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.)
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But after that Ilium was captured by Hercules, as we have related a little before,[*](See above, Apollod. 2.6.4.) Podarces, who was called Priam, came to the throne, and he married first Arisbe, daughter of Merops, by whom he had a son Aesacus, who married Asterope, daughter of Cebren, and when she died he mourned for her and was turned into a bird.[*](Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 224, who seems to follow Apollodorus. The bird into which the mourner was transformed appears to have been a species of diver. See Ov. Met. 11.749-795; Serv. Verg. A. 4.254, Serv. Verg. A. 5.128.) But Priam handed over Arisbe to Hyrtacus and married a second wife Hecuba, daughter of Dymas, or, as some say, of Cisseus, or, as others say, of the river Sangarius and Metope.[*](According to Hom. Il. 16.718ff. Hecuba was a daughter of Dymas, “who dwelt in Phrygia by the streams of Sangarius.” But Eur. Hec. 3 represents her as a daughter of Cisseus, and herein he is followed by Verg. A. 7.320, x.705. The mythographers Hyginus and Tzetzes leave it an open question whether Hecuba was a daughter of Cisseus or of Dymas. See Hyginus, Fab. 91, 111, 249; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron, Introd. p. 266, ed. Muller. Compare the Scholiast on Eur. Hec. 3: “Pherecydes writes thus: And Priam, son of Laomedon, marries Hecuba, daughter of Dymas, son of Eioneus, son of Proteus, or of the river Sangarius, by a Naiad nymph Evagora. But some have recorded that Hecuba's mother was Glaucippe, daughter of Xanthus. But Nicander, in agreement with Euripides, says that Hecuba was a daughter of Cisseus.” The Scholiast on Hom. Il. xvi.718, says that according to Pherecydes the father of Hecuba was Dymas and her mother was a nymph Eunoe, but that according to Athenion her father was Cisseus and her mother Teleclia. Thus it would appear that after all we cannot answer with any confidence the question with which the emperor Tiberius loved to pose the grammarians of his time, “Who was Hecuba's mother?” See Suetonius, Tiberius 70.) The first son born to her was Hector; and when a second
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babe was about to be born Hecuba dreamed she had brought forth a firebrand, and that the fire spread over the whole city and burned it.
[*](For Hecuba's dream and the exposure of the infant Paris, see Pind. Pa. 8; Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.325; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 86; Cicero, De divinatione i.21.42; Hyginus, Fab. 91; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 139 (Second Vatican Mythographer 197). The dream is alluded to, though not expressly mentioned, by Eur. Tro. 919ff. and Verg. A. 7.319ff. The warning given by the diviner Aesacus is recorded also by Tzetzes (Scholiast on Lycophron 224), according to whom the sage advised to put both mother and child to death. Eur. And. 293ff. represents Cassandra shrieking in a prophetic frenzy to kill the ill-omened babe. The suckling of the infant Paris for five days by a she-bear seems to be mentioned only by Apollodorus.) When Priam learned of the dream from Hecuba, he sent for his son Aesacus, for he was an interpreter of dreams, having been taught by his mother's father Merops. He declared that the child was begotten to be the ruin of his country and advised that the babe should be exposed. When the babe was born Priam gave it to a servant to take and expose on Ida; now the servant was named Agelaus. Exposed by him, the infant was nursed for five days by a bear; and, when he found it safe, he took it up, carried it away, brought it up as his own son on his farm, and named him Paris. When he grew to be a young man, Paris excelled many in beauty and strength, and was afterwards surnamed Alexander, because he repelled robbers and defended the flocks.
[*](Apollodorus apparently derives the name Alexander from ἀλέξω “to defend” and ἀνδρός, the genitive of “man.” As the verb was somewhat archaic, he explains it by the more familiar βοηθῶ, if indeed the explanation be not a marginal gloss. See the Critical Note.) And not long afterwards he discovered his parents. After him Hecuba gave birth to daughters, Creusa,
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Laodice,
[*](Laodice is mentioned by Homer as the fairest of Priam's daughters and the wife of Helicaon (Hom. Il. 3.122ff.; Hom. Il. 6.252).) Polyxena, and Cassandra. Wishing to gain Cassandra's favours, Apollo promised to teach her the art of prophecy; she learned the art but refused her favours; hence Apollo deprived her prophecy of power to persuade.
[*](Compare Aesch. Ag. 1202-1212; Hyginus, Fab. 93; Serv. Verg. A. 2.247; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 55, 139 (First Vatican Mythographer 180; Second Vatican Mythographer 196). According to Serv. Verg. A. 2.247, Apollo deprived Cassandra of the power of persuading men of the truth of her prophecies by spitting into her mouth. We have seen that by a similar procedure Glaucus was robbed of the faculty of divination. See above, Apollod. 3.3.2. An entirely different account of the way in which Cassandra and her twin brother Helenus acquired the gift of prophecy is given by a Scholiast on Hom. Il. vii.44. He says that when the festival in honour of the birth of the twins was being held in the sanctuary of the Thymbraean Apollo, the two children played with each other there and fell asleep in the temple. Meantime the parents and their friends, flushed with wine, had gone home, forgetting all about the twins whose birth had given occasion to the festivity. Next morning, when they were sober, they returned to the temple and found the sacred serpents purging with their tongues the organs of sense of the children. Frightened by the cry which the women raised at the strange sight, the serpents disappeared among the laurel boughs which lay beside the infants on the floor; but from that hour Cassandra and Helenus possessed the gift of prophecy. For this story the Scholiast refers to the authority of Anticlides. In like manner Melampus is said to have acquired the art of soothsaying through the action of serpents which licked his ears. See above, Apollod. 1.9.11.) Afterwards Hecuba bore sons,
[*](Compare Hom. Il. 14.248ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 90.) Deiphobus, Helenus, Pammon, Polites, Antiphus, Hipponous, Polydorus, and Troilus: this last she is said to have had by Apollo. By other women Priam had sons, to wit, Melanippus, Gorgythion, Philaemon, Hippothous, Glaucus, Agathon, Chersidamas, Evagoras, Hippodamas, Mestor, Atas, Doryclus, Lycaon, Dryops, Bias, Chromius, Astygonus, Telestas, Evander, Cebriones, Mylius, Archemachus, Laodocus, Echephron, Idomeneus, Hyperion, Ascanius, Democoon, Aretus, Deiopites, Clonius, Echemmon, Hypirochus, Aegeoneus, Lysithous, Polymedon; and daughters, to wit, Medusa, Medesicaste, Lysimache, and Aristodeme.
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Now Hector married Andromache, daughter of Eetion,[*](See Hom. Il. 6.395ff., where it is said that Eetion was king of Thebe in Cilicia.) and Alexander married Oenone, daughter of the river Cebren.[*](For the loves of Paris and Oenone, and their tragic end, compare Conon 23; Parthenius, Narrat. 4; Ovid, Her. v.) She had learned from Rhea the art of prophecy, and warned Alexander not to sail to fetch Helen; but failing to persuade him, she told him to come to her if he were wounded, for she alone could heal him. When he had carried off Helen from Sparta and Troy was besieged, he was shot by Philoctetes with the bow of Hercules, and went back to Oenone on Ida. But she, nursing her grievance, refused to heal him. So Alexander was carried to Troy and died. But Oenone repented her, and brought the healing drugs; and finding him dead she hanged herself. The Asopus river was a son of Ocean and Tethys, or, as Acusilaus says, of Pero and Poseidon, or, according to some, of Zeus and Eurynome. Him Metope, herself a daughter of the river Ladon, married and bore two sons, Ismenus and Pelagon, and twenty daughters, of whom one, Aegina, was carried off by Zeus.[*](As to the river-god Asopus and his family, see Diod. 4.72.1-5; Paus. 2.5.1ff.; Paus. 5.22.6. According to Diodorus, Asopus was a son of Ocean and Tethys; he married Metope, daughter of the Ladon, by whom he had two sons and twelve daughters. Asopus, the father of Aegina, is identified by Diodorus and Pausanias with the Phliasian or Sicyonian river of that name; but the patriotic Boeotian poet Pindar seems to claim the honour for the Boeotian Asopus (Pind. I. 8.16(35)ff., and he is naturally supported by his Scholiast (Scholiast on Pind. I. 8.17(37)), as well as by Statius vii.315ff.) and his Scholiast, Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. vii.424. The Phliasians even went so far as to assert that their Asopus was the father of Thebe, who gave her name to the Boeotian Thebes; but this view the Thebans could not accept (Paus. 2.5.2).) In search of her Asopus came
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to Corinth, and learned from Sisyphus that the ravisher was Zeus.
[*](Compare above, Apollod. 1.9.3; Paus. 2.5.1.) Asopus pursued him, but Zeus, by hurling thunderbolts, sent him away back to his own streams;
[*](Compare Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 78; Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.117.) hence coals are fetched to this day from the streams of that river.
[*](According to Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. vii.315, live coals were to be found in the Asopus, and Statius, in his windy style (Statius, Theb. vii.325ff.), talks of the “brave river blowing ashes of thunderbolts and Aetnaean vapours from its panting banks to the sky,” which may be a poetical description of river-mists. But both the poet and his dutiful commentator here refer to the Boeotian Asopus, whereas Apollodorus probably refers to the Phliasian river of that name.) And having conveyed Aegina to the island then named Oenone, but now called Aegina after her, Zeus cohabited with her and begot a son Aeacus on her.
[*](Compare Diod. 4.72.5; Paus. 2.29.2; Hyginus, Fab. 52. As to Oenone, the ancient name of Aegina, compare Pind. N. 4.46(75); Pind. N. 5.16(29); Pind. N. 8.7(12); Pind. I. 5.34(44); Hdt. 8.46; Strab. 8.6.16; Hyginus, Fab. 52. Another old name for Aegina was Oenopia. See Pind. N. 8.21(45); Ov. Met. 7.472ff. ) As Aeacus was alone in the island, Zeus made the ants into men for him.
[*](As to the transformation of the ants into men see Hesiod, quoted by the Scholiast on Pind. N. 3.13(21); and by Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 176; Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.180; Strab. 8.6.16; Hyginus, Fab. 52; Ov. Met. 7.614ff.; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 23, 142 (First Vatican Mythographer 67; Second Vatican Mythographer 204). The fable is clearly based on the false etymology which derived the name Myrmidons from μύρμηκες, “ants.” Strab. 8.6.16 attempted to rationalize the myth.) And Aeacus married Endeis, daughter of Sciron, by whom he had two sons, Peleus and Telamon.
[*](Compare Plut. Thes. 10; Paus. 2.29.9; Scholiast on Eur. Andr. 687. According to another account, Endeis, the mother of Telamon and Peleus, was a daughter of Chiron. See Scholiast on Pind. N. 5.7(12); Scholiast on Hom. Il. xvi.14; Hyginus, Fab. 14.) But Pherecydes says that Telamon was a friend, not a brother of Peleus, he being a son of Actaeus and Glauce, daughter of Cychreus.
[*](This account of the parentage of Telamon, for which we have the authority of the old writer Pherecydes (about 480 B.C.), is probably earlier than the one which represents him as a son of Aeacus. According to it, Telamon was a native, not of Aegina, but of Salamis, his mother Glauce being a daughter of Cychreus, king of Salamis (as to whom see below, Apollod. 3.12.7). It is certain that the later life of Telamon was associated with Salamis, where, according to one account (Diod. 4.72.7), he married Glauce, daughter of Cychreus, king of Salamis, the very woman whom the other and perhaps later version of the legend represented as his mother. See Jebb, Sophocles, Ajax (Cambridge, 1896), Introduction, Section 4, pp. xviiff. ) Afterwards
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Aeacus cohabited with Psamathe, daughter of Nereus, who turned herself into a seal to avoid his embraces, and he begot a son Phocus.
[*](Compare Hes. Th. 1003ff.; Pind. N. 5.12(21); Scholiast on Eur. Andr. 687, who mentions the transformation of the sea-nymph into a seal. The children of Phocus settled in Phocis and gave their name to the country. See Paus. 2.29.2, Paus. 10.1.1, Paus. 10.30.4. Thus we have an instance of a Greek people, the Phocians, who traced their name and their lineage to an animal ancestress. But it would be rash to infer that the seal was the totem of the Phocians. There is no evidence that they regarded the seal with any superstitious respect, though the people of Phocaea, in Asia Minor, who were Phocians by descent (Paus. 7.3.10), put the figure of a seal on their earliest coins. But this was probably no more than a punning badge, like the rose of Rhodes and the wild celery (σέλινον) of Selinus. See George Macdonald, Coin Types (Glasgow, 1905), pp. 17, 41, 50.) Now Aeacus was the most pious of men. Therefore, when Greece suffered from infertility on account of Pelops, because in a war with Stymphalus, king of the Arcadians, being unable to conquer Arcadia, he slew the king under a pretence of friendship, and scattered his mangled limbs, oracles of the gods declared that Greece would be rid of its present calamities if Aeacus would offer prayers on its behalf. So Aeacus did offer prayers, and Greece was delivered from the dearth.
[*](Compare Isoc. 9.14ff.; Diod. 4.61.1ff.; Paus. 2.29.7ff.; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. vi.3.28, p. 753; Scholiast on Pind. N. 5.9(17). Tradition ran that a prolonged drought had withered up the fruits of the earth all over Greece, and that Aeacus, as the son of the sky-god Zeus, was deemed the person most naturally fitted to obtain from his heavenly father the rain so urgently needed by the parched earth and the dying corn. So the Greeks sent envoys to him to request that he would intercede with Zeus to save the crops and the people. “ Complying with their petition, Aeacus ascended the Hellenic mountain and stretching out pure hands to heaven he called on the common god, and prayed him to take pity on afflicted Greece. And even while he prayed a loud clap of thunder pealed, and all the surrounding sky was overcast, and furious and continuous showers of rain burst out and flooded the whole land. Thus was exuberant fertility procured for the fruits of the earth by the prayers of Aeacus” (Clement of Alexandria, Strom. vi.3.28, p. 753). In gratitude for this timely answer to his prayers Aeacus is said to have built a sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Panhellenius in Aegina (Paus. 2.30.4). No place could well be more appropriate for a temple of the rain-god; for the sharp peak of Mount Panhellenius, the highest mountain of Aegina, is a conspicuous landmark viewed from all the neighbouring coasts of the gulf, and in antiquity a cloud settling on the mountain was regarded as a sign of rain (Theophrastus, De signis tempestat. i.24). According to Apollodorus, the cause of the dearth had been a crime of Pelops, who had treacherously murdered Stymphalus, king of Arcadia, and scattered the fragments of his mangled body abroad. This crime seems not to be mentioned by any other ancient writer; but Diodorus Siculus in like manner traces the calamity to a treacherous murder. He says (Diod. 4.61.1) that to punish the Athenians for the assassination of his son Androgeus, the Cretan king Minos prayed to Zeus that Athens might be afflicted with drought and famine, and that these evils soon spread over Attica and Greece. Similarly Alcmaeon's matricide was believed to have entailed a failure of the crops. See above, Apollod. 3.7.5 with the note.) Even after his death
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Aeacus is honored in the abode of Pluto, and keeps the keys of Hades.
[*](In some late Greek verses, inscribed on the tomb of a religious sceptic at Rome, Aeacus is spoken of as the warder or key-holder (κλειδοῦχος) of the infernal regions; but in the same breath the poet assures us that these regions, with all their inmates, were mere fables, and that of the dead there remained no more than the bones and ashes. See Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, vol. iii. p. 933, No. 6298; G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta 646. Elsewhere Pluto himself was represented in art holding in his hand the key of Hades. See Paus. 5.20.3. According to Isoc. 9.15, Aeacus enjoyed the greatest honours after death, sitting as assessor with Pluto and Proserpine. Plato represents him as judging the dead along with Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Triptolemus (Plat. Apol. 41a), it being his special duty to try the souls of those who came from Europe, while his colleague Rhadamanthys dealt with those that came from Asia (Gorgias 79, p. 524A); apparently no provision was made for African ghosts. Lucian depicts Aeacus playing a less dignified part in the lower world as a sort of ticket-collector or customhouse officer (τελώνης), whose business it was to examine the ghostly passengers on landing from the ferryboat, count them, and see that they had paid the fare. See Lucian, Cataplus 4; Charon 2. Elsewhere he speaks of Aeacus as keeping the gate of Hades (Lucian, Dialog. Mort. xx.1).) As Phocus excelled in athletic sports, his brothers Peleus and Telamon plotted against him, and the lot falling on Telamon, he killed his brother in a match by throwing a quoit at his head, and with the help of Peleus carried the body and hid it in a wood. But the murder being detected, the two were driven fugitives from Aegina by Aeacus.
[*](As to the murder of Phocus and the exile of Peleus and Telamon, see Diod. 4.72.6ff. (who represents the death as accidental); Paus. 2.29.9ff.; Scholiast on Pind. N. 5.14(25); Scholiast on Eur. Andr. 687 (quoting verses from the Alcmaeonis); Scholiast on Hom. Il. xvi.14; Ant. Lib. 38; Plut. Parallela 25; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 175 (vol. i. pp. 444, 447, ed. Muller); Hyginus, Fab. 14; Ov. Met. 11.266ff.; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. ii.113, vii.344, xi.281. Tradition differed on several points as to the murder. According to Apollodorus and Plutarch the murderer was Telamon; but according to what seems to have been the more generally accepted view he was Peleus. (So Diodorus, Pausanias, the Scholiast on Homer, one of the Scholiast on Eur. Andr. 687, Ovid, and in one passage Lactantius Placidus). If Pherecydes was right in denying any relationship between Telamon and Peleus, and in representing Telamon as a Salaminian rather than an Aeginetan (see above), it becomes probable that in the original tradition Peleus, not Telamon, was described as the murderer of Phocus. Another version of the story was that both brothers had a hand in the murder, Telamon having banged him on the head with a quoit, while Peleus finished him off with the stroke of an axe in the middle of his back. This was the account given by the anonymous author of the old epic Alcmaeonis; and the same division of labour between the brothers was recognized by the Scholiast on Pindar and Tzetzes, though according to them the quoit was handled by Peleus and the cold steel by Telamon. Other writers (Antoninus Liberalis and Hyginus) lay the murder at the door of both brothers without parcelling the guilt out exactly between them. There seems to be a general agreement that the crime was committed, or the accident happened, in the course of a match at quoits; but Dorotheus (quoted by Plut. Parallela 25) alleged that the murder was perpetrated by Telamon at a boar hunt, and this view seems to have been accepted by Lactantius Placidus in one place (Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. ii.113), though in other places (Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. vii.344 and xi.281) he speaks as if the brothers were equally guilty. But perhaps this version of the story originated in a confusion of the murder of Phocus with the subsequent homicide of Eurytion, which is said to have taken place at a boar-hunt, whether the hunting of the Calydonian boar or another. See below, Apollod. 3.13.2 with the note. According to Pausanias the exiled Telamon afterwards returned and stood his trial, pleading his cause from the deck of a ship, because his father would not suffer him to set foot in the island. But being judged guilty by his stern sire he sailed away, to return to his native land no more. It may have been this verdict, delivered against his own son, which raised the reputation of Aeacus for rigid justice to the highest pitch, and won for him a place on the bench beside Minos and Rhadamanthys in the world of shades.) And Telamon
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betook himself to Salamis, to the court of Cychreus, son of Poseidon and Salamis, daughter of Asopus. This Cychreus became king of Salamis through killing a snake which ravaged the island, and dying childless he bequeathed the kingdom to Telamon.
[*](Compare Diod. 4.72.4; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 110, 175, 451. In the second of these passages (175, vol. i. p. 444, ed. Muller) Tzetzes agrees closely with Apollodorus and probably follows him. A somewhat different version of the legend was told by Hesiod. According to him the snake was reared by Cychreus, but expelled from Salamis by Eurylochus because of the ravages it committed in the island; and after its expulsion it was received at Eleusis by Demeter, who made it one of her attendants. See Strab. 9.1.9. Others said that the snake was not a real snake, but a bad man nicknamed Snake on account of his cruelty, who was banished by Eurylochus and took refuge at Eleusis, where he was appointed to a minor office in the sanctuary of Demeter. See Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Κυχρεῖος πάγος ; Eustathius, Commentary on Dionysius Perieg. 507 (Geographi Graeci Minores, ed. C. Müller, vol. ii. p. 314). Cychreus was regarded as one of the guardian heroes of Salamis, where he was buried with his face to the west. Sacrifices were regularly offered at his grave, and when Solon desired to establish the claim of Athens to the possession of the island, he sailed across by night and sacrificed to the dead man at his grave. See Plut. Sol. 9. Cychreus was worshipped also at Athens (Plut. Thes. 10). It is said that at the battle of Salamis a serpent appeared among the Greek ships, and God announced to the Athenians that this serpent was the hero Cychreus (Paus. 1.36.1). The story may preserve a reminiscence of the belief that kings and heroes regularly turn into serpents after death. The same belief possibly explains the association of Erichthonius or Erechtheus and Cecrops with serpents at Athens. See The Dying God, pp. 86ff. On account of this legendary serpent Lycophron called Salamis the Dragon Isle (Lycophron, Cassandra 110).) And
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Telamon married Periboea, daughter of Alcathus,
[*](Compare Xen. Cyn. i.9; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xvi.14. According to Diod. 4.72.7, Telamon first married Glauce, daughter of Cychreus, king of Salamis, and on her death he wedded the Athenian Eriboea, daughter of Alcathous, by whom he had Ajax. Pindar also mentions Eriboea as the wife of Telamon: see Pind. I. 6.45(65).) son of Pelops, and called his son Ajax, because when Hercules had prayed that he might have a male child, an eagle appeared after the prayer.
[*](As to the prayer of Herakles and the appearance of the eagle in answer to the prayer, see Pind. I. 6.35(51)ff.; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 455-461. Pindar followed by Apollodorus and Tzetzes, derived the name Ajax from αἰετός “an eagle.” A story ran that Herakles wrapt the infant Ajax in the lion's skin which he himself wore, and that Ajax was thus made invulnerable except in the armpit, where the quiver had hung, or, according to others, at the neck. Hence, in describing the suicide of the hero, Aeschylus told how, when he tried to run himself through the body, the sword doubled back in the shape of a bow, till some spirit showed the desperate man the fatal point to which to apply the trenchant blade. See Scholiast on Soph. Aj. 833; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 455-461; Scholiast on Hom. Il. 23.821. Plato probably had this striking passage of the tragedy in his mind when he made Alcibiades speak of Socrates as more proof against vice than Ajax against steel (Plat. Symp. 219e).) And having gone with Hercules on his expedition against Troy, he received as a prize Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, by whom he had a son Teucer.
[*](See above, Apollod. 2.6.4. As Hesione, the mother of Teucer, was not the lawful wife of Telamon, Homer speaks of Teucer as a bastard (Hom. Il. 8.283ff., with the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 8.284). According to another account, it was not Telamon but his brother Peleus who went with Herakles to the siege of Troy. The poets were not consistent on this point. Thus, while in two passages (Pind. N. 4.25(40); Pind. I. 6.27(39)ff.) Pindar assigns to Telamon the glory of the adventure, in another he transfers it to Peleus (quoted by the Scholiast on Eur. Andr. 796; Pind. Fr. 172). Euripides was equally inconsistent. See his Eur. Tro. 804ff. (Telamon), contrasted with his Eur. And. 796ff. (Peleus).)