The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics) (23 page)

10. The Asopids

The River Asopos was a son of Oceanos and Tethys, or, according to Acousilaos, of Pero and Poseidon, or, according to some accounts, of Zeus and Eurynome. Metope, who was herself a daughter of the River Ladon, married Asopos and bore him two sons, Ismenos and Pelagon, and twenty daughters, one of whom, Aegina, was carried off by Zeus. Asopos set out to find her, and arriving in Corinth, he learned from Sisyphos
*
that her abductor was Zeus. When Asopos tried to pursue him, Zeus sent him back to his own stream by hurling thunderbolts at him (and because of that, coals are collected to this very day from the waters of the Asopos). Zeus took Aegina away to the island that was then known as Oinone, but is now named Aegina after her, where he slept with her and had a son, Aiacos, by her. Because Aiacos was alone on the island, Zeus turned the ants into people
*
for him; and he married Endeis, daughter of Sceiron, who bore him two sons, Peleus and Telamon. Pherecydes says, however, that Telamon was a friend of Peleus rather than a brother, and that he was in fact a son of Actaios and Glauce, daughter of Cychreus. Afterwards Aiacos had intercourse with Psamathe, daughter of Nereus, who turned herself into a seal
*
in the hope of escaping his embraces, and he fathered a son, Phocos.

Of all men Aiacos was the most pious, and for that reason, when Greece was gripped by infertility because of Pelops (who had made war against Stymphalos, king of the Arcadians, and finding himself unable to conquer Arcadia, had feigned friendship with the king and then killed and dismembered him and scattered his limbs), oracles from the gods proclaimed that Greece would be delivered from its present afflictions if Aiacos offered prayers on its behalf; and when he offered the prayers,
Greece was delivered from its barrenness.
*
After his death, Aiacos is honoured in the realm of Pluto also and guards the keys of Hades.
*

Because Phocos excelled in the games, his brothers, Peleus and Telamon, plotted against him; and when Telamon was selected in the lot, he killed his brother
*
by hurling a discus at his head while they were exercising together, and then, with the help of Peleus, he carried the body away and hid it in a wood. But the murder was discovered and they were exiled from Aegina by Aiacos.

⁷
Telamon went to the court of Cychreus in Salamis. Cychreus, the son of [Poseidon and] Salamis, daughter of Asopos, had gained the throne by killing a snake which was devastating the island; and when he died without offspring, he left the throne to Telamon. And Telamon married Periboia, daughter of Alcathous, son of Pelops; and because Heracles had prayed that he would have a male child and after his prayers an
eagle
had appeared, Telamon called the son who was born to him
Aias
*
He then accompanied Heracles on his expedition against Troy, and received as a prize Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, who bore him a son, Teucros.

¹
Peleus for his part fled to Phthia, to the court of Eurytion,

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son of Actor, and was purified by him and received from him his daughter, Antigone, and a third of the country; and a daughter, Polydora, was born to him, who became the wife of Boros, son of Perieres.
²
From there he went with Eurytion to join the hunt for the Calydonian boar, but as he threw a javelin at the boar, he struck Eurytion instead, and accidentally killed him. So he went into exile again, leaving Phthia for Iolcos, where he arrived at the court of Acastos and was purified by him.
³
And he competed at the games held in honour of Pelias, wrestling with Atalante.

Astydameia, the wife of Acastos, fell in love with Peleus and sent him a message proposing an assignation. When she was unable to persuade him, she sent word to his wife saying that he was intending to marry Sterope, the daughter of Acastos; and when his wife heard this, she hanged herself. Astydameia also made false accusations to her husband against Peleus, claiming that he had tried to seduce her. When he heard this, Acastos, who was unwilling to kill a man whom he had purified, took him hunting on Mount Pelion. There they competed in the chase, and Peleus cut out the tongues of the animals caught by him and put them in his pouch, while Acastos and his companions picked up his prey and made fun of Peleus, alleging that he had failed to catch anything. He produced the tongues, however, and told them that he had killed as many beasts as he had tongues. When Peleus fell asleep on Mount Pelion, Acastos left him, concealing his sword
*
in a pile of cow dung, and returned home. On arising, Peleus tried to find his sword, and while he was doing so, he was caught by the Centaurs; and he would shortly have lost his life if he had not been saved by Cheiron, who also searched for his sword and restored it to him.

⁴
Peleus married Polydora, daughter of Perieres, who bore a son, Menesthios, nominally to Peleus, but in reality to the River Spercheios.
*
^s
Later he married Thetis, the daughter of Nereus. Zeus and Poseidon had competed for her hand, only to withdraw when Themis had prophesied that the son born to her would be more powerful than his father. It is said by some, however, that when Zeus was set on having intercourse with her, he was told by Prometheus
*
that the son she would bear to him would become the ruler of heaven; while according to others,
*
Thetis was unwilling to have intercourse with Zeus because she had been brought up by Hera, and in his anger at this, Zeus wanted to marry her to a mortal. Now Peleus had been advised by Cheiron to seize her and keep a firm grip on her; however, she changed her shape, so he lay in wait and caught hold of her, and though she changed now into fire, now
into water, now into a wild beast, he never loosened his grip until she had returned to her original form. And he married her on Mount Pelion, and the gods celebrated his wedding there with feasting and songs. Cheiron gave Peleus an ashwood spear, and Poseidon gave him two horses,
*
Balios and Xanthos, of immortal stock.

⁶
When Thetis gave birth to a child by Peleus, she wanted to make it immortal, and in secret from Peleus, she used to bury it in the fire by night to destroy the mortal element in its nature that came from its father, and rubbed it by day with ambrosia. But Peleus kept a watch on her, and shouted out when he saw the child squirming in the fire; and Thetis, frustrated in her purpose, abandoned her infant son and went back to the Nereids.
*
Peleus delivered the child to Cheiron, who took him in, and fed him on the entrails of lions and wild boars and the marrow of bears, and named him
Achilles
—his former name was Ligyron—because he had
not
applied his
lips
*
to a breast.

⁷
After this, Peleus sacked Iolcos with the help of Jason and the Dioscuri, and slaughtering Astydameia,
*
the wife of Acastos, he cut her body limb from limb and led his army into the city through her remains.

⁸
When Achilles was nine years old, Calchas declared that Troy could not be taken without him, but Thetis—who knew in advance that he was fated to be killed if he joined the expedition—disguised him in women’s clothing and entrusted him to Lycomedes
*
in the semblance of a young girl. While he was growing up at his court, Achilles had intercourse with Deidameia, the daughter of Lycomedes, and a son, Pyrrhos, was born to him, who was later called Neoptolemos.
*
Achilles’ whereabouts were betrayed, however, and Odysseus, searching for him at the court of Lycomedes, discovered him by causing a trumpet to be sounded.
*
And so it came about that Achilles went to Troy.

Phoenix, son of Amyntor, accompanied him. Phoenix had been blinded by his father when Phthia, his father’s concubine, had falsely accused him of having seduced her;
*
but Peleus had taken him to Cheiron, who cured his eyes, and had made him king of the Dolopians.

Achilles was also accompanied by Patroclos, son of Menoitios and of Sthenele, daughter of Acastos, or of Periopis, daughter of Pheres, or according to Philocrates, of Polymele, daughter of Peleus. At Opous, during an argument over a game of knucklebones, Patroclos had killed a boy,
*
Cleitonymos, son of Amphidamas, and had fled with his father to live at the court of Peleus, where Achilles had become his lover.
*

11
.
The kings of Athens

^l
Cecrops, who was born from the earth and had the body of

14

a man and a serpent joined into one, was the first king of Athens, and he named the land, which was known as Acte in earlier days, Cecropia after himself. During his time, they say, the gods decided to take possession of cities where each of them would be honoured with his own special cult. So Poseidon was the first to come to Attica, and striking a blow with his trident on the middle of the Acropolis, he caused a sea to appear, which is now known as the Erechtheid Sea.
*
After Poseidon, Athene arrived; and taking Cecrops as her witness, she claimed possession by planting an olive tree, which is still shown to visitors in the Pandroseion.
*
When the two of them entered into conflict for possession of the land, Zeus separated them, and appointed as judges, not Cecrops and Cranaos as some have claimed, nor Erysichthon, but the twelve gods. In accordance with their decision, the country was awarded to Athene, because Cecrops had testified that it was she who had first planted the olive tree. So Athene named the city Athens after herself, while Poseidon, in a rage, flooded the Thriasian plain
*
and submerged Attica under the sea.

²
Cecrops married Agraulos, the daughter of Actaios,
*
and had a son, Erysichthon, who died without offspring, and three daughters, Agraulos, Herse, and Pandrosos. Agraulos in turn had a daughter, Alcippe, by Ares. When Halirrhothios, son of
Poseidon and a nymph, Euryte, tried to rape Alcippe, he was caught in the act by Ares and killed by him. Poseidon brought charges against Ares, who was tried on the Areiopagos
*
before the twelve gods, and was acquitted.

³
Herse had a son, Cephalos, by Hermes. Dawn fell in love with him and carried him off; and after having intercourse with him in Sicily, she bore him a son, Tithonos, who in turn had a son, Phaethon,
*
whose son Astynoos had a son, Sandocos, who left Syria for Cilicia, where he founded a city, Celenderis, and after marrying Pharnace, daughter of Megassares, king of Hyria, became the father of Cinyras. Arriving in Cyprus with some followers, Cinyras founded Paphos, where he married Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, and became the father of Oxyporos and Adonis, and had three daughters in addition, Orsedice, Laogore, and Braisia. Victims of Aphrodite’s wrath, his daughters slept with foreigners
*
and finished their lives in Egypt.

⁴
Through the anger of Artemis, Adonis died in a hunt while he was still a young boy, from a wound inflicted by a boar. According to Hesiod, however, he was a son [not of Cinyras but] of Phoenix and Alphesiboia, while according to Panyasis, he was a son of Theias,
*
king of Assyria, who had a daughter called Smyrna. And this Smyrna, through the wrath of Aphrodite (whom she had failed to honour), conceived a passion for her father, and enlisting the aid of her nurse, shared her father’s bed for twelve nights before he realized who she was. But when he found out, he drew his sword and chased after her. As he caught up with her, she prayed to the gods to be made invisible; and the gods, taking pity on her, turned her into a tree of the kind known as a
Smyrna
[or myrrh tree]. Ten months later the tree burst open and Adonis, as he is called, was brought to birth. Struck by his beauty, Aphrodite, in secret from the gods, hid him in a chest while he was still a little child, and entrusted him to Persephone. But when Persephone caught sight of him, she refused to give him back. The matter was submitted to the judgement of Zeus; and dividing the year into three parts, he decreed that Adonis should spend a third of the year by himself, a third with Persephone, and the
remaining third with Aphrodite (but Adonis assigned his own share also to Aphrodite). Later, however, while he was hunting, Adonis was wounded by a boar and died.

⁵
When Cecrops died, Cranaos [became king]. He was born from the earth, and it was during his reign that Deucalion’s flood is said to have taken place. He married a woman from Lacedaimon, Pedias, daughter of Mynes, who bore him Cranae, Cranaichme, and Atthis. This Atthis died while still a young girl, and Cranaos named the country Attica after her.

⁶
Cranaos was driven out by Amphictyon, who took over the throne. Some call him a son of Deucalion, while others say that he was born from the earth. When he had ruled for twelve years, Erichthonios drove him out. Some say that Erichthonios was a son of Hephaistos and Atthis, daughter of Cranaos, while according to others, he was born to Hephaistos and Athene,
*
in the following way. Athene visited Hephaistos, wanting to fashion some arms. But Hephaistos, who had been deserted by Aphrodite, yielded to his desire for Athene and began to chase after her, while the goddess for her part tried to escape. When he caught up with her at the expense of much effort (for he was lame), he tried to make love with her. But she, being chaste and a virgin, would not permit it, and he ejaculated over the goddess’s leg. In disgust, she wiped the semen away with a piece of wool
*
and threw it to the ground. As she was fleeing, Erichthonios came to birth from the seed that had fallen on the earth. Athene reared the child in secret from the other gods, wishing to make him immortal; and placing him in a chest, she entrusted it to Pandrosos, the daughter of Cecrops, telling her not to open it. Out of curiosity, however, the sisters of Pandrosos opened it, and beheld a snake
*
lying coiled beside the baby; and according to some, they were destroyed by the snake itself, while according to others, they were driven mad through the anger of Athene and hurled themselves from the Acropolis. After Erichthonios had been brought up by Athene herself within her sanctuary,
*
he expelled Amphictyon and became king of Athens. He erected the wooden image of Athene
*
on the Acropolis, and founded the festival of the Panathenaia;
*
and he married Praxithea, a naiad nymph, who bore him a son, Pandion.