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But Zeus, fearing that men might acquire the healing art from him and so come to the rescue of each other, smote him with a thunderbolt.[*](This account of the death of Aesculapius, the revenge of Apollo, and his servitude with Admetus is copied almost verbally by Zenobius, Cent. i.18, but as usual without acknowledgment. Compare Pherecydes, quoted by the Scholiast on Eur. Alc. 1; Pind. P. 3.54(96)ff.; Eur. Alc. 1ff.; Eur. Alc. 123ff.; Diod. 4.71.1-3; Hyginus, Fab. 49; Serv. Verg. A. 7.761; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 17 (First Vatican Mythographer 46). According to Diod. 4.71.1-3 Aesculapius as a physician was so successful in his practice that the death-rate was perceptibly lowered, and Hades accused the doctor to Zeus of poaching on his preserves. The accusation angered Zeus, and he killed Aesculapius with a thunderbolt. According to Pherecydes, with whom Apollodorus agrees, the period of Apollo's servitude with Admetus was one year; according to Servius and the First Vatican Mythographer it was nine years. This suggests that the period may have been what was called a “great” or “eternal” year, which included eight ordinary years. See above, Apollod. 3.4.2, with the note on Apollod. 2.5.11. According to one account the motive for Apollo's servitude was his love for Admetus. See Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 45ff.; Scholiast on Eur. Alc. 1, quoting Rhianus as his authority. Apollo is said to have served Branchus as well as Admetus (Philostratus, Epist. 57), and we have seen that he served Laomedon. See above, Apollod. 2.5.9 note.) Angry on that account, Apollo slew the Cyclopes who had fashioned the thunderbolt for Zeus.[*](According to Pherecydes, quoted by the Scholiast on Eur. Alc. 1, it was not the Cyclopes but their sons whom Apollo slew. The passage of Pherecydes, as quoted by the Scholiast, runs as follows: “To him” (that is, to Admetus) “came Apollo, to serve him as a thrall for a year, at the command of Zeus, because Apollo had slain the sons of Brontes, of Steropes, and of Arges. He slew them out of spite at Zeus, because Zeus slew his son Aesculapius with a thunderbolt at Pytho; for by his remedies Aesculapius raised the dead.”) But Zeus would have hurled him to Tartarus;

Now Hippocoon had sons, to wit: Dorycleus, Scaeus, Enarophorus, Eutiches, Bucolus, Lycaethus,

Icarius and Periboea, a Naiad nymph,[*](According to the Scholiast on Hom. Od. xv.16, the wife of Icarius was Dorodoche, daughter of Ortilochus; but he adds that according to Pherecydes she was Asterodia, daughter of Eurypylus.) had five sons, Thoas, Damasippus, Imeusimus, Aletes, Perileos,[*](Perileos (Perilaus), son of Icarius, is said to have accused the matricide Orestes at the court of the Areopagus. See Paus. 8.34.4.) and a daughter Penelope, whom Ulysses married.[*](Compare Paus. 3.12.1; Paus. 3.20.10ff. According to the former of these passages, Ulysses won her hand in a footrace. As to races for brides, see Apollod. 3.9.2; Apollod. E.2.5; and note on Apollod. 1.7.8.) Tyndareus and Leda had daughters, to wit, Timandra, whom Echemus married,[*](Compare Paus. 8.5.1.) and Clytaemnestra, whom Agamemnon married; also another daughter Phylonoe, whom Artemis made immortal.

But Zeus in the form of a swan consorted with Leda, and on the same night Tyndareus cohabited with her; and she bore Pollux and Helen to Zeus, and Castor and Clytaemnestra to Tyndareus.[*](Compare Eur. Hel. 16ff.; Lucian, Dial. Deorum xx.14; Lucian, Charidemus 7; Scholiast on Hom. Od. xi.298; Hyginus, Fab. 77; Hyginus, Ast. ii.8; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 27, 64, 119ff., 163 (First Vatican Mythographer 78, 204; Second Vatican Mythographer 132; Third Vatican Mythographer 3.6). As the fruit of her intercourse with the swan, Leda is said to have laid an egg, which in the time of Pausanias was still to be seen hanging by ribbons from the roof of the temple of Hilaira and Phoebe at Sparta. See Paus. 3.16.1. According to one account (First Vatican Mythographer 78), Castor, Pollux, and Helen all emerged from a single egg; according to another account (First Vatican Mythographer 204), Leda laid two eggs, one of which produced Castor and Pollux, and the other Clytaemnestra and Helen. In heaven the twins Castor and Pollux had each, if we may believe Lucian, half an egg on or above his head in token of the way in which he had been hatched. See Lucian, Dial. Deorum xxvi.1. For the distinction between Pollux and Castor, the former being regarded as the son of Zeus and the latter as the son of Tyndareus, see Pind. N. 10.79(149)ff. According to Hesiod, both Pollux and Castor were sons of Zeus. See Scholiast on Pind. N. 10.80(150).) But some say that Helen

Now the kings of Greece repaired to Sparta to win the hand of Helen. The wooers were these:[*](For another list of the suitors of Helen, see Hyginus, Fab. 81. Hesiod in his Catalogues gave a list of the suitors of Helen, and of this list considerable fragments have been discovered in recent years. They include the names of Menelaus, the two sons of Amphiaraus (Alcmaeon and Amphilochus), Ulysses, Podarces, son of Iphiclus, Protesilaus, son of Actor, <Menestheus>, son of Peteos, Ajax of Salamis, Elephenor, son of Chalcodon, and Idomeneus, son of Minos. Thus the list only partially agrees with that of Apollodorus, for it comprises the names of Podarces and Idomeneus, which are omitted by Apollodorus, who also mentions only one son of Amphiaraus, namely Amphilochus. Hyginus includes Idomeneus, but not Podarces, nor the sons of Amphiaraus. In these recently discovered fragments Hesiod does not confine himself to a bare list of names; he contrives to hit off the different characters of the suitors by describing the different manners of their wooing. Thus the canny and thrifty Ulysses brought no wedding presents, because he was quite sure he had no chance of winning the lady. On the other hand, the bold Ajax was extremely liberal with his offer of other people's property; he promised to give magnificent presents in the shape of sheep and oxen which he proposed to lift from the neighbouring coasts and islands. Idomeneus sent nobody to woo the lady, but came himself, trusting apparently to the strength of his personal attractions to win her heart and carry her home with him a blooming bride. See Griechische Dichterfragmente, i., Epische und elegische Fragmente, bearbeitet von W. Schubart und U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Berlin, 1907), pp. 28ff. (Berliner Klassikertexte 1); Hes. Frag. 68.)— Ulysses, son of Laertes; Diomedes, son of Tydeus; Antilochus, son of Nestor; Agapenor, son of Ancaeus; Sthenelus, son of Capaneus; Amphimachus, son of Cteatus; Thalpius, son of Eurytus; Meges, son of Phyleus; Amphilochus, son of Amphiaraus; Menestheus, son of Peteos; Schedius and Epistrophus, sons of Iphitus; Polyxenus, son of Agasthenes; Peneleos, son of Hippalcimus; Leitus, son of Alector; Ajax, son of Oileus; Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, sons of Ares; Elephenor, son of Chalcodon; Eumelus, son of Admetus; Polypoetes, son of Perithous; Leonteus, son of Coronus; Podalirius and Machaon, sons of Aesculapius; Philoctetes, son of Poeas; Eurypylus, son of Evaemon; Protesilaus, son of Iphiclus; Menelaus, son of Atreus; Ajax and Teucer, sons of

Seeing the multitude of them, Tyndareus feared that the preference of one might set the others quarrelling; but Ulysses promised that, if he would help him to win the hand of Penelope, he would suggest a way by which there would be no quarrel. And when Tyndareus promised to help him, Ulysses told him to exact an oath from all the suitors that they would defend the favoured bridegroom against any wrong that might be done him in respect of his marriage. On hearing that, Tyndareus put the suitors on their oath,[*](Compare Hesiod, in Epische und elegische Fragmente, ed. W. Schubart und U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, p. 33; Hes. Frag. 68.89ff.; Eur. IA 57ff.; Thuc. 1.9; Paus. 3.20.9; Scholiast on Hom. Il. 2.339; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 202. According to Paus. 3.20.9 the suitors took the oath standing on the severed pieces of a horse. As to the custom of standing on the pieces of a sacrificial victim or passing between them at the making of solemn covenants, see Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, i.392ff. ) and while he chose Menelaus to be the bridegroom of Helen, he solicited Icarius to bestow Penelope on Ulysses.

Now Menelaus had by Helen a daughter Hermione and, according to some, a son Nicostratus;[*](Homer definitely affirms (Hom. Od. 4.12-14; compare Hom. Il. 3.174ff.) that Helen had only one child, her daughter Hermione. But according to Hesiod, whose verses are quoted by the Scholiast on Soph. El. 539, Helen afterwards bore a son Nicostratus to Menelaus. Compare Scholiast on Hom. Od. iv.11, who tells us further that according to more recent writers Helen had a son Corythus or Helenus by Alexander (Paris). According to Dictys Cretensis v.5, Helen had three sons by Alexander, namely, Bunomus, Corythus, and Idaeus, who were accidentally killed at Troy through the collapse of a vaulted roof. The Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.175, says that the Lacedaemonians worshipped two sons of Helen, to wit, Nicostratus and Aethiolas. He further mentions, on the authority of Ariaethus, that Helen had by Menelaus a son Maraphius, from whom the Persian family of the Maraphions was descended. See Dindorf's edition of the Scholiast on the Iliad vol. i. pp. 147ff., vol. iii. p. 171. According to one account, Helen had a daughter by Theseus before she was married to Menelaus; this daughter was Iphigenia; Helen entrusted her to her sister Clytaemnestra, who reared the child and passed her off on her husband Agamemnon as her own offspring. This account of the parentage of Iphigenia was supported by the authority of Stesichorus and other poets. See Paus. 2.22.6ff.; Ant. Lib. 27. Sophocles represents Menelaus as having two children before he sailed for Troy (Soph. Elec. 539ff.).) and by a female slave Pieris, an Aetolian,

Of the sons born to Leda Castor practised the art of war, and Pollux the art of boxing;[*](Compare Hom. Il. 3.237; Hom. Od. 11.300.) and on account of their manliness they were both called Dioscuri.[*](That is, “striplings of Zeus.”) And wishing to marry the daughters of Leucippus, they carried them off from Messene and wedded them;[*](The usual tradition seems to have been that Idas and Lynceus, the sons of Aphareus, were engaged to be married to the daughters of Leucippus, who were their cousins, since Aphareus and Leucippus were brothers (see above, Apollod. 3.10.3). They invited to their wedding Castor and Pollux, who were cousins both to the bridegrooms and the brides, since Tyndareus, the human father of Castor and Pollux (see above, Apollod. 3.10.7), was a brother of Aphareus and Leucippus (see above, Apollod. 3.10.3). But at the wedding Castor and Pollux carried off the brides, and being pursued by the bridegrooms, Idas and Lynceus, they turned on their pursuers. In the fight which ensued, Castor and Lynceus were slain, and Idas was killed by Zeus with a thunderbolt. See Theocritus xxii.137ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.243; Scholiast on Pind. N. 10.60(112); Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 546; Tzetzes, Chiliades ii.686ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 80; Ovid, Fasti v.699ff.; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 27 (First Vatican Mythographer 77). According to Apollodorus, however, the fight between the cousins was occasioned by a quarrel arising over the division of some cattle which they had lifted from Arcadia in a joint raid. This seems to have been the version of the story which Pindar followed; for in his description of the fatal affray between the cousins (Pind. N. 10.60(112)ff.) he speaks only of anger about cattle as the motive that led Idas to attack Castor. The rape of the daughters of Leucippus by Castor and Pollux was a favourite subject in art. See Paus. 1.18.1; Paus. 3.17.3; Paus. 3.18.11; Paus. 4.31.9. The names of the damsels, as we learn from Apollodorus, were Phoebe and Hilaira. Compare Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Ἄφιδνα ; Prop. i.2.15ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 80. At Sparta they had a sanctuary, in which young maidens officiated as priestesses and were called Leucippides after the goddesses. See Paus. 3.16.1. From an obscure gloss of Hesychius, s.v. πωλία , we may perhaps infer that these maiden priestesses, like the goddesses, were two in number, and that they were called “the colts of the Leucippides.” Further, since the name of Leucippus, the legendary father of the goddesses, means simply “White Horse,” it is tempting to suppose that the Leucippides, like their priestesses, were spoken of and perhaps conceived as white horses. More than that, Castor and Pollux, who carried off these white-horse maidens, if we may call them so, were not only constantly associated with horses, but were themselves called White Horses (λευκόπωλοι) by Pind. P. 1.66(126) and “White Colts of Zeus” by Euripides in a fragment of his lost play the Antiope. See S. Wide, Lakonische Kulte (Leipsig, 1893), pp. 331ff.; A. B. Cook, Zeus, i.442. These coincidences can hardly be accidental. They point to the worship of a pair of brother deities conceived as white horses, and married to a pair of sister deities conceived as white mares, who were served by a pair of maiden priestesses called White Colts, assisted apparently by a boy priest or priests; for a Laconian inscription describes a certain youthful Marcus Aurelius Zeuxippus as “priest of the Leucippides and neatherd (? βουαγόρ) of the Tyndarids,” that is, of Castor and Pollux. See P. Cauer, Delectus Inscriptionum Graecarum propter dialectum memorabilium, p. 17, No. 36; H. Collitz und F. Bechtel, Sammlung der griechischen DialektInschriften, iii.2, pp. 40ff., No. 4499.) and Pollux had Mnesileus by Phoebe, and

Electra, daughter of Atlas, had two sons, Iasion and Dardanus, by Zeus.[*](This account of the parentage of Iasion had the authority of Hellanicus (Scholiast on Hom. Od. v.125). Compare Diod. 5.48.2.) Now Iasion loved Demeter, and in an attempt to defile the goddess he was killed by a thunderbolt.[*](Compare Conon 21; Strab. 7 Fr. 50, ed. Meineke; Hyginus, Ast. ii.4. A different turn is given to the story by Homer, who represents the lovers meeting in a thrice-ploughed field (Hom. Od. 5.125-128). To the same effect Hes. Th. 969-974 says that the thrice-ploughed field where they met was in a fertile district of Crete, and that Wealth was born as the fruit of their love. Compare Diod. 5.77.1ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 270. The Scholiast on Hom. Od. v.125, attempts to rationalize the myth by saying that Iasion was the only man who preserved seed-corn after the deluge.) Grieved at his brother's death, Dardanus left Samothrace and came to the opposite mainland. That country was ruled by a king, Teucer, son of the river Scamander and of a nymph Idaea, and the inhabitants of the country were called Teucrians after Teucer. Being welcomed by the king, and having received a share of the land and the king's daughter Batia, he built a city Dardanus, and when Teucer died he called the whole country Dardania.[*](As to the migration of Dardanus from Samothrace to Asia and his foundation of Dardania or Dardanus, see Diod. 5.48.2ff.; Conon 21; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Δάρδανος ; compare Hom. Il. 20.215ff. According to one account he was driven from Samothrace by a flood and floated to the coast of the Troad on a raft. See Lycophron, Cassandra 72ff., with the scholia of Tzetzes; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xx.215. As to his marriage with Batia, daughter of Teucer, and his succession to the kingdom, compare Diod. 4.75.1. According to Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Δάρδανες , Batia, the wife of Dardanus, was a daughter of Tros, not of Teucer.)

And he had sons born

But Ilus went to Phrygia, and finding games held there by the king, he was victorious in wrestling. As a prize he received fifty youths and as many maidens, and the king, in obedience to an oracle, gave him also a dappled

Now the Dawn snatched away Tithonus for love and brought him to Ethiopia, and there consorting with him she bore two sons, Emathion and Memnon.[*](As to the love of Dawn (Eos) for Tithonus, see the HH Aphr. 218ff.; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 18; Scholiast on Hom. Il. 11.1; Prop. ii.18.7-18, ed. Butler. Homer speaks of Dawn (Aurora) rising from the bed of Tithonus (Hom. Il. 11.1ff.; Hom. Od. 5.1ff.). According to the author of the Homeric hymn, Dawn obtained from Zeus for her lover the boon of immortality; according to the Scholiast on Homer, it was Tithonus himself who asked and obtained the boon from the loving goddess. But the boon turned to be a bane; for neither he nor she had remembered to ask for freedom from the infirmities of age. So when he was old and white-headed and could not stir hand or foot, he prayed for death as a release from his sufferings; but die he could not, for he was immortal. Hence the goddess in pity either shut him up in his chamber and closed the shining doors on him, leaving him to lisp and babble there eternally, or she turned him into a grasshopper, the most musical of insects, that she might have the joy of hearing her lover's voice sounding for ever in her ears. The former and sadder fate is vouched for by the hymn writer, the latter by the Scholiast. Tzetzes perhaps lets us into the secret of the transformation when he tells us Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 18 that “the grasshoppers, like the snakes, when they are old, slough their old age” (τὸ γῆρας, literally “old age,” but applied by the Greeks to the cast skins of serpents). It is a widespread notion among savages, which the ancestors of the Greeks apparently shared, that creatures which cast their skins, thereby renew their youth and live for ever. See Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, i.66ff. The ancient Latins seem also to have cherished the same illusion, for they applied the same name (senecta or senectus) to old age and to the cast skins of serpents.)