jacob, was worsted by his younger brother.) and in the course of the war they were the first to invent shields. And Acrisius gained the mastery and drove Proetus from Argos; and Proetus went to Lycia to the court of Iobates or, as some say, of Amphianax, and married his daughter, whom Homer calls Antia,[*](Hom. Il. 6.160.) but the tragic poets call her Stheneboea.[*](See below, Apollod. 2.3.1, Apollod. 3.9.1. Euripides called her Stheneboea (Eustathius on Hom. Il. vi.158, p 632).) His in-law restored him to his own land with an

army of Lycians, and he occupied Tiryns, which the Cyclopes had fortified for him.[*](Compare Bacch. 10.77ff., ed. Jebb; Paus. 2.25.8; Strab. 8.6.8.) They divided the whole of the Argive territory between them and settled in it, Acrisius reigning over Argos and Proetus over Tiryns.

And Acrisius had a daughter Danae by Eurydice, daughter of Lacedaemon, and Proetus had daughters, Lysippe, Iphinoe, and Iphianassa, by Stheneboea. When these damsels were grown up, they went mad,[*](Compare Bacch. 10.40-112, ed. Jebb; Hdt. 9.34; Strab. 8.3.19; Diod. 4.68; Paus. 2.7.8; Paus. 2.18.4; Paus. 5.5.10; Paus. 8.18.7ff.; Scholiast on Pind. N. 9.13 (30); Clement of Alexandria, Strom. vii.4.26, p. 844, ed. Potter; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Ἀζανία ; Verg. Ecl. 6.48ff.; Ov. Met. 15.325ff.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxv.47; Serv. Verg. Ecl. 6.48; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iii.453; Vitruvius viii.3.21. Of these writers, Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and, in one passage (Paus. 2.18.4), Pausanias, speak of the madness of the Argive women in general, without mentioning the daughters of Proetus in particular. And, according to Diodorus Siculus, with whom Pausanias in the same passage (Paus. 2.18.4) agrees, the king of Argos at the time of the affair was not Proetus but Anaxagoras, son of Megapenthes. As to Megapenthes, see Apollod. 2.4.4. According to Virgil the damsels imagined that they were turned into cows; and Servius and Lactantius Placidus inform us that this notion was infused into their minds by Hera (Juno) to punish them for the airs of superiority which they assumed towards her; indeed, in one place Lactantius Placidus says that the angry goddess turned them into heifers outright. In these legends Mr. A. B. Cook sees reminiscences of priestesses who assumed the attributes and assimilated themselves to the likeness of the cow-goddess Hera. See his Zeus, i.451ff. But it is possible that the tradition describes, with mythical accessories, a real form of madness by which the Argive women, or some portion of them, were temporarily affected. We may compare a somewhat similar form of temporary insanity to which the women of the wild Jakun tribe in the Malay Peninsula are said to be liable. “A curious complaint was made to the Penghulu of Pianggu, in my presence, by a Jakun man from the Anak Endau. He stated that all the women of his settlement were frequently seized by a kind of madness—presumably some form of hysteria— and that they ran off singing into the jungle, each woman by herself, and stopped there for several days and nights, finally returning almost naked, or with their clothes all torn to shreds. He said that the first outbreak of this kind occurred a few years ago, and that they were still frequent, one usually taking place every two or three months. They were started by one of the women, whereupon all the others followed suit.” See Ivor H. N. Evans, “Further Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of Pahang,” Journal of the Federated Malay States Museums, ix:1, January 1920, p. 27 (Calcutta, 1920).) according to Hesiod, because they would not accept the rites of Dionysus, but according to Acusilaus, because they disparaged the wooden image of Hera. In their madness they roamed over the whole Argive land, and afterwards, passing through Arcadia and the Peloponnese,

they ran through the desert in the most disorderly fashion. But Melampus, son of Amythaon by Idomene, daughter of Abas, being a seer and the first to devise the cure by means of drugs and purifications, promised to cure the maidens if he should receive the third part of the sovereignty. When Proetus refused to pay so high a fee for the cure, the maidens raved more than ever, and besides that, the other women raved with them; for they also abandoned their houses, destroyed their own children, and flocked to the desert. Not until the evil had reached a very high pitch did Proetus consent to pay the stipulated fee, and Melampus promised to effect a cure whenever his brother Bias should receive just so much land as himself. Fearing that, if the cure were delayed, yet more would be demanded of him, Proetus agreed to let the physician proceed on these terms. So Melampus, taking with him the most stalwart of the young men, chased the women in a bevy from the mountains to Sicyon with shouts and a sort of frenzied dance. In the pursuit Iphinoe, the eldest of the daughters, expired; but the others were lucky enough to be purified and so to recover their wits.[*](According to Bacch. 10.95ff., ed. Jebb, the father of the damsels vowed to sacrifice twenty red oxen to the Sun, if his daughters were healed: the vow was heard, and on the intercession of Artemis the angry Hera consented to allow the cure.) Proetus gave them in marriage to Melampus and Bias, and afterwards begat a son, Megapenthes.

Bellerophon, son of Glaucus, son of Sisyphus, having accidentally killed his brother Deliades or, as some say, Piren, or, as others will have it, Alcimenes,

came to Proetus and was purified.[*](Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 17; Tzetzes, Chiliades vii.810ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. vi.155. According to one account, mentioned by these writers, Bellerophon received his name (meaning slayer of Bellerus) because he had slain a tyrant of Corinth called Bellerus.) And Stheneboea fell in love with him,[*](In the following story of Bellerophon, our author follows Hom. Il. 6.155ff. (where the wife of Proetus is called Antia instead of Stheneboea). Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 17; Tzetzes, Chiliades vii.816ff.; Zenobius, Cent. ii.87 (who probably followed Apollodorus); Hyginus, Fab. 57; Hyginus, Ast. ii.18; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 24, 119 (First Vatican Mythographer 71, 72; Second Vatican Mythographer 131). Euripides composed a tragedy on the subject called Stheneboea. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 567ff. According to Tzetzes (Scholiast on Lycophron 17), Iobates refrained from slaying Bellerophon with his own hand in virtue of an old custom which forbade those who had eaten together to kill each other.) and sent him proposals for a meeting; and when he rejected them, she told Proetus that Bellerophon had sent her a vicious proposal. Proetus believed her, and gave him a letter to take to Iobates, in which it was written that he was to kill Bellerophon. Having read the letter, Iobates ordered him to kill the Chimera, believing that he would be destroyed by the beast, for it was more than a match for many, let alone one; it had the fore part of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and its third head, the middle one, was that of a goat, through which it belched fire. And it devastated the country and harried the cattle; for it was a single creature with the power of three beasts. It is said, too, that this Chimera was bred by Amisodarus, as Homer also affirms,[*](Hom. Il. 16.328ff.) and that it was begotten by Typhon on Echidna, as Hesiod relates.[*](Hes. Th. 319ff.)

So Bellerophon mounted

his winged steed Pegasus, offspring of Medusa and Poseidon, and soaring on high shot down the Chimera from the height.[*](For the combat of Bellerophon with the Chimera, see Hom. Il. 6.179ff.; Hes. Th. 319ff.; Pind. O. 13.84(120)ff. ; Hyginus, Fab. 57.) After that contest Iobates ordered him to fight the Solymi, and when he had finished that task also, he commanded him to combat the Amazons. And when he had killed them also, he picked out the reputed bravest of the Lycians and bade them lay an ambush and slay him. But when Bellerophon had killed them also to a man, Iobates, in admiration of his prowess, showed him the letter and begged him to stay with him; moreover he gave him his daughter Philonoe,[*](Anticlia, according to the Scholiast on Pind. O. 9.59(82); Cassandra, according to the Scholiast on Hom. Il. vi.155.) and dying bequeathed to him the kingdom.

When Acrisius inquired of the oracle how he should get male children, the god said that his daughter would give birth to a son who would kill him.[*](The following legend of Perseus (Apollod. 2.4.1-4) seems to be based on that given by Pherecydes in his second book, which is cited as his authority by the Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.1091, 1515, whose narrative agrees closely with that of Apollodorus. The narrative of Apollodorus is quoted, for the most part verbally, but as usual without acknowledgment, by Zenobius, Cent. i.41, who, however, like the Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.1091, 1515, passes over in silence the episode of Andromeda. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 838 (who may have followed Apollodorus); Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiv.319. The story of Danae, the mother of Perseus, was the theme of plays by Sophocles and Euripides. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 143ff., 168ff., 453ff. The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 38ff., 115ff. ) Fearing that, Acrisius built a brazen chamber

under ground and there guarded Danae.[*](Compare Soph. Ant. 944ff. Horace represents Danae as shut up in a brazen tower (Hor. Carm. 3.16.1ff.).) However, she was seduced, as some say, by Proetus, whence arose the quarrel between them;[*](That is, between Acrisius and Proetus. See above, Apollod. 2.2.1.) but some say that Zeus had intercourse with her in the shape of a stream of gold which poured through the roof into Danae's lap. When Acrisius afterwards learned that she had got a child Perseus, he would not believe that she had been seduced by Zeus, and putting his daughter with the child in a chest, he cast it into the sea. The chest was washed ashore on Seriphus, and Dictys took up the boy and reared him.