Library

Maia, the eldest, as the fruit of her intercourse with Zeus, gave birth to Hermes in a cave of Cyllene.[*](The following account of the birth and youthful exploits of Hermes is based, whether directly or indirectly, on the beautiful Homeric Hymn to Hermes, though it differs from the hymn on a few minor points, as to which Apollodorus may have used other sources. Compare The Homeric Hymns, ed. T. W. Allen and E. E. Sikes, pp. 130ff. Among the other literary sources to which Apollodorus may have had recourse was perhaps Sophocles's satyric play Ichneutae, or The Trackers. See below.) He was laid in swaddling-bands on the winnowing fan,[*](Compare the HH Herm. 21; HH Herm. 63; HH Herm. 150ff.; HH Herm. 254; HH Herm. 290; HH Herm. 358; Sophocles, Ichneutae 269 (The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, ii.258). So Dionysus at birth is said to have been laid on a winnowing-fan (Serv. Verg. G. 1.166): hence he got the surname of “He of the Winnowing-fan” (Λικνίτης, Plut. Isis et Osiris 35). These traditions as to the gods merely reflected an ancient Greek custom of placing newborn children in winnowing-fans “as an omen of wealth and fruitfulness” (πλοῦτον καὶ καρποὺς οἰωνιζόμενοι). See the Scholiast on Callimachus, Hymn 1.48 (Callimachea, ed. O. Schneider, i.109). As to the symbolism of the custom, see W. Mannhardt, “Kind und Korn,” Mythologische Forschungen, pp. 351-374; Miss J. E. Harrison, “Mystica Vannus Iacchi,” JHS xxiii. (1903), pp. 292-324. The custom was not confined to ancient Greece, but has been widely practised in India and other parts of the east down to modern times. The motives assigned or implied for it are various. Sometimes it seems to have been intended to ensure the wealth and prosperity of the infant, sometimes to guard it against the evil eye and other dangerous influences. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i.5-11. To quote a single example, among the Brahuis of Baluchistan, “most good parents keep their babe for the first six days in a chaj, or winnowing-basket, that God may vouchsafe them full as many children as the basket can hold grain . . . But some folk will have nothing to do with a winnowing-basket; it harbours epilepsy, they say, though how or why I am at a loss to think. So they lay the child in a sieve, that good luck may pour upon him as abundantly as grain pours through a sieve” (Denys Bray, The Life-History of a BrāhūīLondon, 1913, p. 13). The substitution of a corn-sieve for a winnowing-fan seems to be common elsewhere.) but he slipped out and made his way to Pieria

and stole the kine which Apollo was herding.[*](Compare HH Herm. 22ff.; Ant. Lib. 23; Ov. Met. 2.680ff. The theft of cattle by the infant Hermes was the subject of Sophocles's satyric drama Ichneutae, or The Trackers, of which some considerable fragments have been discovered in recent years. The scene of the play is laid on Mount Cyllene. Apollo appears and complains of the loss of the cattle, describes how he has come from Thessaly and through Boeotia in search of them, and offers a reward to anyone who will help him to find the missing beasts. The proclamation reaches the ears of Silenus, who hurries to the scene of action and warmly proffers the services of himself and his Satyrs in the search, only stipulating that the reward shall take the solid shape of cash down. His offer being accepted, the Satyrs at once open on the scent like sleuth-hounds and soon discover confused tracks of cattle pointing in different directions. But in the very heat of this discovery they are startled by a strange sound, the like of which they had never heard before. It is, in fact, the muffled sound of the lyre played by the youthful Hermes in the cave. At this point the nymph Cyllene issues from the cavern and upbraids the wild creatures with the hubbub they are raising in the stillness of the green wooded hills. The Satyrs tender a humble apology for their intrusion, but request to know the meaning of the strange sounds that proceed from the bowels of the earth. In compliance with their request the nymph explains how Zeus had secretly begotten Hermes on Maia in the cave, how she herself was acting temporarily as nurse to the child, how the infant grew at an astonishing and even alarming rate, and how, being detained in the cave by his father's orders, he devoted his leisure hours to constructing out of a dead beast a curious toy which emitted musical notes. Being pressed for a fuller explanation she describes how Hermes made the lyre out of a tortoise shell, how the instrument was “his only balm of grief, his comforter,” and how the child was transported with delight at the ravishing sweetness of the tones which spoke to him from the dead beast. Unmoved by this touching description, the Satyrs at once charge the precocious infant with having stolen the cattle. His nurse indignantly repels the charge, stoutly declaring that the poor child had inherited no propensity to thieving either from its father or from its mother, and recommending his accusers to go and look for the thief elsewhere, since at their age, with their long beards and bald heads, they ought to know better than to trump up such ridiculous accusations, for which they may yet have to smart. The nurse's passionate defence of her little charge makes no more impression on the Satyrs than her previous encomium on his musical talent: indeed their suspicions are quickened by her reference to the hides which the infant prodigy had used in the construction of the lyre, and they unhesitatingly identify the skins in question with those of the missing cattle. Strong in this conviction, they refuse to budge till the culprit has been made over to them. At this point the Greek text begins to fail; we can just catch a few disjointed fragments of a heated dialogue between the nurse and the satyrs; the words “cows,” “thief,” “rascal,” and so forth, occur with painful iteration, then all is silence. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 224-270. From this seemingly simple piece of mild buffoonery Miss J. E. Harrison would extract a ritual of serious and indeed solemn significance, of which, however, she admits that the author of the play was himself probably quite unconscious. See her learned essay in Essays and Studies presented to William Ridgeway, ed. E. C. Quiggin (Cambridge, 1913), pp. 136ff. ) And lest he should be detected by the tracks, he put shoes on their feet and brought them to Pylus, and hid the rest in a cave; but two he sacrificed and nailed the skins to rocks, while of the flesh he boiled and ate some,[*](In the HH Herm. 115ff. we are told that Hermes roasted the flesh of two oxen and divided it into twelve portions (for the twelve gods), but that in spite of hunger he ate none of it himself.) and some he burned. And quickly he departed to Cyllene. And before the cave he found a tortoise browsing. He cleaned it out, strung the shell with chords made from the kine he had sacrificed, and having thus produced a lyre he invented also a plectrum.[*](Compare Sophocles, Ichneutae 278ff. (The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, ii.259). In the HH Herm. 22ff., the invention of the lyre by Hermes precedes his theft of the cattle.) But Apollo came to Pylus[*](In the HH Herm. 185ff. it is to Onchestus in Boeotia, not to Pylus, that Apollo goes at first to inquire after the missing cattle.) in search of the kine, and he questioned the inhabitants. They said that they had seen a boy driving cattle, but could not say whither they had been driven, because they could find no track. Having discovered the thief by divination,[*](Compare the HH Herm. 213ff., where it is said that Apollo discovered Hermes to be the thief through observing a certain long-winged bird.) Apollo came to Maia at Cyllene and accused Hermes. But she showed him the child in his swaddling-bands. So Apollo brought him to Zeus, and claimed the kine; and when Zeus bade him restore them, Hermes denied that he had them, but not being believed he led Apollo to Pylus and restored the kine. Howbeit, when Apollo heard the lyre, he gave the kine in exchange for it. And while Hermes pastured them, he again made himself a shepherd's pipe and piped on it.[*](Compare the HH Herm. 511ff., where, however, nothing is said about an attempt of Apollo to get the pipes from Hermes, or about an exchange of the pipes for the golden wand. However, there is a lacuna in the hymn after verse 526, and the missing passage may have contained the exchange in question and the request of Hermes for the gift of divination, both of which are mentioned by Apollodorus but omitted in the hymn as it stands at present. See Allen and Sikes on the HH Herm. 526ff., in their edition of the Homeric Hymns, p. 190.) And wishing to get the pipe also, Apollo offered to give him the golden wand which he owned while he herded cattle.[*](For the gift of the golden wand, see HH Herm. 527ff. ) But Hermes wished both to get the wand for the pipe and to acquire the art of divination. So he gave the pipe and learned the art of divining by pebbles.[*](Compare the HH Herm. 552ff. The reference is to the divining pebbles called θρίαε, which were personified as three winged sisters who dwelt on Parnassus, and are said to have been the nurses of Apollo. See Zenobius, Cent. v.75; Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 45, with the Scholiast; Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Θρία, p. 455.45; Hesychius, s.v. θριαί ; Anecdota Graeca, ed. Bekker, i.265.11, s.vΘριάσιον πεδίον. . According to one account, the divining pebbles were an invention of Athena, which so disgusted Apollo that Zeus caused that mode of divination to fall into discredit, though it had been in high repute before; and Apollo vented his spite at the practitioners of a rival art by saying that “There be many that cast pebbles, but few prophets.” See Zenobius, Cent. v.75; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Θρία . This tradition may perhaps be accepted as evidence that in time the simple mode of divination by pebbles went out of fashion, being cast into the shade by the far more stately and imposing ritual of the frenzied prophetesses at Delphi, whose wild words were accepted as the very utterances of the deity. However, we are informed that in the temple at Delphi there were divining pebbles in a bowl on a tripod, and that when an inquirer applied to the oracle, the pebbles danced about in the bowl, while the inspired priestess prophesied. See Nonnus, in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, Appendix Narrationum 67, p. 384; Suidas, s.v. Πυθώ . As to Greek divination by pebbles, see A. Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire de la Divination dans l'Antiquité, i.192,ff.; and Frazer, note on Paus. 7.25.10 (vol. iv. pp. 172ff.) ) And Zeus appointed him herald to himself and to the infernal gods.

Taygete had by Zeus a son Lacedaemon, after whom the country of Lacedaemon is called.[*](Compare Paus. 3.1.2; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 626.) Lacedaemon and Sparta, daughter of Eurotas ( who was a son of Lelex,[*](According to Paus. 3.1.1, Eurotas was a son of Myles, who was a son of Lelex.) a son of the soil, by a Naiad nymph Cleocharia), had a son Amyclas and a daughter Eurydice, whom Acrisius married. Amyclas and Diomede, daughter of Lapithus, had sons, Cynortes and Hyacinth.[*](Compare Paus. 3.1.3.) They say that this Hyacinth was beloved of Apollo and killed by him involuntarily with the

cast of a quoit.[*](See above, Apollod. 1.3.3; Nicander, Ther. 901ff., with the Scholiast on Lycophron 902; Paus. 3.1.3; Paus. 3.19.5; Tzetzes, Chiliades i.241ff.; Ov. Met. 10.161-219; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxi.66; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 37, 135ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 117; Second Vatican Mythographer 181). The tomb of Hyacinth was shown at Amyclae under the great image of Apollo; a bronze door opened into the tomb, and sacrifices were there offered to him as a hero. See Paus. 3.19.3. Compare Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed., i.313ff. ) Cynortes had a son Perieres, who married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, as Stesichorus says, and she bore Tyndareus, Icarius, Aphareus, and Leucippus.[*](See above, Apollod. 1.9.5, where Apollodorus represents Perieres as the son of Aeolus (compare Apollod. 1.7.3), though he adds that many people regarded him as the son of Cynortas. See below Apollod. 3.10.4 note.) Aphareus and Arene, daughter of Oebalus, had sons Lynceus and Idas and Pisus; but according to many, Idas is said to have been gotten by Poseidon. Lynceus excelled in sharpness of sight, so that he could even see things underground.[*](Compare Pind. N. 10.62(116); Paus. 4.2.7 (who seems to have misunderstood the foregoing passage of Pindar); Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 553; Hyginus, Fab. 14, p. 42, ed. Bunte.) Leucippus had daughters, Hilaira and Phoebe: these the Dioscuri carried off and married.[*](See below, Apollod. 3.11.2.) Besides them Leucippus begat Arsinoe: with her Apollo had intercourse, and she bore Aesculapius. But some affirm that Aesculapius was not a son of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, but that he was a son of Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas in Thessaly.[*](The ancients were divided with regard to the mother of Aesculapius, some maintaining that she was a Messenian woman Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, others that she was a Thessalian woman Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas. See the Scholiast on Pind. P. 3.8(14), who quotes authorities on both sides: amongst the champions of Arsinoe were Asclepiades and an Argive writer named Socrates. The claims of the Messenian Arsinoe were naturally supported by patriotic Messenians, who looked on the god and his sons as in a sense their fellow countrymen. See Paus. 2.26.3-7; Paus. 4.3.2; Paus. 4.31.12. Apollodorus apparently accepted the Messenian view. But on the other side a long array of authorities declared in favour of Coronis, and her claim to be the mother of the god had the powerful support of the priesthood of Aesculapius at Epidaurus, one of the principal seats of the worship of the healing god. See the HH Ascl.; Pind. P. 3.8(14)ff.; Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.616ff.; Diod. 4.71.1, Diod. 5.74.6; Paus. 2.26.3-7; Hyginus, Fab. 202; Hyginus, Ast. ii.40; Serv. Verg. A. 6.617; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iii.506; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 17, 37 (First Vatican Mythographer 46, 115). Pausanias, who expressly rejects the claim of Arsinoe, quotes in favour of Coronis a Delphic oracle, which he regards as decisive: for who should know the true mother of Aesculapius better than his own father Apollo? The testimony of the deity for once was quite unambiguous. It ran thus:— “O born to be the world's great joy, Aesculapius, Offspring of love, whom Phlegyas' daughter, fair Coronis, bore to me in rugged Epidaurus.” See Paus. 2.26.7. In modern times the stones of Epidaurus, if we may say so, have risen up to testify to the truth of this oracle. For in the course of the modern excavations at the great Epidaurian sanctuary of Aesculapius there was discovered a limestone tablet inscribed with a hymn in honour of Apollo and Aesculapius, in which the family tree of the junior god is set out with the utmost precision, and it entirely confirms the Delphic oracle. The author of the hymn was a certain native of Epidaurus, by name Isyllus, a man of such scrupulous accuracy that before publishing his hymn he took the precaution of submitting it to the fount of knowledge at Delphi with an inquiry whether the god would sanction its publication. The deity granted his permission in very cordial terms; hence we may look on the hymn as an authentic document bearing the imprimatur of the Delphic Apollo himself. In it the pedigree of Aesculapius is traced as follows: Father Zeus bestowed the hand of the Muse Erato on Malus in holy matrimony (ὁσίοισι γάμοις.) The pair had a daughter Cleophema, who married Phlegyas, a native of Epidaurus; and Phlegyas had by her a daughter Aegla, otherwise known as Coronis, whom Phoebus of the golden bow beheld in the house of her grandfather Malus, and falling in love he got by her a child, Aesculapius. See Ἐφημερὶς a)rxaiologikh/, iii. (1885) coll. 65ff.; H. Collitz and F. Bechtel, Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, iii.1, pp. 162ff., No. 3342.) And they say that Apollo loved her and at once consorted with her, but that she, against her father's judgment, preferred and cohabited with Ischys, brother of Caeneus. Apollo cursed the raven that brought the tidings and made him black instead of white, as he had been before; but he killed Coronis. As she was burning, he snatched the babe from the pyre and brought it to Chiron, the centaur,[*](The story how Coronis played her divine lover false and was killed by him, and how the god rescued his child from the burning pyre and carried him to Chiron, is told by Pind. P. 3.8(14)ff. Compare the Scholiast on this passage of Pindar, especially 27(48); Paus. 2.26.6 (according to whom it was Hermes, not Apollo, who snatched the child from the burning pyre); Hyginus, Fab. 202; Hyginus, Ast. ii.40; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iii.506; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 17, 37, and 118 (First Vatican Mythographer 46, 115; Second Vatican Mythographer 128). All these writers, except Pindar and Pausanias, relate the story of the tell-tale raven and his punishment. The story is also told by Ov. Met. 2.534ff. and Ant. Lib. 20, but neither of them mentions Aesculapius. It was narrated by Pherecydes, who may have been the source from which the other writers drew their information. See Scholiast on Pind. P. 3.34(59). The name of the human lover of Coronis is given as Ischys, son of Elatus, by Pindar and Pausanias in agreement with Apollodorus. But Antoninus Liberalis calls him Alcyoneus; Lactantius Placidus and the Second Vatican Mythographer call him Lycus; and the First Vatican Mythographer describes him (Hyginus, Fab. 115) simply as the son of Elatus. As to the connexion of Coronis with the raven or the crow in Greek legendary lore, see Frazer, note on Paus. ii.17.11 (vol. iii. pp. 72ff.). Compare D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Glossary of Greek Birds, p. 93.) by whom he was brought up and taught the arts of healing and hunting. And having become a surgeon, and carried the art to a great pitch, he not only prevented some from dying, but even raised up the dead; for he had received from Athena the blood that flowed from the veins of the Gorgon, and while he used the blood that flowed from the veins on the left side for the bane of mankind, he used the blood that flowed from the right side for salvation, and by that means he raised the dead.[*](Compare Zenobius, Cent. i.18, who probably copied Apollodorus. According to Eur. Ion 999ff., Pallas gave Erichthonius two drops of the Gorgon's blood, one of them a deadly poison, the other a powerful medicine for the healing of diseases.) I found some who are reported to have been raised by him,[*](For other lists of dead men whom Aesculapius is said to have restored to life, see Sextus Empiricus, p. 658, ed. Bekker; Scholiast on Pind. P. 3.54(96); Scholiast on Eur. Alc. 1. These two Scholiasts mention that according to Pherecydes the people who died at Delphi were raised from the dead by Aesculapius. To the list of dead men whom Aesculapius restored to life, Propertius adds Androgeus, son of Minos (Prop. ii.1.61ff.).) to wit, Capaneus and Lycurgus,[*](The resurrection of these two men by the power of Aesculapius is mentioned also, on the authority of Stesichorus, by the Scholiast on Eur. Alc. 1, and the Scholiast on Pind. P. 3.54(96). Otherwise the event is apparently not noticed by ancient writers, and of the many legendary persons who bore the name of Lycurgus we do not know which is referred to. Heyne conjectured that the incident took place in the war of the Epigoni against Thebes, when Capaneus, one of the original Seven against Thebes, and Lycurgus, son of Pronax (as to whom see Apollod. 1.9.13) may have been restored to life by Aesculapius. This conjecture is confirmed by a passage of Sextus Empiricus (p. 658 ed. Bekker), where we read: “Stesichorus in his Eriphyle says that he (Aesculapius) raised up some of those who fell at Thebes.”) as Stesichorus says in the Eriphyle; Hippolytus,[*](As to the restoration of Hippolytus to life by Aesculapius see Pind. P. 3.54(96)ff., with the Scholiast; Sextus Empiricus, p. 658, ed. Bekker (who quotes as his authority Staphylus in his book on the Arcadians); Scholiast on Eur. Alc. 1 (who quotes Apollodorus as his authority); Eratosthenes, Cat. 6; Hyginus, Fab. 49; Hyginus, Ast. ii.14; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.434, vi.353(375). After his resurrection Hippolytus is said to have gone to dwell at Aricia, on the Alban Hills, near Rome, where he reigned as a king and dedicated a precinct to Diana. See Paus. 2.27.4; Verg. A. 7.761ff., with the commentary of Servius; Ovid, Fasti iii.263ff., v.735ff.; Ov. Met. 15.297ff.; Scholiast on Persius, Sat. vi.56, pp. 347ff., ed. O. Jahn; Lactantius, Divin. Inst. i.17; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 118 (Second Vatican Mythographer 128). The silence of Apollodorus as to this well-known Italian legend, which was told to account for the famous priesthood of Diana at Aricia, like his complete silence as to Rome, which he never mentions, tends to show that Apollodorus either deliberately ignored the Roman empire or wrote at a time when there was but little intercourse between Greece and that part of Italy which was under Roman rule.) as the author of the Naupactica reports; Tyndareus, as Panyasis says;[*](For the raising of Tyndareus from the dead by Aesculapius see also Sextus Empiricus, p. 658, ed. Bekker; Scholiast on Eur. Alc. 1 (both these writers cite Panyasis as their authority); Lucian, De saltatione 45; Zenobius, Cent. i.47; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxix.3.) Hymenaeus, as the Orphics report; and Glaucus, son of Minos,[*](See above, Apollod. 3.3.1.) as Melesagoras relates.