“Akesandros tells the story in his Concerning Cyrene that when Eurypylos was king in Libya, Cyrene was taken by Apollo because there was a lion plaguing the land. Eurypylos put his kingship up as a prize for anyone who could kill a lion—and Cyrene killed the lion and gained the kingdom. Her children were Autoukhos and Aristaios. Phularkhos says that she came to Libya with a group, and when they went on a hunting expedition, she joined them too.”
This story is really exceptional in Greek myth and history for a couple of reasons. First, here we have a female beast-slayer who follows the classic pattern of killing a monster and gaining a kingdom. Second, while her children are mentioned–following a typical pattern of defining women by their offspring–her mate is not. There are some other sources on this figure.
Nonnos, Dionys. 13.300-301
“Cyrene, another deer-pursuing Artemis,
The lion-slaying nymph bore him, after sex with Phoibos.”
“Deukaliôn, in whose time the deluge happened, was the son of Prometheus and his mother—according to most authors—was Klymenê. But Hesiod says that his mother was Pronoê and Akousilaos claims that it was Hesione, the daughter of Okeanos and Prometheus. He married Pyrra who was the daughter of Epimêtheus and Pandôra the one who was given by Epimetheus in exchange for fire. Deukalion had two daughters, Prôtogeneia and Melantheia, and two sons, Ampiktuôn and Hellen, whom others say was actually an offspring of Zeus, but in truth he was Deucalion’s”.
This story is a bit strange but repeats the typical connection between man and Prometheus. Here, however, mortal man is descended from Prometheus via Deucalion. He married his cousin, which was not all that uncommon, and the rest of the story proceeds somewhat as is typical (leading to the birth of Hellen, the origin of the ethnonym Hellenes).
The Schol. In Ap. Rhod. 3.1086 tells this part of the story, except, he gives us another mother:
“Deucalion was the son of Prometheus and Pandora, which is what Hesiod says in the Catalogue [Of Women] and that Hellen was the son of Deucalion and Pyrra, from whom the Hellenes and Hellas were named. He also said that Deukalion was king of Thessaly…”
This passage is, of course, more than a little messed up, since it makes Pandôra into Deukalion’s mother. West in the edition with Merkelbach (1967, 4) comments “locum funditus corruptum varie sanare conati sunt viri docti” (“learned men have tried to correct this deeply corrupt passage in different ways”).
The names given for Deucalion’s mothers are interesting. Hêsione is the same name as the Trojan princess rescued by Herakles but not the same figure. She appears in connection with Prometheus in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. Klymene—whose name may have something to do with weeping or flowing—may be associated with Deucalion because of his relationship with the flood (κατακλυσμὸς). And the other alternative, Pronoê, is merely a parallel formation for Prometheus (both mean forethought).
The problem of Deukalion’s mother goes on: Herodotus (4.45) makes her Asia. Thought the schêoliast says that “most authors” make Klymenê Deukalion’s mother, this is a bit of a problem if we look to Hesiod’s Theogony (507-511):
“Iapetos took as wife the fine-ankled Okeanid
Klumenê and put her in his own bed.
She bore to him the strong-minded child Atlas.
She also bore overawing Menoitios and Prometheus
Fine and clever minded, and then messy-minded Epimetheus.”
So, it is clear that Klumenê is not likely to have been Prometheus’ mother and his wife. This also explains why Hesiod listed a different mother for Deukalion—Hesiodic poetrymade the Okeanid Prometheus’ mother. To generate a wife, it seems to have created one based on the idea of her husband’s name. It is thoroughly possible for different genealogical traditions in Greece to attribute offspring to different parents. Deukalion, as the survivor of a flood, makes senseas a son of an Okeanid.
Of course, this means we have no universal choice for his mother. Personally, I kind of like the choice of Pandôra…even if it it comes from a locum funditus corruptum. But the sensible choice, seems a compromise. If Klumene is Prometheus’ mother, then the Okeanid Hesione can be Deukalion’s mother, giving him all that association with the ocean.
Of course, this is not the end of it: in the Works and Days 159a, Epimetheus is made the father of Deucalion and Pyrra….
Works Consulted
R. L. Fowler. Early Greek Mythography. Volume 2: Commentary. Oxford, 2013.
R. Merkelbach and M.L. West. Fragmenta Hesiodea. Oxford, 1967.
“From there for nine days I was carried by ruinous winds
over the fish-bearing sea. On the tenth we came to the land
of the Lotus-Eaters where they eat the florid food.
There we disembarked to the shore and we drew water;
soon my companions made dinner around the swift ships.
But after we had shared the food and drink
I sent out companions to go and discover
whatever men there were who ate the fruit of the earth.
I chose two men and sent a herald as a third.
They went and met the Lotus-eating men.
The Lotus-Eaters didn’t bring any harm to my companions,
but they gave them their lotus to share.
Whoever ate the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus
no longer wished to report back or return home,
but just longed to stay there among the Lotus-eating men
to wait and pluck the lotus, forgetting his homecoming.”
The scholia present reactions to this passage that are not altogether alien from some arguments in the debate about drug enforcement and addiction.
One scholiast quotes Heraclitus the Paradoxographer with approval, noting that this scene is about how the wise man can resist pleasure.
Schol. T ad. Od. 9 89
“From Herakleitos. If someone wishes to examine Odysseus’ wanderings precisely, he will find an allegorical tale. For he has set up Odysseus as something of a vehicle of every kind of virtue through which has philosophized: and then he resists the vices that corrupt human life: the land of the Lotus-eaters represents pleasure, a land of foreign corruption which Odysseus masterfully passes by, and then he settles the wild heart of each man with either chastisement or persuasion.”
Another commentator actually speaks of the Lotus-eaters as merely men. This author implies that Odysseus’ men choose to take the drugs. Therefore, the blame is on them.
Schol. Q ad Od. 9.92
“Because they are righteous men, the [Lotus-eaters] do not restrain anyone by force, but by persuasion. For in the word “they were devising” it is clear that the ruin which attends these men does not happen without their consent. For, because the Lotus-eaters are righteous men, they were detaining no one by force but they were bewitching them with words alone.”
And another comment explains that the men who partake of the lotus don’t actually forget their homecoming, but they merely stop worrying about it. Because, you know, it is their fault!
Schol. HQ ad Od. 9.97
“They forgot their homecoming” This follows from their nature, as it happens with the irrational animals, that the Lotus brings them forgetfulness and because of pleasure they spurn their homecoming. The sentiment is similar to the Iliad’s “they forgot their rushing valor”—they did not really forget it, but they stopped fostering it.”
In these three cases, drug addiction is treated as an individual responsibility and not as either a biological challenge [e.g. addiction as a disease] or a social problem [an act of oblivion in a society with no collective meaning or sense of belonging].
I also wonder about this: Odysseus saved his men from the horrors of the lotus, only for them to die at sea anyway. They had no agency either way. Perhaps they were better off without him.
Ancient Greek may not have had a word for the concept of addiction. And there is definitely a school of thought that sees drug use as being an issue of tolerance:
50 “In his work On Plants, in the last part of the material, Theophrastos says that Eunomos, the Khian and purveyor of drugs, did not [cleanse himself/die] while drinking many doses of hellebore. Once, even, when together with his fellow craftsmen he took over 22 drinks in one day as he sat in the agora and he did not return from his implements. Then he left to wash and eat, as he was accustomed, and did not vomit. He accomplished this after being in this custom for a long time, because he started from small amounts until he got to so many large ones. The powers of all drugs are less severe for those used to them and for some they are even useless.”
“…One could imagine the poet deciding that drugs, too, are a part of experience, and maybe one could learn even from them. And, that being granted, given the poem’s frequent points of contact with a drug culture of some kind, it is not altogether implausible that in book 11 the poet conducts his hero on a hallucinogenic trip to the Underworld precisely when and where it will do him the most good. But only then, and for very special reasons, does it earn something like his grudging respect”
-Douglas J. Stewart. The Disguised Guest. 1976, 212.
When he arrives in Odysseus’ household, the seer Theoklymenos gets a little judgy:
Homer, Odyssey 20.351-57
“Wretches! What evil is this you are suffering? Now your heads
Are covered with night along with your faces and legs below.
A wailing burns and your cheeks streak with tears
As the walls and fine rafters are sprayed with blood.
The entryway is filled with ghosts, the courtyard is filled with ghosts
Heading to Erebos under the darkness. The sun has perished
From the sky and a wicked mist rushes over us.”
A suitor’s response is appropriately dismissive: 20.360-362
“A crazy stranger has just arrived from somewhere else.
Come, quick, young men, send him out of the house
To the assembly since he thinks this is like the night!”
“A solar eclipse did not happen but Theoklymenos sees it this way as he tells a prophecy under divine influence since the sun will eclipse for these guys.”
People cite Plutarch (On the Face in the Moon 19), suggesting that he presents this scene as being an eclipse: but he is, in my opinion, satirizing a man who marshals an excess of questionable poetic ‘proofs’ to display his own erudition about eclipses. You can read a free version of this at Lacus Curtius.
From the Dallas Morning News
Peter Gainsford has a great piece about this from 2012 (TAPA 142 1-22). Over twitter, he pointed out that he did not include P. Oxy. 53, 3710 (M.W. Haslam, 1986) which contains a lot of information about eclipses in conjunction with the passage from the Odyssey.
I have read a good deal of scholia and I am not convinced that the passage changes anything about whether or not this part of Odyssey refers to an eclipse. Some ancient scholars may have thought so—and the scholion implies that—but scholiasts also tend to fill commentary with displays of erudition and minutiae. But, here’s my [hasty] translation of a section of the fragment. You can view the whole fragment here. Also, I welcome any suggestions for cleaning up this translation.
“Aristonikos says that it was the new moon then, from which [we get?] Apollo, since he is the sun himself. Aristarkhos of Samos writes that this is because eclipses happen on the new moon. Thales says that the sun goes into eclipse when the moon is in front of it and when the day [….] marks it, on which it makes the eclipse which some call the thirtieth day and others call the new moon.
Heraclitus says as follows: when the months come together [the eclipse?] appears then before the second new moon and then they grow sometimes less and at other times more. Diodorus explains the same thing. For, after the moon is hidden it moves towards the sun during the final [days] of the month until it impedes the rays of the sun and…..makes it disappear and then in turn….”
“All along, Phaethon’s father, filthy and bereft
Of his own light, the way he is when the sun is eclipsed,
He hates the light and himself and the day
And he dedicates his soul to sorrow and adds rage
To his mourning as he refuses his duty to the world.
‘I’m done. From the beginning my lot has been restless.
My job without end, without honor for my work, has embittered me.
Let some other, anyone, drive the chariot carrying the light.
If there is no one and all the gods claim they cannot do it,
Let the father himself drive it so that, at some point, as he controls the reins,
And he puts down the bolts that make fathers barren,
Then he will understand, once he knows the strength of the fire-footed stallions,
That he did not earn death just because he did not rule them well.’ ”
Squalidus interea genitor Phaethontis et expers
ipse sui decoris, qualis, cum deficit orbem,
esse solet, lucemque odit seque ipse diemque
datque animum in luctus et luctibus adicit iram
officiumque negat mundo. “satis” inquit “ab aevi
sors mea principiis fuit inrequieta, pigetque
actorum sine fine mihi, sine honore laborum!
quilibet alter agat portantes lumina currus!
si nemo est omnesque dei non posse fatentur,
ipse agat ut saltem, dum nostras temptat habenas,
orbatura patres aliquando fulmina ponat!
tum sciet ignipedum vires expertus equorum
non meruisse necem, qui non bene rexerit illos.”
Gemälde – Sturz des Phaethon, Entwurf für die Decke des Treppenhauses der Eichstätter
“Among them then Helen was the third to take up the lament”
‘Hektor, you were by far the dearest of my in-laws—
My husband was actually godlike Alexandros,
The one who brought me to Troy. I wish I had died before that.
This is the twentieth years since I arrived from there
And I left my own homeland.
But I have never heard an evil or cruel word from you.
But if anyone else in our home would criticize me,
One of your brothers or sisters or one of their spouses
Or my mother in law—since your father was always as gentle as my own
Then you would hold them back by persuading them with words,
With your very kindness and your kind words.
So, I am weeping for you now and my unlucky self, aggrieved in my heart.
No one else in the wide land of Troy will be here for me,
As gentle and as dear, and everyone else is rough to me.’ ”
“The twentieth year? Wrong. This can’t be the twentieth year. From the time Helen went to Troy it is established that the gathering of the army happened but that in the twentieth, Odysseus returned to Ithaka.
There was a lot of time wasted in wandering then too.
It is asserted that they spent ten years getting the army together and then they were slowed down by a storm on their own and then once they came to Aulis. So, now is the 20th year since the theft of Helen.
Ten years for the gathering of the army must be added to the Odyssey.”
In the second century CE, Pausanias composed ten books on the sights and wonders of ancient Greece. His text provides some of the only accounts of architecture, art and culture that have been lost in intervening centuries. In his eighth book, he turns to Arcadia and starts by discussing the rituals performed in honor of Lykian Zeus.
The story, mentioned by Plato too, is one of those ‘original sin’ tales from Greek myth–like the story of Tantalos and Pelops, it hearkens back to a golden age when gods and men hung out together. Its details about werewolves are similar to those offered by Pliny (especially the 9-10 year period as a wolf).
“Cecrops was the first to declare Zeus the Highest god and he thought it wrong to sacrifice anything that breathed, so he burned on the altar the local cakes which the Athenians call pelanoi even today. But Lykaon brought a human infant to the altar of Lykaian Zeus, sacrificed it, spread its blood on the altar, and then, according to the tale, turned immediately from a man into a wolf.
This tale convinces me for the following reasons: it has circulated among the Arcadians since antiquity and it also seems probable. For in those days men were guests and tablemates of the gods because of their just behavior and reverence. Those who were good received honor openly from the gods; divine rage fell upon the unjust—then, truly, gods were created from men, gods who have rites even today such as Aristaios, Britomartis the Cretan, Herakles the son of Alkmene, Amphiaros the son of Oicles and, finally, Kastor and Polydeukes.
For this reason we should entertain that Lykaon was turned into a beast and that Niobe became a stone. In our time, when wickedness has swelled to its greatest size and looms over every land and city, no god can come from men, except in the blandishment offered to rulers. Today, divine rage lies in wait for the wicked when they leave for the lower world.
In every age many ancient events—and even those that are current—end up disbelieved because of those who create lies by using the truth. Men report that since the time of Lykaon a man always transforms from a human into a wolf at the sacrifice of Lykaian Zeus, but that he doesn’t remain a wolf his whole life. Whenever someone turns into a wolf, if he refrains from human flesh, people say he can become a man again ten years later. But if he does taste it, he will always remain a beast.”
The Lamia (or, just Lamia to her friends) is one of the figures from Greek myth who seems like a frightening monster but really is a particular distillation of misogyny. She is often called a Greek ‘vampire’ along with Empousa. Unlike the latter, however, Lamia is specifically associated with killing children.
Diodorus Siculus, 20.40
“At the rock’s root there was a very large cave which was roofed with ivy and bryony in which the myths say the queen Lamia, exceptional for her beauty, was born. But, because of the beastliness of her soul, they say that her appearance has become more monstrous in the time since then.
For, when all her children who were born died, she was overwhelmed by her suffering and envied all the women who were luckier with their children. So she ordered that the infants be snatched from their arms and killed immediately. For this reason, even in our lifetime, the story of that women has lingered among children and the mention of her name is most horrifying to them.
But, whenever she was getting drunk, she would allow people to do whatever pleased them without observation. Because she was not closely watching everything at that time, the people in that land imagined that she could not see. This is why the myth developed that she put her eyes into a bottle, using this story a metaphor for the carelessness she enacted in wine, since that deprived her of sight.”
The story of why Lamia killed children gets a little more depressing in the Fragments of the Greek Historians
Duris, BNJ 76 F17 [= Photios s.v. Lamia]
“In the second book of his Libyan History, Duris reports that Lamia was a fine looking woman but after Zeus had sex with her, Hera killed the children she bore because she was envious. As a result she was disfigured by grief and would seize and kill the children of others.”
Elsewhere, the evidence of narratives about Lamia are rather limited. She becomes just another negative, female monster.
Suda, Lambda 85
“Lamia: a monster. The name comes from having a gaping throat, laimia and lamia. Aristophanes: “It has the smell of a seal, the unwashed balls of a Lamia.” For testicles are active—and he is making a fantasy image of Lamia’s balls, since she is female.”
“There is a crag rising up over the ground on which the Delphians claim that a woman stood singing oracles, named Hêrophilê but known as Sibyl. There is the earlier Sibyl, the one I have found to be equally as old as the others, whom the Greeks claim is the daughter of Zeus and Lamia, the daughter of Poseidon. She was the first woman to sing oracles and they say that she was named Sibyl by the Libyans. Hêrophilê was younger than here, but she was obviously born before the Trojan War since she predicted Helen in her oracles, that was raised up in Sparta as the destruction for Asia and Europe and that Troy would be taken by the Greeks because of her.”
“Foremost he differed from previous authors in this, by which I mean how he took on a subject that was not a single thread nor one divided in many different and also disconnected parts. And then, because did not include mythical material in his work and he did not use his writing for the deception and bewitchment of many, as every author before him did when they told the stories of certain Lamiai rising up from the earth in groves and glens and of amphibious Naiads rushing out of Tartaros, half-beasts swimming through the seas and then joining together in groups among humans, and producing offspring of mortals and gods, demigods—and other stories which seem extremely unbelievable and untrustworthy to us now.”
Mormô, in the genitive Mormous, declined like Sappho. There is also the form Mormôn, genitive Mormonos. Aristophanes says “I ask you, take this Mormo away from me”. This meant to dispel frightening things. For Mormo is frightening. And again in Aristophanes: “A Mormo for courage”. There is also a mormalukeion which they also call a Lamia. They were also saying frightening things like this.”
Plutarch, De Curiositate [On Being a Busybody] 516a
“Now, just as in the myth they say that Lamia sleeps at home, putting her eyes set aside in some jar, but when she goes out she puts them back in and peers around, in the same way each of us puts his curiosity, as if fitting in an eye, into meanness towards others. But we often stumble over our own mistakes and faults because of ignorance, since we fail to secure sight or light for them.
For this reason, a busybody is rather useful to his enemies, since he rebukes and emphasizes their faults and shows them what they should guard and correct, even as he overlooks most of his own issues thanks to his obsession with everyone else. This is why Odysseus did not stop to speak with his mother before he inquired from the seer about those things for which he had come to Hades. Once he had made his inquiry, he turned to his own mother and also the other women, asking who Tyro was, who beautiful Khloris was, and why Epikaste had died.”
“Akesandros tells the story in his Concerning Cyrene that when Eurypylos was king in Libya, Cyrene was taken by Apollo because there was a lion plaguing the land. Eurypylos put his kingship up as a prize for anyone who could kill a lion—and Cyrene killed the lion and gained the kingdom. Her children were Autoukhos and Aristaios. Phularkhos says that she came to Libya with a group, and when they went on a hunting expedition, she joined them too.”
This story is really exceptional in Greek myth and history for a couple of reasons. First, here we have a female beast-slayer who follows the classic pattern of killing a monster and gaining a kingdom. Second, while her children are mentioned–following a typical pattern of defining women by their offspring–her mate is not. There are some other sources on this figure.
Nonnos, Dionys. 13.300-301
“Cyrene, another deer-pursuing Artemis,
The lion-slaying nymph bore him, after sex with Phoibos.”
“Prometheus: Know that during the period of the Judean Judges, Prometheus was known among the Greeks as the one who invented academic philosophy. People say that he crafted human beings because he rendered those who were idiots capable of understanding philosophy.
And there was also Epimetheus, who invented the art of music and, in addition, Atlas, who first interpreted astronomy which is why they claim he “holds up the sky”. There is also Argos of many eyes because he was seen by many people, when he was really the one who first established technical knowledge. Then there was also a prophetess named the Sibyl.
When Pharaoh, who is also called Parakhô, was king in Egypt, then Kekrops was king in Athens among the Greeks. He was called Diphyes [“double-formed”] due to the size or because he established a law that women who were still virgins should be given in marriage to a single man, after he named them brides. Previously women of the land had sex like animals. For a woman was no man’s, but gave herself like a prostitute to anyone. No one knew whose son or daughter a child was—instead the mother used to claim and give the child to which ever man it seemed best to her to claim.
Kekrops did this because he came from Egypt and was ignorant of the law which Hephaestus had made when he ruled there before. For he claimed that it was because of this sinful intercourse that Athens was destroyed by the flood. After that point, the people who lived in Greece lived more prudently. Kekrops ruled for 40 years.”
