Discover Hyacinthus, beautiful Spartan youth beloved by Apollo whose death from a discus gave rise to the hyacinth flower and the Spartan Hyacinthia festival. Previous Greek Next > Hyacinthus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ὑάκινθος (Hyakinthos) Pronunciation hy-uh-SIN-thus Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Spartan Flower, The Beloved of Apollo, The Discus Victim, The Youth of Amyclae, The Spring God, The AI AI Blossom Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 8th century BCE (literary attestation); cult origins pre-Greek Symbol Hyacinth Flower & "AI" Tags greek, hyacinthus, person, apollo, sparta, amyclae, zephyrus, discus, hyacinthia, flower Introduction - Overview Hyacinthus is the Spartan youth whose beauty was so perfect that Apollo, the god of light and music, fell in love with him and taught him every art a mortal could learn, only to kill him with a discus thrown in sport. He is the son of Amyclas, the king of Amyclae, the ancient settlement that lay beside Sparta in the valley of the Eurotas, and the beloved whose death gave the Greeks one of their most beautiful and terrible stories. He is the boy whom Zephyrus, the west wind, desired in secret, and whose jealousy turned a game of quoits into a tragedy that stained the Spartan earth with divine blood. He is the youth whose spilled blood became the hyacinth flower, the spring blossom whose petals bear the Greek letters AI AI, the cry of grief that Apollo uttered over his body. And he is the god whose cult outlived the myth, whose festival the Hyacinthia drew Spartans from across Laconia for three days of mourning and rejoicing, and whose tomb beneath the Throne of Apollo at Amyclae was one of the most sacred places in the Peloponnese. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Hyacinthus Hyacinthus was born in Amyclae, a town in the fertile valley of the Eurotas River in Laconia, the region of the Peloponnese dominated by the city of Sparta. His father was Amyclas, the eponymous king from whom the town took its name, a descendant of Lacedaemon, the son of Zeus and Taygete, one of the Pleiades, the seven sisters who were transformed into stars. His mother was Diomede, a woman of the Spartan royal house. Hyacinthus grew up in a land of harsh discipline and austere beauty, where boys were trained for war from the age of seven and where the arts of music and poetry were cultivated with the same rigour as the arts of combat. He was beautiful beyond any other youth in Laconia, with hair the colour of dark honey and eyes that caught the light like the pools of the Eurotas, and his beauty attracted the attention of a god. Apollo, the Olympian god of light, music, prophecy, and archery, saw Hyacinthus and desired him. The god descended from Olympus and came to Amyclae in the guise of a wandering musician, but his disguise was unnecessary. Hyacinthus recognised the god and welcomed him, and the two became inseparable. Apollo taught the youth to play the lyre, the seven-stringed instrument whose music could charm beasts and soothe the Furies, the avenging spirits who pursued murderers. He taught him to hunt with the bow, to throw the discus, and to drive the chariot, and he gave him the gift of prophecy, the power to see the future that was Apollo's own special domain. Hyacinthus learned quickly, and his skill was so great that the Spartans said he would one day surpass his teacher, a boast that made the god smile with pride rather than jealousy, for Apollo loved the boy without reservation. But Apollo was not the only one who loved Hyacinthus. Zephyrus, the west wind, the gentle breeze that brought the spring rains and the first warmth of the year, had also seen the youth and desired him. Zephyrus was a god of lesser rank than Apollo, one of the Anemoi, the four winds who served the greater gods, and he knew that he could not compete with the Olympian for Hyacinthus's affection. He watched in secret as Apollo and Hyacinthus played together on the plain of Amyclae, throwing the discus back and forth, racing their chariots, and singing to the lyre, and his jealousy grew with every day. Zephyrus was not a violent god by nature, but love unrequited can turn even the gentlest spirit to malice, and the west wind began to plot a revenge that would cost him nothing but would destroy everything Apollo loved. The tragedy struck on a day of perfect spring weather, when the sky was clear and the Eurotas ran full with melted snow from Mount Taygetus. Apollo and Hyacinthus had gone to the plain to practise the discus throw, a sport in which a heavy circular stone or metal disc was hurled for distance. Apollo threw first, and his discus soared into the sky, catching the sunlight as it spun, and Hyacinthus ran to catch it on its return, laughing with the joy of the game. Apollo threw again, harder this time, and the discus flew further than any mortal could have thrown it. Hyacinthus ran to meet it, his eyes on the spinning disc, but Zephyrus, watching from his invisible place in the air, blew a sudden gust across the plain. The wind caught the discus and deflected it from its path, sending it straight toward the running youth. It struck Hyacinthus in the head with a sound like a cracked bell, and he fell to the earth, his skull shattered, his blood pouring onto the Spartan soil before Apollo could reach him. The god's grief was absolute. Apollo knelt beside the body and tried to staunch the wound, pressing his hands against the boy's forehead, but the injury was mortal and no god could reverse death once it had taken hold. Apollo wept, and his tears fell upon the blood that soaked the ground, and from the mingled tears and blood there sprang a flower, the hyacinth, whose petals were dark red and bore the marks of the Greek letters AI AI, the cry of lamentation that means "alas, alas." The Spartans said that the flower bloomed every spring on the anniversary of Hyacinthus's death, and that its scent was the scent of divine grief. Apollo cursed Zephyrus for his treachery, and the west wind was banished from the company of the gods, condemned to wander the earth as a bringer of storms rather than gentle breezes. The cult of Hyacinthus at Amyclae was one of the oldest and most important in Sparta. His tomb lay beneath the colossal bronze statue of Apollo that stood on the Throne of Apollo, a monument so ancient that the Spartans could not remember who had built it. Every year the Spartans celebrated the Hyacinthia, a three-day festival that began with mourning and ended with rejoicing. On the first day, the people wore black and fasted, and no music was played. On the second day, sacrifices were offered at the tomb, and choirs of boys sang hymns of lamentation. On the third day, the mourning was cast aside, and the Spartans celebrated with athletic contests, processions, and banquets, for Hyacinthus was not merely a dead youth but a vegetation god, a spirit of the spring who died with the old year and was reborn with the new. The festival thus combined grief for his death with joy at his return, and it remained one of the most important religious observances in Laconia until the end of antiquity. Summary Hyacinthus endures as the most beautiful victim in Greek mythology, the Spartan youth whose death by discus gave the world the hyacinth flower and whose cult bound the Spartans to the cycle of spring death and rebirth. From the plain of Amyclae to the Throne of Apollo, from the jealousy of Zephyrus to the tears that mingled with blood on the Laconian earth, his story is one of love that cannot protect and beauty that cannot survive. A detail worth remembering: the Spartans, the most warlike people in Greece, mourned Hyacinthus with a festival of music and flowers, and in that mourning they showed that even the hardest city knew the softness of grief. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Hyacinthus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Zephyrus Deity Zephyrus Apollo Deity Apollo Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 10.162-219 (c. 8 CE) - primary narrative of Apollo's love, the discus death, and the transformation into the hyacinth flower - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 3.1.3, 3.19.3-5 (c. 150 CE) - the tomb of Hyacinthus at Amyclae, the Throne of Apollo, and the Hyacinthia festival - Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods 16 (c. 2nd century CE) - Apollo's lament for Hyacinthus - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.3.3, 3.10.3 (1st-2nd century CE) - parentage and the discus accident - Euripides, Helen, lines 1465-1475 (c. 412 BCE) - reference to the Hyacinthia in Spartan cult - Theocritus, Idyll 10.28-29 (c. 3rd century BCE) - the hyacinth flower and its mythic origin - Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - comprehensive analysis of the Hyacinthus tradition - Albert Henrichs, "Desiring a God: The Greek Myth of Hyacinthus" in Desire and Denial in Bacchae (University of Leeds, 1996) - scholarly study of the Apollo-Hyacinthus relationship and Spartan cult Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Tutankhamun, the boy king of Egypt who restored the old gods, died at nineteen, and was found in his golden tomb in 1922. - Mythopouch Previous Egyptian Next > Tutankhamun Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s twt-ꜥnḫ-jmn (Egyptian), Nebkheperure (throne name) Pronunciation too-tuhn-kah-MOON Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Tutankhaten, King Tut, the Boy King, the Golden Pharaoh, the Living Image of Amun, Nebkheperure Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details New Kingdom, Eighteenth Dynasty Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Historical Gender Male Time Period c. 1341-1323 BCE (reigned c. 1332-1323 BCE) Symbol Funeral Mask Tags egyptian, tutankhamun, kv62, howard-carter, akhenaten, ankhesenamun, boy-king, valley-of-the-kings Introduction - Overview Tutankhamun is the boy king whose golden tomb became the greatest archaeological discovery ever made, the minor pharaoh who ruled ten years and died at nineteen, only to become, three thousand years later, the immortal face of ancient Egypt. He is the son of Akhenaten, the heretic who bowed to a single sun disk, born Tutankhaten in the city of the Aten and raised in the wreckage of his father's failed revolution. He is the child crowned at nine who, guided by the old courtier Ay and the general Horemheb, put the temples back together, changed his name to honour Amun, the hidden king of the gods, and led Egypt home to its ancient faith. He is the husband of his half-sister Ankhesenamun, the queen whose desperate letter to the king of the Hittites, begging for a prince to marry after his death, is one of the most astonishing documents of the ancient world. He is the king erased from the king lists, his tomb forgotten beneath the huts of later workmen and sealed in darkness for more than three thousand years. He is the treasure house opened by Howard Carter in 1922: the golden mask, the nested shrines, the solid gold coffin, and the whispered curse. And he is the proof that fame in death has nothing to do with greatness in life. Gallery Other depictions like Tutankhamun full. Main Article - Who or What was... Tutankhamun He was born Tutankhaten, the Living Image of the Aten, around 1341 BCE, in Akhetaten, the desert city his father had built for the sun disk. His father was Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh who had closed the temples of Egypt's gods, and his mother, as the geneticists would one day reveal, was his father's own full sister, a queen whose name is lost, known now only as the Younger Lady from her anonymous mummy. He was the child of the most controversial court in Egyptian history, born into the last tired years of the revolution, when the old gods had been struck from the walls, the capital was half empty, and the empire's letters went unanswered. Of his childhood almost nothing is recorded: a toybox, perhaps, the exercises of a prince learning his letters, the memory of a frightened court. When his father died around 1336 BCE, and after the brief shadows of two more rulers, Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten, whose very identities are still disputed, the throne came down to a boy of about nine years old. A child pharaoh is ruled by his elders, and Tutankhaten's elders had seen enough of revolution. The two powers behind the throne were Ay, an elderly courtier who had served his father and bore the title God's Father, and Horemheb, the commander of the army. Within three years the court abandoned the city of the sun disk and sailed back to the old capitals, Thebes and Memphis. The boy king changed his name: Tutankhaten became Tutankhamun, the Living Image of Amun, and his young queen, his half-sister Ankhesenpaaten, a daughter of Akhenaten and the beautiful Nefertiti, became Ankhesenamun. Then came the official undoing of his father's work. The Restoration Stela, set up in the temples, declared that the sanctuaries had fallen to ruin, that the gods had turned their backs on Egypt, and that the armies returned from foreign wars in failure because heaven no longer listened. The boy king reopened the temples, cast new cult images of the gods in gold, re-endowed the priesthoods with lands and income, and filled Karnak, the vast estate of Amun at Thebes, with new statues and colonnades. Egypt breathed again. His reign was short and, by the standards of pharaohs, modest. There was fighting in Nubia, the gold land to the south, and skirmishing in Syria against the rising power of the Hittites, led in the field by Horemheb, and painted on a wooden chest in his tomb the boy king rides his chariot over trampled enemies in the approved style of conquering kings. His own body told a frailer story. The mummy and its scans reveal a youth plagued by malaria, a damaged foot that made walking painful, and a badly broken leg suffered not long before he died; among his treasures lay more than a hundred walking sticks and staffs, some worn smooth with use. Around 1323 BCE, at about nineteen, he died, and the court buried him in haste in KV62, a tomb in the Valley of the Kings far too small for a pharaoh, perhaps swapped for a grander one still unfinished. Some of his burial treasures were second-hand, made for another ruler and reinscribed. With him went the mummies of two stillborn daughters in tiny gilded coffins. And over his body the old man Ay performed the Opening of the Mouth, the rite that gave the dead back their senses, and by that act declared himself the heir. What happened next reads like fiction, but it is written in the archives of the Hittites, the great rival empire of Anatolia, in modern Turkey. A letter arrived at the court of King Suppiluliuma from the widowed queen of Egypt, and its words still startle: my husband is dead and I have no son, but they say you have many sons; if you give me one of your sons, he shall be my husband and king of Egypt, for I will never take a servant of mine as husband. The Hittite king could hardly believe it and sent an envoy to make sure; the queen answered with a sharper letter, half wounded pride, half desperation. At last Suppiluliuma sent a prince named Zannanza south, and on the road the prince died, murdered, the Hittites suspected, by Egyptian hands. Someone in Egypt had decided the throne would not go to a foreigner. The old courtier Ay took the crown and, for a time, the widow: rings survive bearing the names of Ay and Ankhesenamun side by side. Then she vanishes from history, the last child of Akhenaten's house, and no one knows where she lies. Ay ruled about four years and died old, and the general Horemheb became pharaoh at last. Horemheb finished what politics began. The whole heretic line, Akhenaten, the shadow rulers, Tutankhamun, and Ay, was struck from the official king lists, so that history stepped from Amenhotep III straight to Horemheb as if thirty years had never happened. The boy king's name was hacked from his monuments, and his small tomb, hidden low in the valley floor, was buried by flash-flood debris and then by the stone huts of the workmen who cut the tomb of Ramesses VI two centuries later. Robbers found it twice in antiquity, took small portable treasures, and were caught; the necropolis guards resealed the doors, and after that the valley forgot him completely. For 3,245 years Tutankhamun slept in the dark, surrounded by gold, the one royal tomb the ancient world had lost and never found again. Then came Howard Carter, a stubborn English archaeologist, and his patron Lord Carnarvon, an English earl with a passion for excavation. After five empty seasons in the Valley of the Kings, Carnarvon was ready to quit; Carter begged for one more, and on 4 November 1922, beneath the ruins of the old workmen's huts, a water boy tripped over a step cut into the rock. The staircase led down to a sealed door stamped with the seal of the royal necropolis. On 26 November, Carter made a small hole in the second doorway, lit a candle, and looked into three thousand years of darkness. Can you see anything, Carnarvon asked. Yes, said Carter, wonderful things. The clearance took ten years and catalogued 5,398 objects: four gilded shrines nested like boxes within boxes, a stone sarcophagus, three coffins, the innermost of solid gold weighing over a hundred kilograms, chariots, thrones, beds, alabaster cups, and the gold mask that has become the face of ancient Egypt itself. When Carnarvon died of an infected mosquito bite a few months later, the newspapers screamed of a curse, and the legend stuck. The treasures toured the world in the 1970s and drew the largest museum crowds in history. The boy the king lists erased is now the most famous pharaoh of them all. Summary Tutankhamun endures as the supreme irony of fame: a frail boy king who ruled ten forgettable years and became, three thousand years on, the immortal face of ancient Egypt. Among his treasures lay a dagger of iron from an age before Egypt knew ironworking, its blade betrayed by its nickel as the metal of a fallen meteorite, a knife made of sky. Every museum queue, every replica mask, every child who first learns the word pharaoh meets his golden face. In the human imagination, Tutankhamun remains the eternal sleeper, the proof that the dead are never quite gone while one sealed chamber still waits in the dark. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Tutankhamun From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Ay Person Ay Amun-Ra Deity Amun-Ra Horemheb Person Horemheb Aten Deity Aten Akhenaten Person Akhenaten Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Restoration Stela of Tutankhamun (c. 1330 BCE) - the official record of the return to Amun and the old gods - Letter of Ankhesenamun to King Suppiluliuma, Hittite royal archives, Bogazkoy (c. 1327 BCE) - the widowed queen's plea for a Hittite prince - Tomb KV62, Valley of the Kings (c. 1323 BCE) - the burial and its 5,398 objects - Howard Carter and A. C. Mace, The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen (3 volumes, 1923-1933) - the discoverers' own account of the excavation - Nicholas Reeves, The Complete Tutankhamun: The King, the Tomb, the Royal Treasure (Thames & Hudson, 1990) - the definitive modern study of the tomb and its contents - Zahi Hawass et al., Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family (Journal of the American Medical Association, 2010) - the DNA and CT-scan findings on his parentage, health, and death - Joyce Tyldesley, Tutankhamen: The Search for an Egyptian King (Basic Books, 2012) - a scholarly reconstruction of the reign and the succession - Aidan Dodson, Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter-Reformation (American University in Cairo Press, 2009) - the royal line after Akhenaten Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Amenhotep III, the magnificent pharaoh who built Luxor Temple, ruled through diplomacy, elevated Queen Tiye and left the singing Colossi of Memnon. Previous Egyptian Next > Amenhotep III Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s jmn-ḥtp (Egyptian) Pronunciation ah-men-HOH-tep thuh THIRD Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Amenhotep the Magnificent, Amenhotep the Great, Amenophis III, Nibmuaria, Nimmureya, Nebmaatra Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Ancient Egypt Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Historical Gender Male Time Period c. 1386 - 1350 BCE (18th Dynasty) Symbol The serekh crowned with the double plumes of Amun, the solar barque, the lion hunt scarab Tags egyptian, amenhotep-iii, 18th-dynasty, amarna-letters, luxor-temple, colossi-of-memnon, tiye, diplomacy, egyptian-mythology Introduction - Overview Amenhotep III is Amenhotep the Magnificent, the pharaoh who ruled Egypt at the absolute zenith of its wealth, power, and artistic brilliance, a king so glorious that he was worshipped as a god while he still lived. He is the builder of Luxor Temple, whose birth room still tells the story of how the god Amun disguised himself as the pharaoh's father to conceive him on a potter's wheel of divine clay. He is the husband of Tiye, a commoner who became the most powerful queen in Egyptian history, her name carved beside his at equal size on colossal statues that no other royal couple dared imitate. He is the diplomat who received the Amarna Letters, clay tablets in cuneiform script from kings across the Near East - Tushratta of Mitanni begging for gold "like dirt," Kadashman-Enlil of Babylon negotiating for a royal bride - that reveal a world of flattery, grievance, and realpolitik beneath the glittering surface of empire. He is the father of Akhenaten, the heretic king who would overthrow the gods of Egypt, and the grandfather of Tutankhamun, the boy king whose tomb would dazzle the modern world. He is the master of more statues than any pharaoh before or since, including the two Colossi of Memnon that still sing in the dawn, or did until a Roman emperor silenced them. And he is the king who proved that peace could be more magnificent than war, reigning for thirty-eight years without a single major military campaign and making Egypt the envy of every kingdom from Babylon to the Aegean. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Amenhotep III Amenhotep III was born into the Eighteenth Dynasty, the golden age of the New Kingdom, around 1401 BCE. His father was Thutmose IV, the pharaoh who had cleared the sand from the Great Sphinx at Giza after the monument spoke to him in a dream and promised him the throne. His mother was Mutemwiya, a minor wife of Thutmose IV who was never granted the title of Great Royal Wife but whose son would eclipse every queen who had come before him. Amenhotep ascended the throne while still a boy, probably no older than twelve, and may have ruled under a regent during his early years. But the gods, at least in the official story, had already chosen him before his birth. The defining myth of his legitimacy was carved in the Birth Room of Luxor Temple, a chamber that Amenhotep himself commissioned as part of the vast temple complex he built at Thebes. The reliefs tell the story scene by scene. The god Khnum, the ram-headed creator who moulded mankind on his potter's wheel, fashions two tiny figures - one of the infant Amenhotep and one of his ka, the life force that distinguishes the living from the dead. The goddess Isis watches. Then Amun, the king of the gods, falls in love with Queen Mutemwiya and, disguised as her husband Thutmose IV, enters her chamber. Thoth, the ibis-headed god of wisdom, leads him there. Amun and the queen sit together upon the symbol of heaven, supported by the goddesses Selket and Neith, and Amun puts the breath of life into her nostrils. Before he leaves, he reveals his divinity and tells her the child shall be named Amenhotep, meaning "Amun is satisfied." The queen is led to the birth chamber by Khnum and Hathor, where she delivers the child while seated upon a throne. Thoth announces the birth. The infant is suckled by goddesses, including the nine Hathors, the fairy godmothers of Egypt who decree the fate of every child. The final scene shows him grown, a pharaoh blessed by every god in the pantheon. The message was unmistakable: Amenhotep III was not merely the son of a king. He was the son of a god. His marriage to Tiye was the most remarkable partnership in Egyptian royal history. Tiye was not a princess. She was a commoner, the daughter of Yuya and Tjuyu, a wealthy couple from the provincial town of Akhmim whose burials in the Valley of the Kings would prove they had risen to the highest circles of power. For a pharaoh to marry outside the royal family was almost unheard of, and to elevate a commoner to Great Royal Wife was revolutionary. Yet Amenhotep did exactly that, and the evidence of their genuine partnership survives in stone. On colossal statues and temple reliefs, Tiye appears at the same scale as her husband, a visual equality that no previous queen had enjoyed. He built her a pleasure lake at T'aru, and the two of them sailed upon it in a boat called the Disk of Beauties. She bore him at least six children: the crown prince Thutmose, who died young; Sitamun, Henuttaneb, Iset, Nebetah, and Beketaten, their daughters; and Amenhotep IV, the second son who would later change his name to Akhenaten and overturn the religion of his fathers. Tiye outlived her husband and remained a power behind the throne during the early years of her son's reign, so formidable that Tushratta, the king of Mitanni, wrote to her directly when her son failed to send the gold he had promised. The Amarna Letters, a cache of 382 clay tablets discovered in 1887 at the ruined city of Akhetaten, preserve the voice of Amenhotep III's diplomacy. Written in Akkadian cuneiform, the lingua franca of the age, they record correspondence between the pharaoh and the kings of the Great Powers Club: Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni, the Hittites, and Alashiya (Cyprus). The letters reveal a world of elaborate etiquette and barely concealed greed. Tushratta of Mitanni, whose empire was harried by the rising Hittites to his north, calls Amenhotep "brother" and "son-in-law," for he had married Tushratta's daughter Kelu-Heba. In Letter 19, Tushratta professes brotherly love and then begs for gold: "May my brother send to me very much gold that has not been worked. And in the land of my brother gold is plentiful like dirt." In Letter 5, Amenhotep himself writes to Kadashman-Enlil I of Babylon, discussing marriage to the Babylonian king's daughter and dispatching costly gifts. But the pharaohs of Egypt never gave their own daughters in marriage, a rule so absolute that Kadashman-Enlil complains in Letter 4: "Since earliest times no daughter of the king of Egypt has ever been given in marriage." Egypt's supremacy was taken for granted, and Amenhotep's reign was the period when that supremacy was at its peak. Amenhotep III built on a scale that dwarfed every predecessor. His mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes was the largest temple complex ever constructed in Egypt, covering thirty-five hectares and surpassing even Karnak in its day. It was fronted by two colossal quartzite statues, each eighteen metres tall and weighing seven hundred and twenty tons, carved from single blocks quarried near modern Cairo and dragged six hundred and seventy-five kilometres overland to Thebes. These were the Colossi of Memnon, depicting the seated pharaoh with his hands on his knees, wearing the nemes headdress and flanked by smaller figures of his mother Mutemwiya and his wife Tiye. The temple itself was largely destroyed by earthquakes and Nile floods in antiquity, its stone quarried away by later builders, but the colossi remained. In 27 BCE an earthquake cracked the northern statue from the waist up, and thereafter it began to "sing" at dawn, a whistling or humming sound caused by the night dew evaporating in the morning heat. The Greeks, who identified the statues with Memnon, the Ethiopian hero of the Trojan War, believed the sound was the voice of the dead warrior calling to his mother Eos, the dawn. Roman emperors including Septimius Severus came to hear it, and one hundred and seven Greek and Latin inscriptions carved into the legs of the statues record the visits of ancient tourists who claimed to have heard the oracle speak. The singing stopped after Septimius Severus repaired the cracks in 199 CE, but the name Memnon endured. The pharaoh's personal residence was the Malkata Palace, a sprawling complex south of Thebes that included audience halls, harem quarters, kitchens, and a vast artificial lake called the Birket Habu, excavated for the king's pleasure. He celebrated three Sed festivals, the jubilee rituals that renewed a pharaoh's divine authority, an extravagance that testified both to his long reign and to his determination to be recognised as a god on earth. Hundreds of statues survive from his reign, more than from any other pharaoh, depicting him in every material from granodiorite to glazed faience, wearing every crown from the double plumes of Amun to the blue war crown. He was the first pharaoh to be worshipped as a deity during his own lifetime, his cult statues receiving offerings in temples across the land. Amenhotep III died in the thirty-eighth or thirty-ninth year of his reign, around 1350 BCE, and was buried in tomb KV22 in the Valley of the Kings. His mummy has been identified and now rests in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation. He was succeeded by his second son, Amenhotep IV, who within a few years would abandon the name of Amun, close the temples of the old gods, and declare that only the sun disk Aten was divine. The glittering world Amenhotep III had built would be dismantled by his own heir, yet the father's legacy proved stronger than the son's revolution. After Akhenaten's death, the old religion was restored, and Amenhotep III was remembered as the model of what a pharaoh should be: not a warrior but a builder, not a conqueror but a diplomat, a king so magnificent that the gods themselves had shaped him from clay. Summary Amenhotep III endures as the supreme emblem of Egyptian golden-age splendour, the pharaoh who proved that a reign of peace could outshine every conquest. From the divine birth room at Luxor to the diplomatic cuneiform of the Amarna Letters, from the pleasure lake at Malkata to the singing colossi that greeted the Roman dawn, his thirty-eight years represent the apex of a civilisation at its most confident and most beautiful. A detail worth remembering: the one hundred and seven tourist inscriptions carved into the legs of Memnon by Greek and Roman visitors, ancient graffiti that testify to a wonder so compelling it drew pilgrims across the Mediterranean for centuries. In the human imagination, Amenhotep III remains the Magnificent, the proof that the greatest empires are built not only by the sword but by the architect's line, the diplomat's letter, and the artist's chisel. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Amenhotep III From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Akhenaten Person Akhenaten Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Luxor Temple Birth Room reliefs (reign of Amenhotep III, c. 1390-1350 BCE) - the divine birth cycle showing Khnum, Amun, and Mutemwiya - Amarna Letter EA 19, from Tushratta of Mitanni to Amenhotep III (c. 1350 BCE) - "gold is plentiful like dirt" - Amarna Letter EA 5, from Amenhotep III to Kadashman-Enlil I of Babylon (c. 1350 BCE) - royal marriage negotiations - Amarna Letter EA 4, from Kadashman-Enlil I to Amenhotep III (c. 1350 BCE) - complaint that no Egyptian princess has ever been given in marriage - Palermo Stone (Old Kingdom, c. 2400 BCE) and associated annals - regnal records context - Strabo, Geography Book XVII (c. 7 BCE) - the singing Colossus of Memnon - Inscriptions on the Colossi of Memnon (Greek and Latin, 20-250 CE) - 107 tourist graffiti recording the vocal phenomenon - Arielle P. Kozloff, Amenhotep III: Egypt's Radiant Pharaoh (Cambridge UP, 2012) - comprehensive study of the reign, art, and diplomacy - David B. O'Connor and Eric H. Cline, eds., Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign (University of Michigan Press, 1998) - scholarly essays on administration, foreign relations, and building programme - William J. Murnane, Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt (Scholars Press, 1995) - translations and analysis of the diplomatic correspondence Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Cadmus, the Phoenician prince who founded Thebes after slaying a dragon, sowed its teeth to create the Spartoi and began a cursed dynasty in Greek myth. Previous Greek Next > Cadmus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Κάδμος (Kadmos) Pronunciation KAD-mus Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Phoenician, Founder of Thebes, The Dragon-Slayer, The Sower of Men, Kadmos the Tyrian Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 13th century BCE (legendary); c. 8th century BCE (literary crystallisation in Homer) Symbol Dragons Teeth Tags greek, cadmus, thebes, dragonsteeth, spartoi, harmonia, europa, agenor, phoenician Introduction - Overview Cadmus is the Phoenician prince who founded Thebes, the most cursed city in Greek mythology, by sowing the teeth of a dragon he had slain and watching armed warriors spring from the earth to fight one another to the death. He is the son of King Agenor of Tyre and the brother of Europa, the beautiful maiden whom Zeus, the king of the gods, abducted in the form of a white bull and carried away to Crete. He is the exile who searched the known world for his lost sister and, when the oracle at Delphi told him to abandon the quest, followed a stray cow to a spring in Boeotia where a serpent sacred to Ares, the god of war, devoured his companions. He is the culture hero who killed the dragon, sowed its teeth at Athena's command, and founded a city upon the blood of the five survivors who rose from the ground. He is the husband of Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, whose wedding was blessed by the gods and cursed by a necklace forged in divine jealousy. And he is the old man who, after watching his children and grandchildren die in madness and flame, was transformed into a serpent alongside his wife and sent to wander the earth before finding peace in the Elysian Fields, the meadow of the blessed dead. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Cadmus Cadmus was born in Tyre, the great Phoenician city on the coast of what is now Lebanon, the son of King Agenor and Queen Telephassa. He had several brothers, including Cilix and Phoenix, and one sister, Europa, whose beauty was so extraordinary that Zeus himself desired her. The king of the gods came to Tyre in the guise of a gentle white bull, mingled with the royal herds, and when Europa climbed upon his back he sprang into the sea and swam to Crete, where he revealed his true form. King Agenor was devastated and enraged. He sent his sons forth with a terrible command: find Europa, and do not return without her. Cadmus set out with his brothers, each taking a different direction, and searched the Mediterranean for years. But Europa was beyond finding, hidden on Crete and destined to become the mother of the kings of that island, including Minos, the legendary lawgiver whose name would one day be given to the civilisation of the Minoans. When Cadmus had exhausted every lead, he came to Delphi, the most famous oracle in Greece, where a priestess called the Pythia sat above a chasm and spoke prophecies inspired by the god Apollo. The oracle did not tell him where Europa was. Instead it gave him a new command: stop searching for his sister. Follow a cow that bore the mark of the moon upon its flank, and build a city on the spot where the beast lay down to rest. Cadmus obeyed. A cow with a half-moon mark appeared, and he followed it across Phocis and into Boeotia, the rich plain north of the Gulf of Corinth. At last the cow stopped beside a spring called the Ismenian Spring, near a place that would one day be called Thebes. Cadmus was overjoyed. He wished to sacrifice the cow to Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, and sent some of his companions, men named Deioleon and Seriphus among them, to draw water from the spring for the ritual. The spring was guarded. A monstrous serpent, the offspring of Ares in some accounts, a creature with a golden crest and triple rows of teeth, lay coiled in the cave from which the water flowed. When Cadmus's men dipped their pails into the pool, the dragon emerged and killed them all, crushing some in its coils and poisoning others with its venom. Cadmus waited for their return, and when they did not come he followed their tracks to the spring and found their bodies. He attacked the serpent with stones and then with his spear, and after a fierce battle he pinned the creature against an oak tree and killed it. A mysterious voice spoke from the air, warning him that he too would one day become a serpent and be stared at as he had stared at the dragon, but Cadmus had no time to ponder the prophecy. Athena appeared to him in the aftermath and told him to take the dragon's teeth and sow them in the earth like seeds. Cadmus did as the goddess commanded. He tore the teeth from the dragon's jaw and scattered them across the ploughed field. From the furrows, armed men began to spring up, fully grown, wearing helmets and carrying spears and shields. They were the Spartoi, the sown men, born from the earth itself. At first they simply stood and stared at one another, but then one of them cried out that a jewel had been thrown among them, and they turned on each other in a frenzy of suspicion and violence. The battle was terrible, earth-born warriors hacking at earth-born warriors until the ground ran red. Only five survived: Echion, Udaeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelorus. These five became Cadmus's allies and the founding ancestors of the noble families of Thebes. Together they built the citadel called the Cadmeia, and around it rose the city that would become one of the greatest in Greece, the stage for the tragedies of Oedipus, Antigone, and the house of Labdacus. But the dragon had been sacred to Ares, and the god of war demanded a price. Cadmus was forced to serve Ares for eight years as penance for the killing. When the term was complete, the gods themselves arranged his marriage to Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Their wedding was the first occasion on which gods and mortals feasted together as equals. Twelve golden thrones were set for the Olympians, and the Muses sang. Athena gave the bride a robe woven by herself, and Aphrodite gave her a golden girdle. But Hephaestus, the divine smith and husband of Aphrodite, was bitterly jealous of his wife's affair with Ares, and he crafted a cursed necklace as a wedding gift for Harmonia, a jewel that would bring misfortune to every woman who wore it. Cadmus and Harmonia had four daughters and two sons. Their daughters were Semele, who would become the mother of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, only to be burned alive by Zeus's thunderbolt when she asked to see his true form; Ino, who would be driven mad by Dionysus and leap into the sea with her infant son; Autonoe, whose son Actaeon was torn apart by his own hounds for glimpsing the goddess Artemis bathing; and Agave, who in a Dionysiac frenzy would tear her own son Pentheus limb from limb upon the mountains of Cithaeron. Their sons were Polydorus, who died young, and Illyrius, from whom the Illyrians claimed descent. The curse of the necklace worked its way through the generations, and the house of Cadmus became synonymous with suffering. In his old age, Cadmus could bear Thebes no longer. He and Harmonia left the city they had built and wandered north to the land of the Enchelei in Illyria, on the shores of the Adriatic. There, according to Euripides in his tragedy The Bacchae, Cadmus was transformed into a serpent by Dionysus himself, punished for denying the god's divinity despite being his own maternal grandfather. In other accounts, the transformation was voluntary or sent by the gods as a release from human sorrow. Harmonia, who loved her husband beyond measure, prayed to share his fate and was transformed into a serpent beside him. Together they slithered through the Illyrian forests, still capable of human speech and thought, until at last the gods took pity and sent them to the Elysian Fields, the green meadows of the underworld where the blessed dead dwell in peace beneath a sunless sky. Summary Cadmus stands as the founder whose gift to Greece was also its curse, the Phoenician prince who brought the alphabet, built a city from dragon's teeth, and fathered a dynasty of tragedy. From the bull-strewn shores of Tyre to the spring of Ares in Boeotia, from the wedding of gods and mortals to the serpent-haunted forests of Illyria, his story is one of obedience to oracles, courage in the face of monsters, and the terrible price of divine favour. Every city founded on blood, every noble house that traces its line to earth-born warriors, and every tale of a family destroyed by its own gifts carries some echo of Cadmus, the dragon-slayer who became a dragon and found peace only in death. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Cadmus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Harmonia Deity Harmonia Ares Deity Ares Europa Person Europa The Spartoi Group The Spartoi Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad, Book 4.385-388, Book 5.804-808 (c. 8th century BCE) - earliest references to Cadmeans and Thebes - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 3.4.1-3.5.4 (c. 1st-2nd century CE) - the full narrative of Cadmus's wanderings, dragon-slaying, and foundation of Thebes - Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 3.1-137, Book 4.563-603 (c. 8 CE) - the dragon, the sown men, and the curse of the house - Euripides, The Bacchae, lines 1330-1339 (c. 405 BCE) - Cadmus's transformation into a serpent by Dionysus - Pindar, Pythian Ode 3.86-95 (c. 5th century BCE) - reference to the house of Cadmus and its sufferings - Herodotus, Histories, 5.57-59 (c. 5th century BCE) - Cadmus the Phoenician and the introduction of writing - Hyginus, Fabulae, 6, 148, 179 (c. 1st-2nd century CE) - the dragon's teeth and the transformation - Pausanias, Description of Greece, 9.5.1-9.12.3 (c. 2nd century CE) - Theban traditions of Cadmus - Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Johns Hopkins University Press, chapters on Cadmus and Thebes - Calasso, Roberto. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (1994) - Vintage, literary and mythological study - Kerenyi, Karl. The Heroes of the Greeks (1959) - Thames and Hudson, chapter on Cadmus as culture hero Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Io, the moon-marked Argive princess turned into a white heifer by Zeus, who wandered from Argos to Egypt and became ancestress of heroes - Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Io Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ἰώ (Iō) Pronunciation EYE-oh Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Moon-Marked Cow, The Horned Virgin, Phoronis, Callithyia, The Wandering Heifer, The Mother of Epaphus, The Priestess of Hera Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Female Time Period c. 8th century BCE (Hesiodic tradition); Bronze Age setting Symbol A white heifer Tags greek-mythology, io, zeus, hera, argus-panoptes, prometheus, egypt, heracles Introduction - Overview Io is the Argive princess whose name means "moon" in the dialect of her city, the priestess of Hera who was transformed into a white heifer with horns like crescents of the moon. She is the mortal lover of Zeus, the king of the gods who ruled from Mount Olympus, whose affair with her drove the queen of the gods to a jealousy so terrible that it reshaped the geography of the world. She is the cow who was guarded by Argus Panoptes, the hundred-eyed giant whose gaze never slept, and who was freed by Hermes, the messenger god who moved between heaven and earth with winged sandals, when he lulled the giant to sleep with music and stories. She is the wanderer who crossed the strait that still bears her name, the Bosporus, the ox-passage, and who climbed the mountains of Caucasus to meet Prometheus, the Titan who had stolen fire for mankind and was chained to a rock where an eagle ate his liver each day. She is the mother of Epaphus, the boy born from Zeus's touch in Egypt, whose descendants would include Danaus, the king who returned to Argos with his fifty daughters, and Cadmus, the Phoenician prince who founded the city of Thebes. And she is the woman whose descendants include Perseus, the slayer of the Gorgon Medusa, and Heracles, the hero who completed twelve impossible labours, a lineage that made her the ancestress of almost every great hero in Greece. Gallery Io was also transformed into a white heifer (cow) by Zeus to hide her from Hera when she found out Zeus was cheating on her Main Article - Who or What was... Io Io was born in Argos, the greatest city of the Argolid, the region of the Peloponnese that jutted into the Aegean Sea. Her father was Inachus, the river god whose waters ran through the plain of Argos, or in some tellings Iasus, a descendant of the first king Phoroneus. She was a priestess of Hera, the queen of Olympus and wife of Zeus, the king of the gods who ruled with his thunderbolt, and her beauty was so extraordinary that Zeus himself desired her. The king of the gods came to her in secret, or in some versions he pursued her through the fields of Argos until she could run no further, and from their union came a child that would shake the world. But Hera was not deceived. She watched her husband with the eyes of a goddess who had learned to recognise every trick, and when she found Io, the girl was already transformed. The stories disagree about who changed Io into a cow. In some tellings, Zeus transformed her into a white heifer to hide her from his wife, hoping that Hera would not recognise the priestess beneath the horns and hide. In others, Hera herself struck the girl with divine power, turning her into a beast as punishment for daring to share her husband's bed. Either way, the result was the same: Io stood in the grove of Hera at Mycenae, a white cow with horns curved like the crescent moon, her human mind trapped inside the body of an animal. Hera approached Zeus and asked for the heifer as a gift. Zeus could not refuse without revealing his deception, and so he gave Io to his wife. Hera then appointed Argus Panoptes, the hundred-eyed giant who was the son of Gaia, the earth goddess, as the cow's guardian. Argus tied Io to an olive tree in the sacred grove and watched her with eyes that never closed all at once, some always awake while others slept, so that no one could approach her unseen. Zeus could not bear to see Io suffer, and he sent Hermes, the messenger god who moved between Olympus and the mortal world with winged sandals and a caduceus, to free her. Hermes came to Argus disguised as a shepherd and sat beside him, playing music on his reed pipes and telling stories so long and so captivating that the giant's eyes began to close one by one. When the last eye shut, Hermes struck, and Argus Panoptes fell dead. Hera took the hundred eyes of her fallen servant and placed them upon the tail of her favourite bird, the peacock, where they remain to this day as the iridescent spots that decorate its feathers. But Hera was not finished. She sent a gadfly, a stinging insect whose bite was like fire, to torment Io without rest. The gadfly drove the heifer mad with pain, and she bolted from the grove and ran. Io's flight was the longest wandering of any mortal in Greek myth. She ran north from Argos, across the plains of Thessaly, through the mountains of Thrace, and came at last to the narrow strait that separates Europe from Asia, the passage that would be called the Bosporus, the ox-passage, forever after. She swam across the channel, her hooves striking the waves, and continued eastward through the lands of the Scythians and the Cimmerians. She climbed the mountains of Caucasus, where Prometheus, the Titan who had stolen fire for mankind and was punished by being chained to a rock where an eagle ate his liver each day, called out to her from his chains. He told her that her suffering would end, that she would be restored to human form in Egypt, and that one of her descendants would be Heracles, the greatest hero of Greece, who would one day free Prometheus from his own torment. He told her to follow the south wind, and she ran on. She crossed the Ionian Sea, the waters that would bear her name, and came to the shores of Egypt. There, on the banks of the Nile, Zeus touched her with his hand and restored her human form. She gave birth to a son, Epaphus, whose name means "touch," for he was born from the touch of a god. The Egyptians worshipped Io as the goddess Isis, and her son as the sacred bull Apis. She married Telegonus, the king of Egypt, and her descendants ruled the land for generations. Her grandson Danaus would one day return to Greece with his fifty daughters, the Danaids, to reclaim the throne of Argos. Her other descendants included Cadmus, the Phoenician prince who slew the dragon of Ares and founded Thebes, and through them the line stretched to Perseus, the slayer of the Gorgon Medusa, and Heracles, the hero who completed twelve impossible labours and became a god. The moon-marked cow had become the mother of heroes. Summary Io stands as the mortal woman whose suffering traced the boundaries of the known world, the priestess who became a cow and wandered from Argos to Egypt before she found peace. From the hundred eyes of Argus to the peacock's tail, from the Bosporus to the Ionian Sea, her story is written into the geography of the Mediterranean itself. She gave birth to a dynasty that would produce the greatest heroes of Greek myth, and every crescent moon that rises over the Argolid remembers the horns of the white heifer who once grazed in the grove of Hera. She is the reminder that the gods do not punish fairly, and that the mortal who suffers most may be the one who shapes the future. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Io From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Argus Panoptes Giant Argus Panoptes Zeus Deity Zeus Hera Deity Hera Hermes Deity Hermes Prometheus Titan Prometheus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (c. 430 BCE) - Lines 561-886 (Io's encounter with Prometheus and her wandering) - Aeschylus, Suppliant Women (c. 463 BCE) - Lines 40-176, 291-324 (the Danaids claim descent from Io) - Hesiod, Catalogue of Women (c. 7th century BCE) - Fragment 124 (Io's genealogy and descendants) - Hesiod, Aegimius Fragments (c. 7th century BCE) - Fragments 4-5 (Io transformed on Euboea) - Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) - Book 1, Lines 583-746 (Io's transformation, Argus, and Hermes) - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (1st-2nd century CE) - Book 2.1.3 (Io's story and descendants) - Herodotus, Histories (c. 440 BCE) - Book 1.1 (the Persian account of Io's abduction) - Herodotus, Histories (c. 440 BCE) - Book 2.41 (Io identified with Isis in Egypt) - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - Volume 1, pp. 198-207 (comprehensive survey of Io variants) - Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985) - Chapter 3 (Io and the integration of Egyptian elements into Greek myth) Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover the Aegis, the storm-shield of Zeus and Athena, a goat-skin fringed with golden tassels and crowned with Medusa's petrifying head. | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Aegis Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s αἰγίς (Aigís) Pronunciation EE-jis Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Storm-Shield of Zeus, the Goat-Skin, the Gorgon-Bearer, the Aegis of Athena, the Tasselled Terror Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Artifact/Object/Weapon Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender N/A Time Period Age of heroes; first attested in Homer (8th century BCE) Symbol A Gorgon's head with snake hair Tags greek, aegis, athena, zeus, medusa, gorgoneion, amalthea, shield, olympus, troy, apollo Introduction - Overview The Aegis is the storm-shield of the gods, the most fearsome object carried on any battlefield of myth, a fringed goat-skin that raises tempests when it is shaken and routs whole armies with terror. It is the hide of Amalthea, the she-goat who suckled the infant Zeus in his hidden cave on Crete, taken up by the grateful god as both armour and emblem when he came of age. It is the sign of Zeus the Storm-Bringer, whose very title aigiochos, the Aegis-Bearer, made the object part of his name, fringed with a hundred golden tassels, each one worth a hundred oxen, ageless and undying. It is the shield of Apollo, who shook it over the Greek ships at Troy until their hearts forgot how to fight. And it is the breastplate of Athena, who set upon it the severed head of the Gorgon Medusa, the face that turns living flesh to stone, a gift from the hero Perseus, and wore it on every statue, every coin and every temple that ever bore her image. To stand under the aegis was to stand under the protection of heaven itself, and three thousand years later we still say it. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Aegis The aegis was born in the hidden years of Zeus's childhood. When the Titan Cronus swallowed his own children to cheat a prophecy, the goddess Rhea hid her youngest son in a cave on Crete, and there the infant god was nursed on the milk of a she-goat named Amalthea, while the armed Curetes clashed their shields outside to drown his crying. Amalthea was no ordinary beast. When one of her horns snapped off, Zeus filled it with fruits and made it the cornucopia, the horn of plenty that never empties. And when the goat died, or in sterner tellings when Zeus came of age and needed armour for his war against the Titans, her hide became the aegis: tough, shaggy, storm-dark and proof against any weapon. A darker tradition names the skin differently. The monster Aix, the Goat, was a daughter of the sun god Helios with the face of a Gorgon, so dreadful that the gods themselves fled from her. When the Titanomachy broke out, Zeus slew her and wrapped himself in her impenetrable hide, and from that day the Gorgon's face glared from the shield of heaven. In either telling, the meaning is the same: the aegis is the skin of something holy or monstrous, worn by the god who conquered it. The object itself is described once and never forgotten. In the Iliad, when Hera arms for war and Zeus prepares his wrath, the aegis is called ageless and immortal, fringed with a hundred tassels of pure gold, each tassel worth a hundred oxen, a shield whose value cannot be counted in any earthly currency. Its power was double. Shaken gently, it sheltered. Shaken in anger, it broke men. The Greek word aigis also meant a rushing storm or hurricane, and the oldest Greeks heard the thunder in it: the aegis is the storm-cloud of the sky god, fringed with lightning, and when Zeus raised it over Mount Ida the heavens themselves went dark. Other gods bore other weapons. Zeus bore the thunderbolt and the aegis, one to strike and one to terrify, and poets gave him the title aigiochos, the Aegis-Bearer, as naturally as they called Athena grey-eyed or Apollo far-shooting. The aegis saw its most terrible service on the plain of Troy. When the Greeks had driven the Trojans back to their city and Zeus resolved to punish them for the wrongs done to Achilles, he lent the aegis to Apollo. The god stood on the wall the Greeks had built around their ships, holding the tasselled shield of Zeus, and shouted, and shook it, and the courage ran out of the Achaeans like water from a broken jar. They fled in a mob, trampling one another, while the Trojans poured through the gap and the wall came down like a sandcastle before a wave. Earlier in the war, when Athena armed herself from Zeus's own stores to fight beside Diomedes, she buckled on the tasselled aegis, crowned with Strife and Force and cold Pursuit and the grim head of the Gorgon. And in the Odyssey, when Odysseus turned on the suitors in his hall, it was Athena who held the aegis aloft from the roof-beams, and the men who had feasted on another's wealth for three years ran screaming like cattle when a gadfly stings the herd. Wherever the aegis appears in Homer, the pattern holds: a god lifts it, and mortal hearts simply stop working. After the age of the Titanomachy, the aegis passed from father to daughter and became the property of Athena, and it was she who made it famous. When Perseus cut off the head of Medusa, guided by Athena's mirror-bright shield, he brought the trophy back and gave it to his patroness, and Athena set the Gorgon's face upon her aegis, ringed with a border of living snakes. From that day forward the aegis and the goddess are inseparable. The great gold and ivory statue of Athena Parthenos that stood in the Parthenon wore the aegis across her breast with the Gorgon's head at its centre. Vase-painters drew it as a shaggy goat-skin cape fringed with serpents, thrown over her shoulders or swung across her left arm like a shield. The tragedian Euripides offered yet another origin, singing that the aegis was the skin of the Gorgon born of Earth herself, which Athena slew in the Giants' War and flayed to wear as a breastplate against the Titans' brood. And the historian Herodotus, ever curious about origins, claimed that the Athenians had copied the goat-skin aegis and the ritual dress of Athena from the garments of Libyan women, who wore fringed goat-skins dyed red and thonged into tassels. Whatever its birthplace, by the classical age the aegis was Athena's signature, as unmistakable as the owl on her shoulder or the olive tree she gave her city. The aegis outlasted the gods who carried it. Roman poets gave it to Minerva, and Virgil's Cyclopes forge it in their volcanic smithy, hammering serpent-scales and setting the Gorgon's rolling eyes in gold for the wrathful daughter of Jupiter. Alexander the Great, who claimed descent from heroes, wore the Gorgoneion on his breastplate into every battle, trusting that the face which turned men to stone would turn aside arrows. Roman emperors followed him, and the Gorgon-faced shield marched with the legions from Hadrian's Wall to the Euphrates. Painters of the Renaissance and the Baroque rediscovered the image, arming their Athenas and allegories of Wisdom with the tasselled, snake-fringed shield. But the aegis had already escaped its picture and entered the language. To act under the aegis of a king, a nation or a cause is to act under its protection and authority, a phrase used in diplomacy and law to this day, inherited directly from the battlefield at Troy, where to stand beneath the storm-shield of Zeus was to be untouchable, and to face it was to be nothing at all. The aegis endures because it holds an old truth: real protection has never been a soft thing. The gods did not guard their favourites with gentleness. They guarded them with terror, and the terror was the aegis. Summary The Aegis stands as the supreme emblem of divine power and protection in Greek mythology, the goat-skin storm-shield that nursed its way from a Cretan cave to the shoulders of the gods. From Amalthea's milk and the cornucopia to the Gorgon's petrifying face, from Apollo's rout of the Greeks at Troy to the golden statue in the Parthenon, it has always meant the same thing: heaven's shelter, delivered as heaven's terror. Every army that marched behind a Gorgon-faced shield, and every act done under the aegis of a greater power, still carries its old storm within it. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Aegis From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Amalthea Creature/Monster/Animal Amalthea Zeus Deity Zeus Perseus Person Perseus Medusa Creature/Monster/Animal Medusa Athena Deity Athena Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad 2.446-452, 5.733-747, 15.229-322 (8th century BCE) - the aegis described, armed and shaken at Troy - Homer, Odyssey 22.297-300 (8th century BCE) - Athena raises the aegis in Odysseus's hall - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.1.6 and 2.4.3 (1st-2nd century CE) - Zeus and the skin of Amalthea, Perseus gives the Gorgon's head to Athena - Euripides, Ion 987-997 (c. 413 BCE) - the aegis as the skin of the Earth-born Gorgon - Herodotus, Histories 4.189 (5th century BCE) - the Libyan origin of Athena's goat-skin and dress - Hyginus, Poeticon Astronomicon 2.13 (1st-2nd century CE) - Amalthea, the cornucopia and the constellation traditions - Pindar, Pythian Ode 12 (490 BCE) - the Gorgon's head and its power - Virgil, Aeneid 8.435-438 (1st century BCE) - the Cyclopes forge the aegis for Pallas - Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.790-803 and 6.70-82 (c. 8 CE) - the Gorgoneion and Athena's woven aegis - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - chapters on Zeus's childhood and the Gorgons - Deacy, Susan, Athena (Routledge, 2008) - the goddess's attributes and cult imagery Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Ganymede, the Trojan prince taken by Zeus to Olympus, made immortal as cupbearer of the gods and placed among the stars as Aquarius the Water Bearer. Previous Greek Next > Ganymede Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Γανυμήδης (Ganumēdēs) Pronunciation GAN-ih-meed Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Catamitus, The Cupbearer of the Gods, The Most Beautiful Mortal, The Trojan Prince, The Eagle's Prey Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period 8th century BCE (earliest attested in Homer's Iliad) Symbol Cup & Eagle Tags greek, zeus, troy, cupbearer, eagle, aquarius, olympus, immortality Introduction - Overview Ganymede is the Trojan prince whose beauty was so surpassing that Zeus, the king of the gods who rules from Olympus, descended from the sky in the form of an eagle and snatched him away to serve as cupbearer to the immortals. He is the son of Tros, the king of Troy who gave his name to the city and the Trojans, and Callirhoe, the daughter of Scamander, the great river that flows through the plain of Troy. He is the youth who replaced Hebe, the daughter of Hera and Zeus, as the server of nectar and ambrosia at the divine feasts, and who was granted eternal youth and immortality as a gift for his service. He is the figure whose abduction became one of the most painted scenes in Western art, from the red-figure vases of Athens to the ceilings of the Vatican, and whose name would echo across centuries into the English language as the origin of the word catamite. And he is the constellation Aquarius, the Water-Bearer, whose jar pours the winter rains upon the earth every January and February. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Ganymede Ganymede was born to Tros, the king of Troy and the eponym of the Trojans, and Callirhoe, the daughter of Scamander, the river-god whose waters flowed through the plain where the city stood. From his earliest youth, he was renowned as the most beautiful of all mortals, a beauty so radiant that it drew the eye of Zeus himself. Homer, the poet of the Iliad, says that the gods caught him up because of his beauty, so that he might dwell among the immortals and pour wine for them at their eternal feasts. He was hunting on the slopes of Mount Ida when the eagle came. The defining moment of Ganymede's life came on a day like any other. The youth was among his companions on Mount Ida, perhaps hunting with his hounds or exercising his father's horses, when a great eagle descended from the clouds. Some said it was Zeus himself in the form of the bird, his golden wings blotting out the sun; others said it was the eagle Aquila, sent by the god to fetch the boy. The bird seized Ganymede in its talons and bore him up through the sky to the high throne-room of Olympus. His companions cried out and searched the mountain for him, but the eagle had already vanished into the realm of the gods, and Ganymede was gone from the earth forever. On Olympus, Ganymede was given a new role. Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Hera, the queen of the gods, had served as the cupbearer of the immortals, pouring nectar and ambrosia at the divine banquets. Ganymede took her place, standing beside the golden throne of Zeus and filling the cups of the gods with the wine of immortality. He was granted eternal youth and a place among the stars as the constellation Aquarius, the Water-Bearer, whose jar pours the winter rains upon the earth. Homer says that the gods rejoiced in him, and that Zeus was so pleased with his service that he gave Tros, the boy's father, a pair of divine horses as compensation for the loss of his son. Not all the gods welcomed the new cupbearer. Hera, the wife of Zeus, was said to resent the beautiful Trojan youth who had displaced her daughter Hebe from her honoured position. Some later poets hinted at darker tensions on Olympus, suggesting that Ganymede's presence was a constant reminder of Zeus's wandering eye. Yet in the earliest Greek tradition, the abduction was not portrayed as a tragedy but as an elevation, a mortal raised to the divine sphere by the supreme god's favour. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite mentions Ganymede as one of the few mortals whom the gods loved so dearly that they granted him immortality, placing him alongside Tithonus in the select company of those who escaped death. In later ages, the image of Ganymede and the eagle became one of the most enduring motifs in Western art. The Greeks painted it on hundreds of vases, showing the eagle descending or the youth riding upon its back. The Romans adopted the scene with enthusiasm, and in the Renaissance it was painted by Michelangelo, Correggio, and Rubens, each interpreting the abduction as a moment of divine rapture or earthly violence. The name Ganymede passed into Latin as Catamitus, which became the English word catamite, carrying the memory of the Trojan prince into modern discourse. The largest moon of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo in 1610, bears his name, a fitting tribute to the youth who served the king of the gods. Summary Ganymede endures as the archetype of beauty that transcends mortality, the Trojan prince whose face was so radiant that it earned him a place among the stars. From the slopes of Mount Ida to the golden feasting-hall of Olympus, from the divine horses given to his grieving father to the winter rains that pour from his constellation, his story binds together desire and transcendence. Every painting of an eagle carrying a youth, every mention of the Water-Bearer in the zodiac, and every word derived from his Latin name carries his memory. He is the reminder that beauty can be a passport to the divine, and that the gods do not always ask permission before they take what they desire. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Ganymede From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Hera Deity Hera Zeus Deity Zeus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad, Book 5, lines 265-267 (8th century BCE) - Ganymede as the most beautiful mortal, seized by the gods - Homer, Iliad, Book 20, lines 231-235 (8th century BCE) - the lineage of Ganymede as son of Tros - Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite, lines 202-217 (7th-6th century BCE) - Ganymede granted immortality by Zeus - Pindar, Olympian Ode 1.40-45 (476 BCE) - the abduction and the gift of horses to Tros - Euripides, Trojan Women (415 BCE) - reference to Ganymede's abduction and its effect on Troy - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.12.2 (c. 100-200 CE) - the full myth of Ganymede's abduction by Zeus in eagle-form - Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.155-161 (c. 8 CE) - the transformation and the granting of eternal youth - Virgil, Aeneid 1.28 (19 BCE) - reference to the rape of Ganymede as a cause of divine anger - Sergent, Bernard, Homosexuality in Greek Myth (1986), Beacon Press - scholarly analysis of the Ganymede myth and its cultural context - DeVries, Keith, "Ganymede" in LIMC IV (1988), Artemis Verlag, pp. 154-165 - comprehensive iconographic study of Ganymede in ancient art Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Telamon, king of Salamis and father of Ajax, who sailed with the Argonauts and joined Heracles in the first legendary sack of Troy in Greek mythology. Previous Greek Next > Telamon Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Τελαμών (Telamṗn) Pronunciation TEL-uh-mon Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Son of Aeacus, The Argonaut, The Sacker of Troy, The Father of Ajax, The King of Salamis Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 13th-12th century BCE (mythical era); 8th-5th century BCE (literary attestation) Symbol Lion-skin Cloak & Shield Tags greek, telamon, ajax, heracles, argonauts, troy, salamis, aeacus, peleus Introduction - Overview Telamon is the son of Aeacus, the king of the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf and one of the three judges of the dead in the Underworld, and the brother of Peleus, the mortal father of Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War. He is the hero who sailed with Jason on the Argo, the ship built from the sacred oak of Dodona, as one of the fifty Argonauts who sought the Golden Fleece in distant Colchis on the Black Sea. He is the companion of Heracles who helped sack Troy long before the Trojan War, joining the greatest hero in the assault on King Laomedon's city and receiving Hesione, the Trojan princess, as his prize. He is the king of Salamis, the island off the coast of Attica near Athens, where he established a kingdom after being exiled from Aegina for the murder of his half-brother Phocus. And he is the father of Ajax the Great, the mighty warrior who was second only to Achilles at Troy, and of Teucer, the finest archer in the Greek army, a legacy of strength and war that made his name one of the most honoured in all Greece. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Telamon Telamon was born to Aeacus, the king of the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf, and Endeis, the daughter of the centaur Chiron, the wise creature who was half man and half horse and who trained the greatest heroes of Greece, though some say his mother was Plutia, a daughter of the river god Asopus. His brother was Peleus, who would later marry the sea nymph Thetis and become the father of Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War. Telamon also had a half-brother named Phocus, the son of Aeacus and the Nereid Psamathe, a sea nymph of extraordinary beauty, who was so skilled at athletics that he outshone both Telamon and Peleus in the games. The jealousy of the legitimate brothers grew until, during a discus throw or a quarrel over a game, they killed Phocus, either accidentally or by design, and hid his body in a wood or threw it into the sea. When Aeacus discovered the murder, he banished both Telamon and Peleus from Aegina forever. Telamon sailed to the island of Salamis, which lay off the coast of Attica near Athens, and there he found a kingdom in need of a king. The king of Salamis, Cychreus, had no male heir, and Telamon married his daughter, who was called Glauce in some tellings and Periboea in others, and inherited the throne. He ruled Salamis with justice and strength, and his fame as a warrior grew until he was counted among the greatest heroes of his generation. When Jason, the son of Aeson and rightful heir to the throne of Iolcus, assembled the Argonauts to sail for the Golden Fleece, Telamon was one of the first to join, bringing his own ship or sailing aboard the Argo, the vessel built from the sacred oak of Dodona and fitted with a speaking beam that warned the crew of danger. The voyage of the Argo was only the beginning of Telamon's adventures. He also took part in the Calydonian Boar Hunt, the great expedition sent by King Oeneus of Calydon to kill a monstrous boar that had been sent by Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt, to ravage the king's lands because he had failed to honour her in his harvest sacrifices. Telamon stood among the hunters, which included Meleager, the prince of Calydon, Atalanta, the swift-footed huntress, and many other heroes, and he fought the beast with spear and courage. The boar was eventually killed by Meleager, but the hunt ended in tragedy when Meleager murdered his uncles in a quarrel over the hide, and Telamon returned to Salamis with the memory of a hunt that had brought glory to some and death to others. The most famous campaign of Telamon's life was the sack of Troy, not the great war of Agamemnon and Achilles that would come a generation later, but an earlier assault led by Heracles, the hero forced to complete twelve impossible labours. King Laomedon of Troy, the father of Priam who would later rule the city during the Trojan War, had cheated Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Apollo, the god of music and prophecy, of their wages after they built the walls of his city. Heracles gathered an army to punish the king, and Telamon sailed with him as his closest companion. When the Greeks assaulted the walls of Troy, Telamon was the first to breach them, throwing himself into the city with a fury that even Heracles admired. Heracles had promised that the first man to enter the city would receive the fairest prize, and when Telamon leaped through the gap in the wall, Heracles feared that the glory would go to another. He drew his sword and rushed after Telamon, but Telamon, seeing the hero's face, understood the danger and quickly began to pile stones into a heap, declaring that he was building an altar to Heracles the Glorious Victor. Heracles, flattered, sheathed his sword, and the two men sacked the city together. Laomedon and all his sons were killed except for Priam, who was ransomed, and Hesione, the king's daughter, was given to Telamon as his prize. She bore him two sons: Ajax, who would grow to be the mightiest warrior in Greece after Achilles, and Teucer, who would become the finest archer in the Greek army. Telamon lived to see his sons sail to Troy with the Greek fleet, a war that was in some ways the continuation of the campaign he had fought with Heracles. Ajax the Great, as he was called to distinguish him from the lesser Ajax of Locris, was a tower of strength at Troy, second only to Achilles in prowess, and when Achilles was killed by Paris, the Trojan prince whose abduction of Helen had caused the war, Ajax claimed the dead hero's armour as the rightful successor. But Odysseus, the cunning king of Ithaca, won the armour by trickery, and Ajax, driven mad by the shame, fell upon his own sword. Teucer survived the war but was banished by Telamon for failing to bring Ajax home alive, or in some versions for failing to avenge his brother's death, and the old king died in grief and anger, his heart broken by the loss of the son who had been his greatest pride. Telamon was buried on Salamis, and his tomb was honoured by the islanders for centuries as the resting place of a hero who had stood beside Heracles and sacked the city that would one day destroy his own line. Summary Telamon endures as one of the great heroes of the generation before the Trojan War, the king of Salamis whose name was spoken with honour in every corner of Greece. From the murder of Phocus to the sack of Troy, from the Argo to the walls of Laomedon's city, his life was one of strength, loyalty, and the terrible cost of heroic ambition. Every son who has had to leave his father's house in disgrace, every warrior who has breached a wall before his commander, and every father who has buried a son who died too young carries his memory. Telamon reminds us that the hero's path is paved not only with glory but with exile, jealousy, and the grief that outlasts every victory. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Telamon From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Hesione Person Hesione Peleus Person Peleus Jason Person Jason Ajax the Greater Person Ajax the Greater Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pindar, Isthmian Ode 6 (c. 480 BCE) - the birth of Telamon and Peleus, the murder of Phocus - Pindar, Nemean Ode 3 (c. 475 BCE) - Telamon at the sack of Troy and the birth of Ajax - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.8.2, 2.6.4, 3.12.6-7 (2nd century BCE) - Telamon in the Calydonian Hunt, the sack of Troy, and his marriage to Hesione - Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.32.1-6, 4.49.1-7 (1st century BCE) - Telamon with Heracles at Troy and the siege of Laomedon - Homer, Iliad 2.557-558, 8.224-226, 12.370-371 (c. 750 BCE) - Ajax as son of Telamon and his prowess at Troy - Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.35.2, 1.42.4, 2.29.9 (2nd century CE) - the tomb of Telamon on Salamis and his cult - Sophocles, Ajax (c. 440 BCE) - the death of Ajax and Teucer's relationship to Telamon - Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.476-478, 11.211-217 (c. 8 CE) - Telamon in the Calydonian Hunt and the exile from Aegina - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - pp. 218-221 on Telamon and the pre-Trojan sack - March, Jennifer, Cassell's Dictionary of Classical Mythology (1998) - pp. 892-893 on Telamon's life and lineage - Kearns, Emily, The Heroes of Attica (1989) - Chapter 3 on the cult of Telamon on Salamis and his heroic status - Willcock, Malcolm M., A Companion to the Iliad (1976) - the role of Telamon's sons in the Homeric tradition Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Aristeas of Proconnesus, soul-travelling poet of the lost Arimaspeia who journeyed beyond Scythia and returned with tales of griffins and Arimaspians. Previous Greek Next > Aristeas Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ἀριστέας (Aristeas) Pronunciation air-iss-TEE-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Aristeas of Proconnesus, The Shaman-Poet, The Soul-Traveller, The Raven of Apollo Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 7th century BCE Symbol Raven & Arrow Tags greek, proconnesus, arimaspeia, apollo, shaman, issedones, arimaspians, hyperborea, soul-travel Introduction - Overview Aristeas is the poet who died in a fuller's shop and came back to life, the shaman whose soul flew from his body as a raven and travelled to the edge of the known world. He is the native of Proconnesus, an island in the Sea of Marmara, who wrote the lost epic Arimaspeia and gave the Greeks their first map of the northern wilderness beyond Scythia. He is the servant of Apollo who entered a trance so deep that his body seemed dead, whose spirit journeyed past the Issedones to the land of the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding griffins, and finally the blessed Hyperboreans who live beyond the north wind. He is the ghost who appeared in Metapontum in southern Italy years after his death, telling the citizens to build an altar to Apollo and leaving his name inscribed on a bronze arrow as proof. And he is the most enigmatic traveller in early Greek literature, a man who blurred the boundary between poet and prophet, between life and death, and between the geography of the earth and the geography of the soul. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Aristeas Aristeas was born on the island of Proconnesus, a Greek settlement in the Propontis, the inland sea that connects the Black Sea to the Aegean. The island was famous for its white marble, but Aristeas would make it famous for something far stranger. He was a devotee of Apollo, the god of poetry, prophecy, and the sun, and he carried the god's inspiration in a form that his neighbours found terrifying. One day, while walking through the streets of Proconnesus, he entered a fuller's shop and fell down dead. The fuller, a man who cleaned woollen garments for a living, was horrified. He sent word to Aristeas' family, who came to mourn. But when they opened the door of the shop to take the body away, it had vanished. There was no sign of Aristeas anywhere on the island. His family searched in vain, and the people of Proconnesus concluded that the god had taken him. Seven years later, Aristeas returned to Proconnesus. He walked into the agora, the public square, and told the assembled citizens that he had not been dead. His soul had left his body and travelled north, carried by Apollo beyond every land the Greeks knew. He had reached the country of the Issedones, a people who lived beyond the Scythians on the inner steppes of Central Asia. From them he learned of the peoples still further north: the one-eyed Arimaspians, the griffins that guarded gold in the mountains, and beyond them the Hyperboreans, the blessed race who lived at the back of the north wind where the sun never set in summer. He wrote all this down in a poem called the Arimaspeia, a work in three books that is now lost but whose contents were preserved in the writings of later historians. The Arimaspeia described a chain of peoples that stretched from the familiar to the fabulous. The Issedones were the first step into the unknown, a people who honoured their dead by eating their flesh and keeping their skulls as drinking cups. Beyond them lived the Arimaspians, fierce horse-riding warriors with a single eye in the centre of their foreheads, who waged perpetual war with the griffins over gold dug from the northern mountains. The griffins themselves were not mere beasts but divine guardians, lion-bodied and eagle-headed, who nested in the Rhipaean Mountains and defended their treasure with absolute ferocity. Beyond the griffins and their gold lay the Hyperboreans, a blessed people who knew no war, no disease, and no old age, who sent sacred offerings to Apollo at Delos wrapped in sheaves of wheat, passing them from hand to hand through every nation between their land and Greece. Aristeas claimed to have seen all this not with his body's eyes but with his soul's, travelling in a state of divine possession that left his earthly form behind. Years after his return and his second disappearance, Aristeas appeared again, this time not in his homeland but in Metapontum, a Greek city on the gulf of southern Italy. The citizens were astonished to see a man they did not recognise walking through their streets, carrying a message from Apollo. He told them that the god commanded them to build an altar in the middle of their city, and that Apollo would come to them himself if they obeyed. Then he vanished. The Metapontines, uncertain whether to believe a stranger who had appeared from nowhere, sent a delegation to Delphi, the most famous oracle of Apollo in Greece, to ask the god if the command was genuine. The Pythia, the priestess who spoke Apollo's words from a tripod over a chasm in the earth, confirmed everything. She told them that Aristeas of Proconnesus had indeed come among them, and that they should build the altar. She added a detail that made their hair stand on end: Aristeas had visited them not in the body but in the spirit, for his physical form was dead and buried in Proconnesus. When the Metapontines built the altar and made their offerings, they placed beside it a bronze statue of Aristeas holding a raven, the bird into which his soul was said to transform when it left his body. Some said they also found a bronze arrow in the temple with his name inscribed upon it, the very arrow with which Apollo had once slain the Python, the great serpent that guarded Delphi before the god claimed the sanctuary for his own. Summary Aristeas remains the most mysterious figure in early Greek literature, a poet whose body was a temporary lodging for a soul that ranged across continents and returned with news from the edge of the world. From the fuller's shop in Proconnesus to the bronze arrow in Metapontum, from the Issedones on the steppe to the griffins in the northern mountains, his story is one of divine possession and geographical imagination. Every map that extends beyond the known, every tale of a shaman's soul-flight, every poet who claims to have seen what mortal eyes cannot carries something of Aristeas in it. He reminds us that before the Greeks became historians, they were travellers of the spirit, and that the farthest north was sometimes reached not by ship but by trance. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Aristeas From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Arimaspians Group Arimaspians Apollo Deity Apollo Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Aristeas of Proconnesus, Arimaspeia (c. 650-550 BCE, lost poem, fragments preserved in Herodotus) - the original account of the northern journey - Herodotus, Histories 4.13-16 (c. 440 BCE) - the fuller's shop, the disappearance, the return, and the Metapontum epiphany - Herodotus, Histories 4.24-27 (c. 440 BCE) - the contents of the Arimaspeia and the chain of northern peoples - Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.6 (c. 150 CE) - the statue of Aristeas with the raven at Metapontum - Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.174 (77 CE) - Aristeas' soul leaving the body and the raven transformation - Bolton, J.D.P., Aristeas of Proconnesus (Oxford, 1962) - the standard scholarly monograph - Dowden, Ken, European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2000) - pp. 157-159, shamanic elements in Greek religion - Kingsley, Peter, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic (Oxford, 1995) - Chapter 2, Aristeas and the tradition of ecstatic travel - Phillips, E.D., "The Legend of Aristeas: Fact and Fancy in Early Greek Notions of East Russia, Siberia and Inner Asia" (Artibus Asiae 18.2, 1955) - pp. 161-177 Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Horus, the Egyptian falcon god who avenged Osiris, defeated Set, and became the divine model for every pharaoh. - Mythopouch Previous Egyptian Next > Horus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s ḥr (Egyptian) Pronunciation HOR-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Heru, Horus the Elder, Horus the Younger, Harpocrates, Horus of Edfu, Horus the Avenger, the Falcon of the Sky, the Uniter of the Two Lands, Lord of the Horizon Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Ancient Egypt Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period c. 6000 BCE (predynastic worship) - Roman period Symbol The falcon, the wedjat eye, the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, the winged sun disk Tags egyptian, horus, falcon, osiris, isis, set, edfu, wedjat-eye Introduction - Overview Horus is the falcon-headed god of the sky who avenged his father's murder and claimed the throne of Egypt, the divine prototype of every pharaoh who ever ruled. He is the son of Isis, the great enchantress who gathered the scattered fragments of her murdered husband, and Osiris, the green-skinned lord of the afterlife who judged the dead. He is the lord of Edfu, the temple city where his granite sanctuary still stands as one of the best-preserved monuments of the ancient world. He is the god who battled Set, the crimson-haired storm-lord of the desert, for eighty years in the most famous lawsuit ever heard by the divine tribunal. He is the falcon whose right eye was the sun and whose left eye was the moon, the healer whose restored eye became the most powerful protective symbol in Egypt. And he is the eternal king, the living Horus in whom every pharaoh was incarnated, the divine right that made Egypt the longest-lived civilisation on earth. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Horus Horus was ancient before the first dynasty, worshipped in the predynastic period around 6000 BCE when the falcon was already the sacred bird of the Nile valley. In the earliest form he was Horus the Elder, a sky god whose eyes were the sun and the moon, born from the union of Geb, the green earth god, and Nut, the star-spangled sky goddess whose arched body was the canopy of heaven. But the Horus who would dominate Egyptian religion for four millennia was Horus the Younger, the son of Osiris and Isis. When Set, the god of chaos and desert storms, murdered Osiris and usurped the throne, Isis fled to the reed-beds of the northern Delta to hide her unborn child. She gave birth in secret and raised Horus among the papyrus thickets, protecting him from Set's assassins with magic and cunning. The boy grew to manhood in the marshes, and when he was old enough he set out to claim the inheritance that Set had stolen. The central drama of Horus's life was the Contendings of Horus and Set, the eighty-year lawsuit that the gods heard before the divine tribunal. Horus claimed the throne as the son of Osiris, arguing that legitimacy passed through the bloodline. Set claimed it as the brother of Osiris, arguing that strength and seniority were the rightful measures of kingship. The gods met in the Hall of the Ennead, where the nine great gods of Heliopolis sat in judgment, and the debate raged for decades. Set challenged Horus to a series of contests, from hippopotamus hunts to stone boat races, each designed to destroy the younger god. In one episode, Set tore out Horus's left eye, the lunar eye, and tore it into pieces. But Thoth, the ibis-headed scribe who kept the sacred records of the gods, gathered the fragments and restored the eye with his magic, creating the wedjat, the sound eye that became the most powerful amulet in Egypt. The climax of the conflict came when the gods finally ruled in Horus's favour. Set, enraged, transformed into a red hippopotamus and hid in the waters of the Nile. Horus harpooned him, and the battle raged for days. Isis intervened and bound Set with her magic, but Horus, furious that his mother had shown mercy to his father's murderer, struck off her head in a moment of rage. Thoth restored her with a cow's head, and the tribunal finally awarded the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt to Horus. Set was cast out into the desert, condemned to be the thunderstorm that raged beyond the fertile valley, while Horus was crowned king in the great temple at Heliopolis, the city of the sun. The ceremony was the template for every royal coronation that followed, and the pharaoh who sat on the throne was called the Living Horus, the god incarnate. Horus's power was not confined to myth. Every pharaoh from Narmer, the first king of a unified Egypt, to Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh, identified himself with Horus in life and with Osiris in death. The king wore the double crown that Horus had won, the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red crown of Lower Egypt combined into one. The temple of Edfu, built between 237 and 57 BCE, was the greatest monument to Horus in Egypt, a granite fortress-temple whose walls tell the entire story of his battle with Set in carved reliefs that still glow in the desert light. The winged sun disk, the image of Horus as a falcon with outstretched wings and a solar orb upon his head, was carved above the doorways of every temple as a protective emblem. In the afterlife, Horus led the deceased to Osiris and offered the restored wedjat eye as a symbol of wholeness and health. Horus did not die in the Egyptian tradition. He was eternal, the living king who passed the throne to his son and then ascended to the sky. But his human incarnation, the pharaoh, did die, and at that moment the king became Osiris while his son became the new Horus. This cycle of father and son, death and rebirth, was the engine of Egyptian civilisation for three thousand years. The Greeks called the child Horus Harpocrates, and they carried his image to the farthest corners of their empire. In modern times, the wedjat eye is worn as a protective charm across the world, and the falcon remains the symbol of sovereign vision. Horus endures as the eternal prototype of legitimate kingship, the son who avenged his father and restored order to a world that chaos had nearly destroyed. Summary Horus endures as the supreme image of divine kingship and filial vengeance, the falcon-headed god whose eighty-year struggle against Set defined the moral order of Egypt. From the reed-beds of the Delta where Isis hid him to the granite halls of Edfu where his temple still stands, from the restored wedjat eye to the double crown of every pharaoh, he spans six millennia as the living king. Every royal coronation, every protective amulet, every winged sun disk carries the mark of his ancient falcon head. In the human imagination, Horus remains the eternal avenger, the proof that legitimacy outlasts violence and that the son's duty to his father is older than the state itself. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Horus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Eye of Horus (Wedjat) Artifact/Object/Weapon Eye of Horus (Wedjat) Thoth Deity Thoth Set Deity Set Isis Deity Isis Osiris Deity Osiris Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pyramid Texts (5th-6th Dynasty, c. 2345-2181 BCE) - earliest references to Horus as divine king and son of Osiris - Coffin Texts, Spell 148 (Middle Kingdom, c. 2055-1650 BCE) - Horus's protection of the deceased and the wedjat eye - Contendings of Horus and Set, papyrus Chester Beatty I (20th Dynasty, c. 1186-1077 BCE) - the eighty-year lawsuit and the divine tribunal - Book of the Dead, Spell 17 (New Kingdom, c. 1550-1070 BCE) - Horus as the son of Osiris and avenger of his father - Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride (c. 100 CE) - the murder of Osiris, Horus's upbringing, and the battle with Set - Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2003) - Horus's iconography, cult, and role as divine king - Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford UP, 2002) - the Contendings and the Edfu temple - David P. Silverman, "The Nature of Kingship in Ancient Egypt" in Ancient Egyptian Kingship (Brill, 1995) - Horus as the theological basis of pharaonic authority Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Gildas, the sixth-century British monk who wrote De Excidio, condemned five kings and became famous for never naming Arthur in his surviving history. Previous Arthurian Next > Gildas Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Gildas Sapiens, Gildas Badonicus, Gildas the Wise, Gweltaz (Breton), Gildas Albanicus Pronunciation GIL-das Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Wisest of Britons, The Monk of the Ruin, The Scourge of Kings, The Father of British History, The Man Who Ignored Arthur, The Voice of the Groans Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Romano-British/Celtic Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Historical Gender Male Time Period c. 500-570 CE (lifetime); literary tradition from c. 540 CE (De Excidio) to 12th century CE (Lives of Gildas) Symbol Quill as a Boat Tags arthurian, gildas, british, hero, monk, de-excidio, ambrosius-aurelianus, mount-badon, historian, sixth-century Introduction - Overview Gildas is the monk who wrote the only surviving work from sixth-century Britain, a thunderous sermon called De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, "On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain," that condemned five kings as beasts of the Apocalypse and described the Battle of Mount Badon without once mentioning the name Arthur. He is the Romano-British historian born in the same year as the battle that halted the Saxon advance, educated by Illtud the educator of all Britain, who fled the strife of his homeland to become a hermit on an island in the Bristol Channel and later a teacher in Brittany whose most famous student was Taliesin, the greatest bard in Welsh legend. He is the son of Caw, one of twenty brothers, whose own brother Hueil was killed by King Arthur and whose forgiveness of the king became the foundation of a friendship that legend says saved Guinevere from the kidnapper Melwas of the Summer Country. He is the man whose body, laid in a boat upon a river after his death, drifted downstream for three months and was found intact by the monks of Rhuys, a miracle that confirmed his sainthood. And he is the most infuriating source in British history, the eyewitness who tells us everything about the age of Arthur except the one thing we most want to know, a monk whose silence about the greatest king has fuelled eight centuries of debate. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Gildas Gildas was born around the year 500, in the same year that the Battle of Mount Badon was fought, the decisive engagement that halted the Saxon advance and gave Britain a generation of peace. He came from the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, the northern kingdom of the Britons that would one day become Scotland, though some later traditions placed his birth in Powys in Wales. He was educated at a monastery, probably Llantwit Major in Glamorgan, under the tutelage of Illtud, a teacher so renowned that Gildas himself called him the educator of all Britain. The world into which Gildas was born was a world in ruins: the Roman legions had departed a century earlier, the cities were crumbling, and the Saxon invaders were pressing westward from the eastern shores. Yet Gildas was trained in the classical tradition, fluent in Latin, steeped in the Bible, and possessed of a literary style that would make his work the most influential text written in Britain for five hundred years. His masterpiece, De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, was written sometime between 516 and 547, probably in the 540s. It is not a history in the modern sense but a sermon, a thunderous religious polemic that uses the past to condemn the present. Gildas divides his work into three parts. The first is a narrative of Roman Britain from the conquest to his own day, a tale of invasion, rebellion, persecution, and divine punishment that includes the first written mention of the Battle of Mount Badon and the hero Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Romano-British leader who rallied the Britons against the Saxons. The second part is a savage denunciation of five British kings, whom Gildas compares to the beasts of the Apocalypse: Constantine the tyrannical whelp of the unclean lioness of Dumnonia, Aurelius Conanus the lion's whelp, Vortiporus the spotted leopard of the Demetians, Cuneglas the bear, and Maglocune the dragon of the island. Each king is torn apart with biblical rhetoric, his sins laid bare for the world to read. The third part attacks the British clergy, whom Gildas calls fools, shameless, and wily plunderers, ministers who had betrayed their sacred trust. The work is a cry of anguish, a lament for a fallen people, and a warning that the Saxons were God's punishment for British sin. The most famous thing about Gildas is what he did not write. In a work that covers the entire history of post-Roman Britain, that mentions Ambrosius Aurelianus and the Battle of Mount Badon, that condemns kings and bishops by name, there is no mention of Arthur. This silence has haunted historians for centuries. Some have argued that Arthur was not yet famous when Gildas wrote, a minor warlord beneath the notice of a monk who cared only for the great and the sinful. Others have suggested that Gildas deliberately omitted Arthur because of a personal grievance: in the Welsh tradition recorded by Caradoc of Llancarfan in the twelfth century, Gildas was the son of Caw, and his brother Hueil ap Caw was killed by King Arthur. Gildas, preaching in Ireland at the time, was said to have been grief-stricken, but he later forgave Arthur, who performed great penance for the slaying. The tradition grew so strong that by the thirteenth century, poets claimed Gildas had thrown all his books about Arthur into the sea in rage. Whether the omission was deliberate or simply a matter of perspective, the silence of Gildas is the single most important fact in the historical debate over Arthur's existence. Gildas's later life took him far from Britain. The Annales Cambriae record that he visited Ireland in 565, where he preached and restored church order at the request of King Ainmuire. He then made a pilgrimage to Rome and continued to Brittany, where he founded the monastery of St Gildas-de-Rhuys on a peninsula jutting into the Atlantic. There he lived as a teacher and hermit, and there he died around 570. His body was laid in a boat upon the river and allowed to drift downstream, as he had requested. Three months later, fishermen found the boat and the body intact, a miracle that confirmed his sanctity and made him one of the most revered saints in Brittany. His relics were venerated at Rhuys for generations before being transferred to Berry in the tenth century. In the Arthurian legends that grew up centuries after his death, Gildas became a character in the very story he had refused to tell. Caradoc of Llancarfan's Life of Gildas, written around 1130, describes how Gildas and the Abbot of Glastonbury persuaded King Melwas of the Summer Region to release Guinevere, whom Melwas had kidnapped and brought to his stronghold at Glastonbury. Arthur had gathered an army to besiege the stronghold, but Gildas's intervention prevented bloodshed and secured the queen's safe return. In this legend, Gildas is the peacemaker, the monk whose holiness could turn the wrath of kings. In Thomas Hughes's Elizabethan tragedy The Misfortunes of Arthur, Gildas appears on stage to lament the state of Britain after Arthur's death, a voice of prophecy and mourning. The historical Gildas, who wrote with such fury about the sins of his own age, would have recognised the role: he was always a man who spoke truth to power, who saw the ruin of Britain and refused to look away, and whose words outlasted every king he condemned. Summary Gildas endures as the most important voice from the age of Arthur, the monk whose thunderous sermon De Excidio is the only surviving contemporary account of post-Roman Britain and whose silence about the greatest king has fuelled eight centuries of debate. From the banks of the Clyde to the monastery of Rhuys, from the five beasts of the Apocalypse to the boat that carried his body intact down the river, his story is the reminder that history is written by the survivors and that the greatest historian may be the one who refuses to mention the name we most want to hear. He is the wisest of Britons, and the most infuriating. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Gildas From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Thames Location Thames Merlin Person Merlin Uther Pendragon Person Uther Pendragon The Black Dog of Maelgwn Creature/Monster/Animal The Black Dog of Maelgwn King Arthur Person King Arthur Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Gildas, De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, c. 516-547 CE - primary source; the only surviving contemporary work from sixth-century Britain, including the account of Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Battle of Mount Badon, and the condemnation of five British kings - Annales Cambriae (The Annals of Wales), c. 10th century - primary source; the record of Gildas's visit to Ireland in 565 and his death in 570, and his designation as "the wisest of Britons" - Caradoc of Llancarfan, Vita Gildae (Life of Saint Gildas), c. 1130 - primary source; the Arthurian legend of Gildas, his brother Hueil's death at Arthur's hands, his forgiveness of the king, and his rescue of Guinevere from Melwas - Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, c. 731 CE - primary source; Bede's use of Gildas as a source for the early history of post-Roman Britain - Nennius, Historia Brittonum, c. 828 CE - primary source; the Welsh monk's use of Gildas and the development of the Arthurian tradition from Gildas's silence - Thomas Hughes, The Misfortunes of Arthur, 1587 - primary source; the Elizabethan tragedy featuring Gildas lamenting the state of Britain after Arthur's death - Winterbottom, Michael (ed. and trans.), Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Works (Phillimore, 1978) - scholarly critical edition and translation of De Excidio with extensive commentary - Dumville, David N., "Gildas and Maelgwn: Problems of Dating," in Gildas: New Approaches, ed. Michael Lapidge and David Dumville (D.S. Brewer, 1984) - scholarly analysis of the dating of Gildas's work and the historical context of the five kings - Higham, N.J., King Arthur: Myth-Making and History (Routledge, 2002) - scholarly study of Gildas's silence on Arthur and the historical foundations of the Arthurian legend - Charles-Edwards, T.M., "The Arthur of History," in The Arthur of the Welsh, ed. Rachel Bromwich (University of Wales Press, 1991) - scholarly examination of Gildas as a historical source and the relationship between De Excidio and the Arthurian tradition - Lapidge, Michael and David Dumville (eds.), Gildas: New Approaches (D.S. Brewer, 1984) - scholarly collection of essays on Gildas's life, work, and historical significance Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Belus, son of Poseidon and king linked with Egypt and Phoenicia, whose twin descendants Aegyptus and Danaus began the bloody tragedy of the Danaids. Previous Greek Next > Belus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Βῆλος (Bêlos) Pronunciation BEE-lus Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Belos, The Libyan Zeus, King of Egypt, Father of the Danaids, Son of Poseidon Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Egyptian / Phoenician Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period Heroic Age; first attested in Hesiod (8th century BCE) Symbol Flowing Jar, River & Reeds Tags greek, egyptian, phoenician, egypt, danaus, aegyptus, danaids, poseidon, libya, agenor, baal Introduction - Overview Belus is the king who gave Greece its two most famous feuding twins, the ruler of Egypt whose fifty grandsons were murdered by his fifty granddaughters on their wedding night. He is the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Libya, the princess whose name became the land itself, and the twin brother of Agenor, the Phoenician king whose daughter Europa was carried away by Zeus in the form of a white bull. He is the husband of Achiroe, the daughter of the river god Nilus, by whom he fathered Aegyptus and Danaus, the brothers whose rivalry would drive the Danaids across the sea to Argos and stain Greek myth with the most notorious mass murder of bridegrooms ever told. He is the ancestor from whom the Greeks traced their claim to Egypt, the name they gave to a line of kings that stretched back through Memphis and Epaphus to the wandering Io. And he is the echo of Baal, the Canaanite storm-god whose title meant simply "lord," a name that travelled from Phoenician temples to Babylonian ziggurats and finally into the genealogies of the greatest families in Greece. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Belus Belus was born from the union of Poseidon, the earth-shaking god of the sea, and Libya, the daughter of Epaphus and Memphis. Epaphus was himself the son of Io, the priestess of Hera whom Zeus had loved and transformed into a heifer, sending her wandering across Europe and Asia until she reached Egypt and gave birth to a son by the Nile. That son, Epaphus, married Memphis, a nymph of the river, and their daughter Libya gave her name to the whole northern coast of Africa. Poseidon saw Libya and desired her, and from their union came twin sons: Agenor and Belus. The brothers were destined to rule the two halves of the Mediterranean world. Agenor departed for Phoenicia, where he founded the cities of Tyre and Sidon and became the father of Europa, Cadmus, Cilix, and Phoenix. Belus remained in Africa, inheriting the kingdom of his grandfather Epaphus, and ruled as king over Egypt and the lands that bore his mother's name. Belus married Achiroe, whom some call Anchinoe, a daughter of Nilus, the river god whose waters made Egypt the gift of the Nile. By her he fathered at least two sons, and in some accounts many more. The most famous were Aegyptus and Danaus, twin brothers who would become the protagonists of one of Greek mythology's darkest stories. Aegyptus was given Arabia to rule, and Danaus was given Libya. But Aegyptus was not satisfied. He conquered the land of the Melampods, a territory that probably lay within Danaus' own kingdom, and named the conquered country after himself. From that day, the land was called Egypt, and Aegyptus ruled it as his own. Danaus, seeing his brother's power grow, grew fearful. The rivalry between the twins festered until it became intolerable. Aegyptus fathered fifty sons. Danaus fathered fifty daughters, the Danaids. Aegyptus decided that his fifty sons would marry his brother's fifty daughters, binding the two houses together in a union that would end the feud. Danaus saw the proposal for what it was: a plot to absorb his line into his brother's and eliminate his independence. He refused. Aegyptus pressed the matter, and Danaus, in desperation, fled. He built a ship - the first vessel ever constructed, according to some traditions - and sailed with his fifty daughters across the Mediterranean to Argos in Greece. There he claimed the throne from the descendants of Io, his own great-great-grandmother, and established himself as king. But Aegyptus' sons were not deterred. They pursued their cousins across the sea, landed in Argos, and demanded the marriages that their father had arranged. Danaus, unable to refuse outright without starting a war he could not win, agreed. On the wedding night, however, he gave each of his daughters a dagger and commanded them to kill their bridegrooms. Forty-nine of the Danaids obeyed. Only Hypermnestra, the eldest, spared her husband Lynceus, because he had respected her virginity. The forty-nine heads were buried, and the forty-nine murderesses were condemned in the underworld to carry water in leaky jars for eternity. Belus, the grandfather of all hundred children, had set in motion a tragedy that would stain his name forever. But Belus was more than a genealogical node. His very name carried divine resonance. In the ancient Near East, the title Baal meant "lord," and it was applied to storm-gods across Canaan, Phoenicia, and Syria. The Greeks heard this name and incorporated it into their own mythic geography, making Belus a king who stood at the crossroads of Egypt and Phoenicia, of the Nile and the Mediterranean. The late epic poet Nonnus, writing in the fifth century CE, called him "the Libyan Zeus," a title that suggests the Greeks saw in him not merely a mortal king but a local manifestation of the thunder-god himself. Diodorus Siculus, the historian who wrote in the first century BCE, claimed that Belus founded a colony on the river Euphrates and appointed the Chaldean priests-astrologers whom the Babylonians revered, making him a bridge between Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisation. Pausanias, the Greek traveller, recorded that Belus founded a temple of Heracles in Babylon, a claim that links the Greek hero-cult to the ancient East. The family of Belus extended far beyond the Danaids. According to Pherecydes of Athens, an early Greek mythographer, Belus had a daughter named Damno who married her uncle Agenor and bore him Phoenix and two daughters, Isaie and Melia, who in turn married their cousins Aegyptus and Danaus. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women made Belus the father of a daughter named Thronia, on whom Hermes fathered Arabus, the eponym of Arabia. Some sources made him the father of Lamia, the Libyan queen who became a child-eating demon after Hera killed her children. Antoninus Liberalis named him as the father of Thias, who in turn fathered Smyrna, the woman who conceived a passion for her own father and was transformed into a myrrh tree. Euripides added Cepheus and Phineus to the list of Belus' sons, and Nonnus gave him five: Phineus, Phoenix, Agenor, Aegyptus, and Danaus, though Nonnus elsewhere confused the generations and made Phineus a brother of Cadmus. The ancient sources disagree on almost every detail of Belus' family, but they agree on one thing: he was the root from which the royal houses of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greece all claimed descent. Summary Belus stands as the great genealogical junction of the eastern Mediterranean, the king whose children and grandchildren linked Egypt to Greece, Phoenicia to Argos, and the Nile to the Aegean. From the twin sons who divided Africa and Arabia to the fifty granddaughters who murdered their fifty cousins, from the name that echoed the Canaanite storm-god to the temple of Heracles in Babylon, his story is woven into every claim of divine descent that the Greeks made upon the ancient East. Every dynasty that traces its blood to a god, every mass wedding that ends in blood, every title that makes a mortal king into a local Zeus carries something of Belus in it. He reminds us that in Greek myth, the boundary between king and god was often no thicker than a name. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Belus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Poseidon Deity Poseidon Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fragment 137 (trans. Most) (8th century BCE) - Belus as father of Thronia and Arabus - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.1.4 (1st-2nd century CE) - genealogy of Belus and Agenor as twin sons of Poseidon and Libya - Pausanias, Description of Greece 4.23.10 (c. 150 CE) - Libya as daughter of Epaphus and mother of Belus and Agenor - Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.28.1, 20.41.3-6 (1st century BCE) - Belus as founder of Babylonian colony and Chaldean priests - Pherecydes of Athens, fragment 21 Fowler (5th century BCE, preserved in scholia) - Damno, daughter of Belus, and her marriage to Agenor - Hyginus, Fabulae 124, 157, 168, 273, 274 (2nd century CE) - the family of Belus, the Danaids, and the fifty sons of Aegyptus - Nonnus, Dionysiaca 3.287 ff., 2.686 (c. 450-470 CE) - Belus as "the Libyan Zeus" and father of five sons - Aeschylus, Suppliants 318-319 (c. 463 BCE) - the Danaids claim descent from Belus through Epaphus and Io - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Volume 1, pp. 207-210, the Egyptian genealogies and the Danaid tradition - West, M.L., The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985) - pp. 84-86, fragment 137 and the Arabus lineage - Fowler, R.L., Early Greek Mythography, Volume 2: Commentary (Oxford, 2013) - pp. 289-290, Pherecydes on Belus and Damno Previous --- End of Record --- Next >