When Telephassa died, Cadmus buried her, and after being hospitably received by the Thracians he came to Delphi to inquire about Europa. The god told him not to trouble about Europa, but to be guided by a cow, and to found a city wherever
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she should fall down for weariness.
[*](With this story of the foundation of Thebes by Cadmus compare Paus. 9.12.1ff., Paus. 9.19.4; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.494; Scholiast on Eur. Ph. 638 (who quotes the oracle at full length); Scholiast on Aesch. Seven 486; Hyginus, Fab. 178; Ov. Met. 3.6ff. The Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.494 agrees almost verbally with Apollodorus, and cites as his authorities the Boeotica of Hellanicus and the third book of Apollodorus. Hence we may suppose that in this narrative Apollodorus followed Hellanicus. According to Pausanias, the cow which Cadmus followed bore on each flank a white mark resembling the full moon; Hyginus says simply that it had the mark of the moon on its flank. Varro says (Varro, Re Rust. iii.1) that Thebes in Boeotia was the oldest city in the world, having been built by King Ogyges before the great flood. The tradition of its high antiquity has been recently confirmed by the discovery of many Mycenaean remains on the site. See A. D. Keramopoullos, in *)arxaiologiko\n *delti/on (Athens, 1917), pp. 1ff. ) After receiving such an oracle he journeyed through Phocis; then falling in with a cow among the herds of Pelagon, he followed it behind. And after traversing Boeotia, it sank down where is now the city of Thebes. Wishing to sacrifice the cow to Athena, he sent some of his companions to draw water from the spring of Ares. But a dragon, which some said was the offspring of Ares, guarded the spring and destroyed most of those that were sent. In his indignation Cadmus killed the dragon, and by the advice of Athena sowed its teeth. When they were sown there rose from the ground armed men whom they called Sparti.
[*](That is, “sown.” Compare Eur. Ph. 939ff. For the story of the sowing of the dragon's teeth, see Paus. 9.10.1; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.494; Hyginus, Fab. 178; Ov. Met. 3.26-130. Similarly, Jason in Colchis sowed some of the dragon's teeth which he had received from Athena, and from the teeth there sprang up armed men, who fought each other. See Apollod. 1.9.23. As to the dragon-guarded spring at Thebes, see Eur. Ph. 930ff.; Paus. 9.10.5, with my note. It is a common superstition that springs are guarded by dragons or serpents. Compare The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii.155ff. ) These slew each other, some in a chance brawl, and some in ignorance. But Pherecydes says that when Cadmus saw armed men growing up out of the ground, he flung stones
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at them, and they, supposing that they were being pelted by each other, came to blows. However, five of them survived, Echion, Udaeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelorus.
[*](The names of the five survivors of the Sparti are similarly reported by Paus. 9.5.3; the Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. iii.1179; and Hyginus, Fab. 179. From the Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. iii.1179, we learn that their names were given in like manner by Pherecydes as indeed we might have inferred from Apollodorus's reference to that author in the present passage. Ov. Met. 3.126 mentions that five survived, but he names only one (Echion).) But Cadmus, to atone for the slaughter, served Ares for an eternal year; and the year was then equivalent to eight years of our reckoning.[*](The “eternal year” probably refers to the old eight years' cycle, as to which and the period of a homicide's banishment, see the note on Apollod. 2.5.11.) After his servitude Athena procured for him the kingdom, and Zeus gave him to wife Harmonia, daughter of Aphrodite and Ares. And all the gods quitted the sky, and feasting in the Cadmea celebrated the marriage with hymns.[*](As to the marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia, see Pind. P. 3.88(157)ff.; Eur. Ph. 822ff.; Theognis 15-18; Diod. 4.2.1, Diod. 5.48.5, Diod. 5.49.1; Paus. 3.18.12; Paus. 9.12.3; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 101 (Second Vatican Mythographer 78), (who calls the wife Hermiona).) Cadmus gave her a robe and the necklace wrought by Hephaestus, which some say was given to Cadmus by Hephaestus, but Pherecydes says that it was given by Europa, who had received it from Zeus.[*](According to another account, this golden necklace was bestowed by Aphrodite on Cadmus or on Harmonia. See Diod. 4.65.5; Scholiast on Pind. P. 3.94(167); Scholiast on Eur. Ph. 71. But, according to yet another account, the necklace and robe were both bestowed by Athena. See Diod. 5.49.1. Second Vatican Mythographer 78 (see preceding note) says that the necklace was made by Vulcan (Hephaestus) at the instigation of Minerva (Athena), and that it was bestowed by him on Harmonia at her marriage.) And to Cadmus were born daughters, Autonoe, Ino, Semele, Agave, and a son Polydorus.[*](Compare Hes. Th. 975-978ff.; Diod. 4.2.1. As to the daughters Semele and Ino, compare Pind. O. 2.22(38)ff. ) Ino was married to Athamas, Autonoe to Aristaeus, and Agave to Echion.
But Zeus loved Semele and bedded with her unknown to
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Hera.
[*](For the loves of Zeus and Semele and the birth of Dionysus, see Hes. Th. 940-942; Eur. Ba. 1ff.; Eur. Ba. 242ff.; Eur. Ba. 286ff.; Diod. 4.2.2ff.; Diod. 5.52.2; Philostratus, Im. i.13; Paus. 3.24.3; Paus. 9.5.2; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiv.325 (who copies Apollodorus without mentioning him); Scholiast on Pind. O. 2.25(44); Lucian, Dial. Deorum ix.; Nonnus and Nicetas, in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, Appendix Narrationum, lxxi. p. 385; Ov. Met. 3.259ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 167, 179; Fulgentius, Mytholog. ii.15; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. i.12; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 38ff., 102 (First Vatican Mythographer 120; Second Vatican Mythographer 79).) Now Zeus had agreed to do for her whatever she asked, and deceived by Hera she asked that he would come to her as he came when he was wooing Hera. Unable to refuse, Zeus came to her bridal chamber in a chariot, with lightnings and thunderings, and launched a thunderbolt. But Semele expired of fright, and Zeus, snatching the sixth-month abortive child
[*](So the infant Dionysus is described by the Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiv.325, who however may be copying Apollodorus, though he refers to the Bacchae of Euripides. But Lucian, Dial. Deorum. ix.2 and Nonnus, in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, p. 385, speak of the infant as a seventh-month child at birth.) from the fire, sewed it in his thigh. On the death of Semele the other daughters of Cadmus spread a report that Semele had bedded with a mortal man, and had falsely accused Zeus, and that therefore she had been blasted by thunder. But at the proper time Zeus undid the stitches and gave birth to Dionysus, and entrusted him to Hermes. And he conveyed him to Ino and Athamas, and persuaded them to rear him as a girl.
[*](So Achilles is said to have been dressed in his youth as a girl at the court of Lycomedes, king of Scyros. See below, Apollod. 3.13.8 note. These traditions may embody reminiscences of an old custom of dressing boys as girls in order to avert the evil eye. See “Frazer, The Youth of Achilles,” The Classical Review, vii. (1893), pp. 292.ff., and Frazer, note on Paus. i.22.6.) But Hera indignantly drove them mad, and Athamas hunted his elder son Learchus as a deer and killed him,
[*](Compare Paus. 1.44.7; Paus. 9.34.7; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 229; Scholiast on Hom. Od. v.334; Hyginus, Fab. 2, 4; Ovid, Fasti vi.489ff.; Ov. Met. 4.512ff.; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. i.12; Serv. Verg. A. 5.241; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 102 (Second Vatican Mythographer 79).) and Ino threw Melicertes into a boiling
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cauldron,
[*](Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 229; Scholiast on Pind. I., Arg. p. 514, ed. Boeckh.) then carrying it with the dead child she sprang into the deep. And she herself is called Leucothea, and the boy is called Palaemon, such being the names they get from sailors; for they succour storm-tossed mariners.
[*](On Ino and Melicertes see also Paus. 1.42.6, Paus. 1.44.7ff., Paus. 2.1.3, Paus. 4.34.4; Zenobius, Cent. iv.38; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 107, 229-231; Scholiast on Hom. Il. viii.86, Od. v.334; Scholiast on Eur. Med. 1284; Hyginus, Fab. 2, 4; Ov. Met. 4.519-542; Ovid, Fasti vi.491ff.; Serv. Verg. A. 5.241; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. i.12; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 102 (Second Vatican Mythographer 79).) And the Isthmian games were instituted by Sisyphus in honor of Melicertes.
[*](On the foundation of the Isthmian games in honour of Melicertes, see Paus. 1.44.8, Paus. 2.1.3; Scholiasts on Pind. I., Arg. pp. 514, 515, ed. Boeckh; Scholiasts on Eur. Med. 1284; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii.34, p. 29, ed. Potter; Zenobius, Cent. iv.38; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 107, 229-231; Hyginus, Fab. 2.) But Zeus eluded the wrath of Hera by turning Dionysus into a kid,
[*](Dionysus bore the title of Kid. See Hesychius, s.v. Ἔριφος ὁ Διόνυσος ; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Ἀκρώρεια . When the gods fled into Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus is said to have been turned into a goat. See Ant. Lib. 28; Ov. Met. 5.39; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 29 (First Vatican Mythographer 86). As a god of fertility, Dionysus appears to have been conceived as embodied, now in the form of a goat, now in the form of a bull; and his worshippers accordingly entered into communion with him by rending and devouring live goats and bulls. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i.12ff., ii.1ff. The goat was the victim regularly sacrificed in the rites of Dionysus, because the animal injured the vine by gnawing it; but the reason thus alleged for the sacrifice may have been a later interpretation. See Verg. G. 2.380-384, who refers the origin both of tragedy and of comedy to these sacrifices of goats in honour of the wine-god. Compare Varro, Re. Rust. i.2.19; Ovid, Fasti i.353ff.; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium 30; Serv. Verg. A. 3.118.) and Hermes took him and brought him to the nymphs who dwelt at Nysa in Asia, whom Zeus afterwards changed into stars and named them the Hyades.
[*](Apollodorus seems here to be following Pherecydes, who related how the infant Dionysus was nursed by the Hyades. See the Scholiast on Hom. Il. xviii.486; Hyginus, Ast. ii.21; Scholiast on Germanicus, Aratea (in Martianus Capella, ed. Fr. Eyssenhardt, p. 396); Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, i.84. Frag. 46. Nothing could be more appropriate than that the god of the vine should be nursed by the nymphs of the rain. According to Diod. 3.59.2, Diod. 3.64.5, Diod. 3.65.7, Diod. 3.66.3, Nysa, the place where the nymphs reared Dionysus, was in Arabia, which is certainly not a rainy country; but he admits (Diod. 3.66.4, Diod. 3.67.5) that others placed Nysa in Africa, or, as he calls it, Libya, away in the west beside the great ocean. Herodotus speaks of Nysa as “in Ethiopia, above Egypt” (Hdt. 2.146), and he mentions “the Ethiopians who dwell about sacred Nysa and hold the festivals in honor of Dionysus” ( Hdt. 3.97). But in fact Nysa was sought by the ancients in many different and distant lands and was probably mythical, perhaps invented to explain the name of Dionysus. See Stephanus Byzantius and Hesychius, s.v. Νύσα ; A. Wiedemann on Herodotus, ii.146; T. W. Allen and E. E. Sikes on HH to Dion. i.8, p. 4.) 323
Autonoe and Aristaeus had a son Actaeon, who was bred by Chiron to be a hunter and then afterwards was devoured on Cithaeron by his own dogs.[*](As to Actaeon and his dogs, see Diod. 4.3-5; Nonnus, Dionys. v.287ff.; Palaephatus, De incredib. 3; Nonnus, in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, Appendix Narrationum, 6, p. 360; Hyginus, Fab. 181; Ov. Met. 3.138ff.; Fulgentius, Mytholog. iii.3; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 103 (Second Vatican Mythographer 81). Hyginus and Ovid give lists of the dogs' names.) He perished in that way, according to Acusilaus, because Zeus was angry at him for wooing Semele; but according to the more general opinion, it was because he saw Artemis bathing. And they say that the goddess at once transformed him into a deer, and drove mad the fifty dogs in his pack, which devoured him unwittingly. Actaeon being gone, the dogs sought their master howling lamentably, and in the search they came to the cave of Chiron, who fashioned an image of Actaeon, which soothed their grief.
- [ The names of Actaeon's dogs from the . . . . So
- Now surrounding his fair body, as it were that of a beast,
- The strong dogs rent it. Near Arcena first.
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. . . . after her a mighty brood,- Lynceus and Balius goodly-footed, and Amarynthus. —
- And these he enumerated continuously by name.
- And then Actaeon perished at the instigation of Zeus.
- For the first that drank their master's black blood
- Were Spartus and Omargus and Bores, the swift on the track.
- These first ate of Actaeon and lapped his blood.
- And after them others rushed on him eagerly . . . .
- To be a remedy for grievous pains to men. ]
unknown
Dionysus discovered the vine,[*](As to the discovery of the vine by Dionysus and the wanderings of the god, see Diod. 3.62ff., Diod. 4.1.6ff., Diod. 4.2.5ff.; Strab. 15.1.7-9 The story of the rovings of Dionysus, and in particular of his journey to India, was probably suggested by a simple observation of the wide geographical diffusion of the vine. Wherever the plant was cultivated and wine made from the grapes, there it would be supposed that the vine-god must have tarried, dispensing the boon or the bane of his gifts to mortals. There seems to be some reason to think that the original home of the vine was in the regions to the south of the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea, where the plant still grows wild “with the luxuriant wildness of a tropical creeper, clinging to tall trees and producing abundant fruit without pruning or cultivation.” See A. de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants (London, 1884), pp. 191ff. Compare A. Engler, in Victor Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Ubergang aus Asien (Berlin, 1902), pp. 85ff. But these regions are precisely those which Dionysus was supposed to have traversed on his journeys. Certainly the idea of the god's wanderings cannot have been suggested, as appears to be sometimes imagined, by the expedition of Alexander the Great to India (see F. A. Voigt, in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i.1087), since they are described with geographical precision by Euripides, who died before Alexander the Great was born. In his famous play, The Bacchae (Eur. Ba. 13-20), the poet introduces the god himself describing his journey over Lydia, Phrygia, Bactria, Media, and all Asia. And by Asia the poet did not mean the whole continent of Asia as we understand the word, for most of it was unknown to him; he meant only the southern portion of it from the Mediterranean to the Indus, in great part of which the vine appears to be native.) and being driven mad by Hera[*](Compare Eur. Cyc. 3ff. ) he roamed about Egypt and
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Syria. At first he was received by Proteus, king of Egypt,
[*](The visit of Dionysus to Egypt was doubtless invented to explain the close resemblance which the ancients traced between the worships of Osiris and Dionysus. See Hdt. 2.42; Hdt. 2.49, and Hdt. 2.144; Diod. 1.11.3, Diod. 1.13.5, Diod. 1.96.5, Diod. 4.1.6; Plut. Isis et Osiris 28, 34, and 35; Tibullus 1.7.29ff. For the same reason Nysa, the place where Dionysus was supposed to have been reared, was by some people believed to be in the neighbourhood of Egypt. See HH Dion. 8ff.; Diod. 1.15.6, Diod. 4.2.3.) but afterwards he arrived at Cybela in Phrygia.
[*](For the association of Dionysus with Phrygia, see Eur. Ba. 58ff.; Eur. Ba. 78ff., where the chorus of Bacchanals is represented escorting Dionysus from the mountains of Phrygia to Greece. According to one account, Dionysus was reared by the great Phrygian goddess Rhea (Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Μάσταυρα.) These legends were probably intended to explain the resemblances between the Bacchic and the Phrygian religions, especially in respect of their wild ecstatic and orgiastic rites.) And there, after he had been purified by Rhea and learned the rites of initiation, he received from her the costume and hastened through Thrace against the Indians. But Lycurgus, son of Dryas, was king of the Edonians, who dwell beside the river Strymon, and he was the first who insulted and expelled him.
[*](For the story of the hostility of Lycurgus to Dionysus, see Hom. Il. 6.129ff., with the Scholia; Soph. Ant. 955ff.; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 273; Hyginus, Fab. 132; Serv. Verg. A. 3.14; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 39 (First Vatican Mythographer 122). According to Sophocles, it would seem that Lycurgus suffered nothing worse at the hands of his subjects than imprisonment in a cave, where his frenzy gradually subsided. According to Hyginus, Servius, and the First Vatican Mythographer, the furious king, in attempting to cut down the vines, lopped off one of his own feet or even both his legs. It appears to be a common belief that a woodman who cuts a sacred tree with an axe wounds himself in so doing. See W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 36ff. It is said that when the missionary Jerome of Prague was preaching to the heathen Lithuanians and persuading them to cut down their sacred woods, one of the converts, moved by his exhortation, struck at an ancient oak with an axe, but wounded himself in the legs and fell to the ground. See Aeneas Sylvius, Opera (Basel, 1571), p. 418 [wrongly numbered 420]. The accident to this zealous convert closely resembles the one which is said to have befallen the Edonian king in a similar attempt on the sacred vine.) Dionysus took refuge in the sea with Thetis, daughter of Nereus, and the Bacchanals were taken prisoners together with the multitude of Satyrs that attended him. But afterwards the Bacchanals were suddenly released, and Dionysus drove Lycurgus mad. And in his madness he struck his son Dryas dead with an axe, imagining that he was lopping a branch of a vine, and when he had cut off
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his son's extremities,
[*](Greek murderers used to cut off the extremities, such as the ears and noses, of their victims, fasten them on a string, and tie the string round the necks and under the armpits of the murdered men. One motive assigned for this custom, and probably the original one, was the wish by thus mutilating the dead man to weaken him so that he, or rather his ghost, could not take vengeance on his murderer (ἵνα, φασίν, ἀσθενὴς γένοιτο πρὸς τὸ ἀντιτίσασθαι τὸν φονέα, Scholiast on Soph. El. 445; διὰ τούτων ὥσπερ τὴν δύναμιν ἐκείνων [scil. τῶν ἀναιρεθέντων] ἀφαιρούμενοι, διὰ τὸ μὴ παθεῖν ἐς ὕστερόν τι δεινὸν παρʼ ἐκείνων, Suidas, s.v. μασχαλισθῆναι). On this barbarous custom see the Scholiast on Soph. El. 445; Suidas, s.v. μασχαλισθῆναι); Hesychius and Photius, Lexicon, s.v. μασχαλίσματα; ; Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.477. According to one account (Scholiast on Soph. El. 445), the murderer fastened the extremities of his victim about his own person, but the better attested and more probable account is that he tied them about the mutilated body of his victim. Compare E. Rohde, Psyche(3), i.322-326; Jebb on Soph. El. 445, with the Appendix, pp. 211ff. The practice is perhaps illustrated by an original drawing in the Ambrosian manuscript of the Iliad, which represents the Homeric episode of Dolon (Hom. Il. 10.314ff.); in the drawing the corpse of the slain Dolon is depicted shorn of its feet and hands, which lie beside it, while Ulysses holds Dolon's severed head in his hand. See Annali dell' Instituto di Correspondenza Archeologica (Rome, 1875), tav. d'agg. R.; Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums, i.460ff., fig. 506. It appears to be a widespread belief that the ghost of one who has died a violent death is dangerous to his slayer, but that he can be rendered powerless for mischief by maiming his body in such a way as would have disabled him in life. For example, some of the Australian aborigines used to cut off the thumbs of the right hands of dead enemies to prevent their ghosts from throwing spears. See A. Oldfield, “The Aborigines of Australia,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, iii. (1865) p. 287. In Travancore the spirits of murderers who have been hanged are thought to be very mischievous; hence, in order to prevent them from doing harm, it used to be customary to cut off the heels of the criminal with a sword or to hamstring him as he swung on the gallows. See S. Mateer, The Land of Charity (London, (1871), pp. 203ff. In Armenia, when a person falls sick soon after the death of a member of the family, it is supposed that the sickness is caused by the dead man, who cannot rest in his grave until he has drawn away one of his kinsfolk to the spirit land. To prevent this catastrophe, the body of the deceased is disinterred and decapitated, and to make assurance doubly sure the head is smashed or a needle is stuck into it and into the heart. See Manuk Abeghian, Der armenische Volksglaube (Leipsig, 1899), p. 11. In some parts of West Africa it is similarly customary to disinter and decapitate a corpse of a person whose ghost is supposed to be causing sickness, “because the deceased, having his head cut off, will not have the same strength as before, and consequently will not be in a position to trouble him (the patient).” See J. B. Labat, Relation Historique de l'Ethiopie Occidentale (Paris, 1732), i.208.) he recovered his senses.
[*](So Orestes, driven mad by the Furies of his murdered mother, is said to have recovered his senses on biting off one of his own fingers (Paus. 8.34.2). By the sacrifice he may be supposed to have appeased the anger of his mother's ghost, who was thought to be causing his madness. Compare Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, iii.240ff. ) But the land remaining barren, the god declared oracularly that it would bear fruit if Lycurgus were put to death. On hearing that, the Edonians led him to
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Mount Pangaeum and bound him, and there by the will of Dionysus he died, destroyed by horses.
[*](The king thus done to death was perhaps supposed to die in the character of the god; for Dionysus himself was said to have been rent in pieces by the Titans. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed. ii.98ff.; Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i.24ff. ) Having traversed Thrace and the whole of India and set up pillars there,[*](Compare Tzetzes, Chiliades viii.582ff. ) he came to Thebes, and forced the women to abandon their houses and rave in Bacchic frenzy on Cithaeron. But Pentheus, whom Agave bore to Echion, had succeeded Cadmus in the kingdom, and he attempted to put a stop to these proceedings. And coming to Cithaeron to spy on the Bacchanals, he was torn limb from limb by his mother Agave in a fit of madness; for she thought he was a wild beast.[*](In these lines Apollodorus has summarized the argument of the Bacchae of Euripides; for the death of Pentheus, see Eur. Ba. 1043ff. Compare Hyginus, Fab. 184; Ov. Met. 3.511ff., especially 701ff.; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 103 (Second Vatican Mythographer 83). Aeschylus wrote a tragedy on the subject of Pentheus (TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 60ff.).) And having shown the Thebans that he was a god, Dionysus came to Argos, and there again, because they did not honor him, he drove the women mad, and they on the mountains devoured the flesh of the infants whom they carried at their breasts.[*](The reference is to the madness of the daughters of Proetus. See above, Apollod. 2.2.2 note.)
And wishing to be ferried across from Icaria to Naxos he hired a pirate ship of Tyrrhenians. But when they had put him on board, they sailed past Naxos and made for Asia, intending to sell him. Howbeit, he turned the mast and oars into snakes, and filled the vessel with ivy and the sound of flutes. And the pirates went mad, and leaped into the sea, and were turned
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into dolphins.
[*](The story of Dionysus and the pirates is the theme of the HH Dion. Compare Ov. Met. 3.581ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 134; Hyginus, Ast. ii.17; Serv. Verg. A. 1.67; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 39, 133 (First Vatican Mythographer 123; Second Vatican Mythographer 171).) Thus men perceived that he was a god and honored him; and having brought up his mother from Hades and named her Thyone, he ascended up with her to heaven.
[*](Compare Diod. 4.25.4. Dionysus is said to have gone down to hell to fetch up his mother Semele at Lerna, where he plunged into the Alcyonian Lake, a pool which was supposed to be bottomless and therefore to afford an easy access to the nether world. See Paus. 2.37.5; and for a description of the pool as it is at the present time, see Frazer's commentary on Pausanias, vol. v. pp. 604ff. Never having been in hell before, Dionysus did not know how to go there, and he was reduced to the necessity of asking the way. A certain Prosymnus pointed it out to the deity on condition of receiving a certain reward. When Dionysus returned from the lower world, he found that his guide had died in the meantime; but he punctually paid the promised reward to the dead man at his grave with the help of a branch of fig wood, which he whittled into an appropriate shape. This story was told to explain the similar implements which figured prominently in the processions of Dionysus. See Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii.34, pp. 29ff., ed. Potter; Nonnus, in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, Appendix Narrationum, xxii.1, p. 368; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 212; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes v.28; Hyginus, Ast. ii.5. Pausanias calls the god's guide Polymnus, unless that form of the name is the mistake of a copyist for Prosymnus, as seems to be suggested by the epithet Prosymna, which was applied to Demeter in the sacred grove at Lerna, where Dionysus also had an image. See Paus. 2.37.1. However, Hyginus gives Hypolipnus as the name of the guide to hell. Every year the descent of the god through the deep water was celebrated with nocturnal rites on the reedy margin of the pool (Paus. 2.37.6). The pious Pausanias shrank from divulging the nature of the rites; but from Plutarch we learn that a lamb was thrown into the lake as an offering to the warder of hell, while on trumpets hidden in the god's leafy emblems the buglers blew blasts which, startling the stillness and darkness of night, were believed to summon up the lost Dionysus from the watery depths. See Plut. Isis et Osiris 35. Perhaps in answer to this bugle call an actor, dressed in the vine-god's garb, may have emerged dripping from the pool to receive the congratulations of the worshippers on his rising from the dead. However, according to others, the resurrection of Dionysus and his mother took place, not in the gloomy swamp at Lerna, but on the beautiful, almost landlocked, bay of Troezen, where nowadays groves of oranges and lemons, interspersed with the dark foliage of tall cypresses, fringe the margin of the calm blue water at the foot of the rugged mountains. See Paus. 2.31.2. Plutarch has drawn a visionary picture of the scene of the ascension. It was, he says, a mighty chasm like the caves sacred to Bacchus, mantled with woods and green grass and blooming flowers of every sort, and exhaling a delicious, an intoxicating, perfume, while all about it the souls of the departed circled and stooped upon the wing like flights of birds, but did not dare to cross its tremendous depth. It was called the Place of Forgetfulness. See Plut. De sera numinis vindicta 22, pp. 565ff. A pretty story was told of the device by which Dionysus induced the grim warden of the dead to release the soul of his mother from the infernal gaol. It is said that Hades consented to set her free provided that her son would send of his best beloved to replace her shade in the world of shadows. Now of all the things in the world the dearest to Dionysus were the ivy, the vine, and the myrtle; so of these he sent the myrtle, and that is why the initiated in his rites wreathed their brows with myrtle leaves. See Scholiast on Aristoph. Frogs 330. The harrying of hell is the theme of Aristophanes's amusing comedy The Frogs.) 335
But Cadmus and Harmonia quitted Thebes and went to the Encheleans. As the Encheleans were being attacked by the Illyrians, the god declared by an oracle that they would get the better of the Illyrians if they had Cadmus and Harmonia as their leaders. They believed him, and made them their leaders against the Illyrians, and got the better of them. And Cadmus reigned over the Illyrians, and a son Illyrius was born to him. But afterwards he was, along with Harmonia, turned into a serpent and sent away by Zeus to the Elysian Fields.[*](As to the departure of Cadmus and Harmonia to Illyria and their transformation into snakes in that country, where their tomb was shown in later ages, see Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.516ff.; Dionysius, Perieg. 390ff., with the commentary of Eustathius, Comm. on Dionysius Perieg. v.391; Strab. 1.2.39, Strab. 7.7.8; Paus. 9.5.3; Athenaeus xi.5, p. 462 B; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Δυρράχιον ; Tzetzes, Chiliades iv.393ff.; Ov. Met. 4.563-603; Hyginus, Fab. 6; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iii.290; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 48 (First Vatican Mythographer 150). Euripides mentions the transformation of the couple into snakes, but without speaking of their banishment to Illyria (Eur. Ba. 1530ff.), probably because there is a long lacuna in this part of the text. According to Hyginus, the transformation of the two into serpents was a punishment inflicted by Ares on Cadmus for killing his sacred dragon which guarded the spring at Thebes, which Hyginus absurdly calls the Castalian spring. It is a common belief, especially among the Bantu tribes of South Africa, that human beings at death are turned into serpents, which often visit the old home. There is some reason to think that the ancestors of the Greeks may have shared this widespread superstition, of which the traditional transformation of Cadmus and Harmonia would thus be an isolated survival. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed. i.82ff. )
Polydorus, having become king of Thebes, married Nycteis, daughter of Nycteus, son of Chthonius, and begat Labdacus, who perished after Pentheus because he was like-minded with him.[*](Compare Eur. Ph. 8; Paus. 2.6.2, Paus. 9.5.4ff. Apollodorus implies that Labdacus was murdered by the Bacchanals because he set himself against the celebration of their orgiastic rites. But there seems to be no express mention of his violent death in ancient writers.) But Labdacus having left a year -old son, Laius, the government was usurped by Lycus, brother of Nycteus, so long as Laius was a child. Both of them[*](That is, the two brothers Lycus and Nycteus.) had fled [ from
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Euboea] because they had killed Phlegyas, son of Ares and Dotis the Boeotian,
[*](This Phlegyas is supposed to be Phlegyas, king of Orchomenus, whom Paus. 9.36.1 calls a son of Ares and Chryse. If this identification is right, the words “from Euboea” appear to be wrong, as Heyne pointed out, since Orchomenus is not in Euboea but in Boeotia. But there were many places called Euboea, and it is possible that one of them was in Boeotia. If that was so, we may conjecture that the epithet “Boeotian,” which, applied to Dotis, seems superfluous, was applied by Apollodorus to Euboea and has been misplaced by a copyist. If these conjectures are adopted, the text will read thus: “Both of them fled from Euboea in Boeotia because they had killed Phlegyas, son of Ares and Dotis, and they took up their abode at Hyria.” As to the various places called Euboea, see Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Εὔβοια ; W. Pape, Wörterbuch der griechischen Eigennamen, s.v. Εὔβοια .) and they took up their abode at Hyria, and thence having come to Thebes, they were enrolled as citizens through their friendship with Pentheus. So after being chosen commander-in-chief by the Thebans, Lycus compassed the supreme power and reigned for twenty years, but was murdered by Zethus and Amphion for the following reason. Antiope was a daughter of Nycteus, and Zeus had intercourse with her.
[*](With the following story of Antiope and Dirce compare Paus. 2.6.1ff., Paus. 9.25.3; Malalas, Chr. ii. pp. 45-49, ed. L. Dindorf; Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.1090; Nicolaus Damascenus, frag. 11, in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iii.365ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 7, 8; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 32, 99ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 97; Second Vatican Mythographer 74). Euripides wrote a tragedy Antiope, of which Hyginus, Fab. 8 gives a summary. Many fragments of the play have been preserved. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 410ff. In his version of the story Apollodorus seems to have followed Euripides. The legend is commemorated in the famous group of statuary called the Farnese bull, which is now in the museum at Naples. See Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums, i.107, fig. 113.) When she was with child, and her father threatened her, she ran away to Epopeus at Sicyon and was married to him. In a fit of despondency Nycteus killed himself, after charging Lycus to punish Epopeus and Antiope. Lycus marched against Sicyon, subdued it, slew Epopeus, and led Antiope away captive. On the way she gave birth to two
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sons at Eleurethae in Boeotia. The infants were exposed, but a neatherd found and reared them, and he called the one Zethus and the other Amphion. Now Zethus paid attention to cattle-breeding, but Amphion practised minstrelsy, for Hermes had given him a lyre.
[*](Compare Paus. 9.5.7ff. The two brothers are said to have quarrelled, the robust Zethus blaming Amphion for his passionate addiction to music and urging him to abandon it for what he deemed the more manly pursuits of agriculture, cattle-breeding and war. The gentle Amphion yielded to these exhortations so far as to cease to strum the lyre. See Dio Chrysostom lxxiii. vol. ii. p. 254, ed. L. Dindorf; Hor. Epist. i.18.41-44; TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 414-416, frag. 184-188. The discussion between the two brothers, the one advocating the practical life and the other the contemplative or artistic, seems to have been famous. It is illustrated by a fine relief in which we see Amphion standing and holding out his lyre eagerly for the admiration of his athletic brother, who sits regarding it with an air of smiling disdain. See W. H. Roscher, Lexikon der griech, und röm. Mythologie, i.311.) But Lycus and his wife Dirce imprisoned Antiope and treated her despitefully. Howbeit, one day her bonds were loosed of themselves, and unknown to her keepers she came to her sons cottage, begging that they would take her in. They recognized their mother and slew Lycus, but Dirce they tied to a bull, and flung her dead body into the spring that is called Dirce after her. And having succeeded to the sovereignty they fortified the city, the stones following Amphion's lyre
[*](Compare Hom. Od. 11.260-265 (who does not mention the miracle of the music); Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.735-741; Paus. 9.5.6-8; Prop. i.9.10, iv.2.3ff.; Hor. Carm. 3.11.2, Hor. Ars. 394-396. Apollonius represents Zethus staggering under the load of a mountain, while Amphion strolls along drawing a cliff twice as large after him by singing to his golden lyre. He seems to have intended to suggest the feebleness of brute strength by comparison with the power of genius.); and they expelled Laius.
[*](As to the banishment and restoration of Laius, see Paus. 9.5.6; Paus. 9.5.9; Hyginus, Fab. 9.) He resided in Peloponnese, being hospitably received by Pelops; and while he taught Chrysippus, the son of Pelops, to drive a chariot, he conceived a passion for the lad and carried him off.
[*](Compare Athenaeus xiii.79, pp. 602ff., who says that Laius carried off Chrysippus in his chariot to Thebes. Chrysippus is said to have killed himself for shame. See the Scholiast on Eur. Ph. 1760.) 341
Zethus married Thebe, after whom the city of Thebes is named; and Amphion married Niobe, daughter of Tantalus,[*](For the story of Niobe and her children, see Hom. Il. 24.602ff.; Diod. 4.74; Paus. 1.21.3; Paus. 2.21.9; Paus. 5.11.2; Paus. 5.16.4; Paus. 8.2.5; Paus. 8.2.7; Tzetzes, Chiliades iv.416ff.; Ov. Met. 6.146ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 9, 11; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iii.191; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 50 (First Vatican Mythographer 156). Great diversity of opinion prevailed among the ancients with regard to the number of Niobe's children. Diodorus, Ovid, Hyginus, Lactantius Placidus, and the First Vatican Mythographer agree with Apollodorus as to the seven sons and seven daughters of Niobe, and from the Scholiast on Eur. Ph. 159, we learn that Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes in lost plays adopted the same numbers, but that Pherecydes agreed with Homer in reckoning six sons and six daughters, while Hellanicus allowed the lady no more than four sons and three daughters. On the other hand, Xanthus the Lydian, according to the same Scholiast, credited her with a score of children, equally divided between the two sexes. Herein he probably followed the authority of Hesiod (see Apollodorus, below), and the same liberal computation is said to have been accepted by Bacchylides, Pindar, and Mimnermus, while Sappho reduced the figure to twice nine, and Alcman to ten all told (Aulus Gellius xx.70; Ael., Var. Hist. xii.36). Aeschylus and Sophocles each wrote a tragedy Niobe, of which some fragments remain. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 50ff., 228ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, ii.94ff., frag. 442-451. The subject is rendered famous by the fine group of ancient statuary now in the Uffizi gallery at Florence. See Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums, iii.1674ff. Antiquity hesitated whether to assign the group to Scopas or Praxiteles (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi.28), and modern opinion is still divided on the question. See Frazer on Paus. ii.29.9 (vol. iii. p. 201). The pathetic character of the group may perhaps be held to speak in favour of Scopas, who seems to have excelled in the portrayal of the sterner, sadder emotions, while Praxiteles dwelt by preference on the brighter, softer creations of the Greek religious imagination. This view of the sombre cast of the genius of Scopas is suggested by the subjects which he chose for the decoration of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea (Paus. 8.45.5-7), and by the scanty remains of the sculptures which have been found on the spot. See Frazer, commentary on Pausanias, vol. iv. pp. 426ff. However, the late historian of Greek sculpture, Professor M. Collignon, denied that the original of this famous group, which he regarded as a copy, was either by Scopas or Praxiteles. He held that it belongs to an Asiatic school of sculpture characterized by picturesque grouping, and that it could not have been executed before the third century B.C. To the same school he would assign another famous group of sculpture, that of Dirce and the bull (above, Frazer on Apollod. 3.5.5). See M. Collignon, Histoire de la Sculpture Grecque (Paris, 1892-1897), ii.532ff. The tomb of the children of Niobe was shown at Thebes (Paus. 9.16.7; compare Eur. Ph. 159ff.); but according to Statius, Theb. vi.124ff. the Mater Dolorosa carried the ashes of her dead children in twice six urns to be buried on her native Mount Sipylus. Thus the poet dutifully follows Homer in regard to the number of the children.) who bore seven sons, Sipylus, Eupinytus, Ismenus, Damasichthon, Agenor, Phaedimus, Tantalus, and the same number of daughters, Ethodaia ( or, as some say, Neaera), Cleodoxa, Astyoche, Phthia, Pelopia, Astycratia, and Ogygia, But Hesiod says that they had ten sons and ten
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daughters; Herodorus that they had two male children and three female; and Homer that they had six sons and six daughters. Being blessed with children, Niobe said that she was more blessed with children than Latona. Stung by the taunt, Latona incited Artemis and Apollo against them, and Artemis shot down the females in the house, and Apollo killed all the males together as they were hunting on Cithaeron. Of the males Amphion alone was saved, and of the females Chloris the elder, whom Neleus married. But according to Telesilla there were saved Amyclas and Meliboea,
[*](Compare Paus. 2.21.9, Paus. 5.16.4, according to whom Meliboea was the original name of Chloris; but she turned pale with fear at the slaughter of her brothers and sisters, and so received the name of Chloris, that is, the Pale Woman. As to the marriage of Chloris with Neleus, see Hom. Od. 11.281ff. ) and Amphion also was shot by them.
[*](The ancients differed as to the death of Amphion. According to one account, he went mad (Lucian, De Saltatione 41), and in attempting to attack a temple of Apollo, doubtless in order to avenge the death of his sons on the divine murderer, he was shot dead by the deity (Hyginus, Fab. 9). According to Ov. Met. 6.271ff., he stabbed himself for grief.) But Niobe herself quitted Thebes and went to her father Tantalus at Sipylus, and there, on praying to Zeus, she was transformed into a stone, and tears flow night and day from the stone.
After Amphion's death Laius succeeded to the kingdom. And he married a daughter of Menoeceus; some say that she was Jocasta, and some that she was Epicasta.[*](For the tragic story of Laius, Jocasta or Epicasta, and their son Oedipus, see Hom. Od. 11.271-280, with the Scholiast on Hom. Od. 11.271; Eur. Ph. 1-62; Diod. 4.64; Paus. 9.2.4; Paus. 9.5.10ff.; Paus. 10.5.3ff.; Scholiast on Eur. Ph. 1760; Hyginus, Fab. 66, 67. In Homer the mother of Oedipus is named Epicasta; later writers call her Jocasta. The mournful tale of Oedipus is the subject of Sophocles's two great tragedies, the Oedipus Tyrannus and the Oedipus Coloneus. It is also the theme of Seneca's tragedy Oedipus. From the Scholiast on Hom. Od. 11.271-280 we learn that the story was told by Androtion. Apollodorus's version of the legend closely follows Sophocles and is reproduced by Zenobius, Cent. ii.68 in a somewhat abridged form with certain verbal changes, but as usual without acknowledgment. Some parallel stories occur in the folklore of other peoples. See Frazer's Appendix to Apollodorus, “The Oedipus Legend.”) The oracle had warned him not
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to beget a son, for the son that should be begotten would kill his father; nevertheless, flushed with wine, he had intercourse with his wife. And when the babe was born he pierced the child's ankles with brooches and gave it to a herdsman to expose. But the herdsman exposed it on Cithaeron; and the neatherds of Polybus, king of Corinth, found the infant and brought it to his wife Periboea.
[*](Sophocles calls her Merope (Soph. OT 775), and so does Seneca, Oedipus 272, 661, 802. But, according to Pherecydes, the wife of Polybus was Medusa, daughter of Orsilochus (Scholiast on Soph. OT 775).) She adopted him and passed him off as her own, and after she had healed his ankles she called him Oedipus, giving him that name on account of his swollen feet.
[*](The name Oedipus was interpreted to mean “swollen foot.” As to the piercing of the child's ankles, see Soph. OT 718; Eur. Ph. 26ff.; Diod. 4.64.1; Paus. 10.5.3; Hyginus, Fab. 66; Seneca, Oedipus 812.) When the boy grew up and excelled his fellows in strength, they spitefully twitted him with being supposititious. He inquired of Periboea, but could learn nothing; so he went to Delphi and inquired about his true parents. The god told him not to go to his native land, because he would murder his father and lie with his mother. On hearing that, and believing himself to be the son of his nominal parents, he left Corinth, and riding in a chariot through Phocis he fell in with Laius driving in a chariot in a certain narrow road.
[*](The “narrow road” is the famous Cleft Way (Paus. 10.5.3ff.) now called the Crossroad of Megas (Stavrodromi tou Mega), where the road from Daulis and the road from Thebes and Lebadea meet and unite in the single road ascending through the long valley to Delphi. At this point the pass, shut in on either hand by lofty and precipitous mountains, presents one of the wildest and grandest scenes in all Greece; the towering cliffs of Parnassus on the northern side of the valley are truly sublime. Not a trace of human habitation is to be seen. All is solitude and silence, in keeping with the tragic memories of the spot. Compare Frazer, commentary on Paus. 10.5.3 (vol. v. pp. 231ff.) As to the Cleft Way or Triple Way, as it was also called, and the fatal encounter of the father and son at it, see Soph. OT 715ff.; Soph. OT 1398ff.; Eur. Ph. 37ff.; Seneca, Oedipus 276ff. ) And when Polyphontes,
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the herald of Laius, ordered him to make way and killed one of his horses because he disobeyed and delayed, Oedipus in a rage killed both Polyphontes and Laius, and arrived in Thebes.