LP0019 - Athenian Fables - Hyginus' Fables -

Legendary Passages #0019 - Athenian Fables - Hyginus' Fables -

The next six episodes focus on the people and stories of Crete, from the family of King Minos and Ariadne to Daedalus and Icarus.

This passage is from the Fables of Hyginus, and is an overview of the stories of Theseus, the Minotaur, and a few others.

First is a review of the origins of Theseus, from his mother Aethra to all of the bandits and monsters he killed on his way to Athens.

Next how Daedalus helped Pasiphae consummate her love with the Cretan Bull, which resulted in the Minotaur. Minos imprisoned Daedalus, but he escaped with Icarus by mechanical wings. But Icarus fell to his death, and Daedalus fled to Sicily.

Theseus killed the minotaur, loses Ariadne to Dionysus, and becomes King when his father jumps into the sea.

Minos follows Daedalus to Sicily, ruled by King Cocalus. The king's daughters help Deadalus kill Minos.

Next is the story of Progne and Philomela, daughters of King Pandion of Athens. Tereus, the Thracian son of Mars is married to Progne, but tells her farther that she died, and asks to marry her sister Philomela. Tereus violates her and gives her as a concubine to King Lynceus, whose wife reunites the sisters. In revenge they kill Tereus' son, cook him, and trick Tereus into eating him.

Then there is the story of the daughters of Erectheus. When a son of Neptune is killed attacking the city, Neptune demands the sacrifice of one of the daughters. They had previously sworn an oath to all die together, and Erechtheus dies by thunderbolt.

Theseus once married an Amazon, and they had a son Hippolytus before she died. He then married Phaedra, daughter of Minos and sister to Ariadne, but she fell in love with his son Hippolytus. Spurned, she hung herself, and claimed that he had violated her. Theseus exiles his son, and asks Neptune for his death. Hippolytus' horses drag him to his doom.

After a list of Kings of Athens, we hear the story of Aesculapius. He is a son of Apollo and a healer, and after bringing Hippolytus back from the dead, he is killed by a thunderbolt.

In revenge, Apollo kills the forgers of thunderbolts, the cyclops. As punishment, he serves King Admetus. In order to marry Alcestis, King Admetus must yoke wild animals to a chariot. Apollo helps him, and offers to prolong his life if someone will die in his place. Alcestis dies for him, but Hercules wrestles death to save her.

Lastly is the story of Aegina, daughter of Asopus, and mother, by Jupiter, of King Aeacus. He names his island after his mother, and Hera sends a terrible plague. Aeacus prays to Jupiter, who changes men into ants, and thus is the reason the the men of Ageina are called Myrmidons.

Next time we shall hear the story of the mother of Minos, Europa.

http://www.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae1.html#37

Athenian Fables,
a Legendary Passage.
from Hyginus' Fables,
translated by Mary Grant.

[37]-[52]

XXXVII. AETHRA

Neptune and Aegeus, son of Pandion, one night in the shrine of Minerva both lay with Aethra, daughter of Pittheus. Neptune conceded the child to Aegeus. Now he, on the point of returning to Athens from Troezene, put his sword under a stone, and told Aethra that when the boy could lift the stone and take his father’s sword, she should send him to him. He would recognize his son by that. And so later Aethra bore Theseus. When he had reached young manhood, his mother told him Aegeus’ instructions, showed him the stone so that he could get the sword, and bade him set out for Athens to Aegeus . . . and he killed all those who made the road unsafe.

XXXVIII. LABORS OF THESEUS

He slew Corynetes, son of Neptune, by force of arms.

He killed Pityocamptes, who forced travellers to help him bend a pine tree to the ground. When they had taken hold of it with him, he let it rebound suddenly with force. Thus they were dashed violently to the ground and died.

He killed Procrustes, son of Neptune. When a guest came to visit him, if he was rather tall, he brought a shorter bed, and cut off the rest of his body; if rather short, he gave him a longer bed, and by hanging anvils to him stretched him to match the length of the bed.

Sciron used to sit near the sea at a certain point, and compel those who passed by to wash his feet; then he kicked them into the sea. Theseus cast him into the sea by a similar death, and from this the rocks are called those of Sciron.

He killed by force of arms Cercyon, son of Vulcan.

He killed the boar which was at Cremyon.

He killed the bull at Marathon, which Hercules had brought to Eurystheus from Crete.

He killed the Minotaur in the town of Cnossus.

XXXIX. DAEDALUS

Daedalus, son of Eupalamus, who is said to have received the art of craftsmanship from Athena, threw down from the roof Perdix, son of his sister, envying his skill, because he first invented the saw. Because of this crime he went into exile from Athens to Crete to King Minos.

XL. PASIPHAE

Pasiphae, daughter of Sol and wife of Minos, for several years did not make offerings to the goddess Venus. Because of this Venus inspired in her an unnatural love for a bull [corrupt]. At the time when Daedalus came there as an exile, he asked her to help him. For her he made a wooden heifer, and put in it the hide of a real heifer, and in this she lay with the bull. From this intercourse she bore the Minotaur, with bull’s head but human body. Then Daedalus made for the Minotaur a labyrinth with an undiscoverable exit in which it was confined. When Minos found out the affair he cast Daedalus into prison, but Pasiphae freed him from his chains. And so Daedalus made wings and fitted them to himself and to his son Icarus, and they flew away from that place. Icarus flew too high, and when the wax was melted by the sun, fell into the sea which was named Icarian for him. Daedalus flew on to King Cocalus in the island of Sicily. Others say that after Theseus killed the Minotaur he brought Daedalus back to Athens, his own country.

XLI. MINOS

When Minos, son of Jove and Europa, fought with the Athenians, his son Androgeus was killed in the fight. After he conquered the Athenians their revenues became his; he decreed, moreover, that each year they should send seven of their children as food for the Minotaur. After Theseus had come from Troezene, and had learned what a calamity afflicted the state, of his own accord he promised to go against the Minotaur. When his father sent him off, he charged him to have white sails for his ships if he came back as victor; those who were sent to the Minotaur journeyed with black sails.

XLII. THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR

When Theseus came to Crete, Ariadne, Minos’ daughter, loved him so much that she betrayed her brother and saved the stranger, or she showed Theseus the way out of the Labyrinth. When Theseus had entered and killed the Minotaur, by Ariadne’s advise he got out by unwinding the thread. Ariadne, because she had been loyal to him, he took away, intending to marry her.

XLIII. ARIADNE

Theseus, detained by a storm on the island of Dia, though it would be a reproach to him if he brought Ariadne to Athens, and so he left her asleep on the island of Dia. Liber, falling in love with her, took her from there as his wife. However, when Theseus left, he forgot to change the black sails, and so his father Aegeus judged that he had been devoured by the Minotaur. He threw himself into the sea, which was called Aegean from this. But Theseus married Phaedra, Ariadne’s sister.

XLIV. COCALUS

Minos, because many misfortunes had come to him through the agency of Daedalus, followed him to Sicily, and asked King Cocalus to surrender him. When Cocalus had promised this, and Daedalus found it out, he sought help from the daughters of the king, and they killed Minos.

XLV. PHILOMELA

While Tereus, son of Mars, a Thracian, was married to Progne, daughter of Pandion, he came to Athens to his father-in-law Pandion to ask for his other daughter in marriage, stating that Progne had died. Pandion granted him the favour, and sent Philomela and guards along with her. But Tereus threw the guards into the sea, and finding Philomela on a mountain, violated her. After he returned to Thrace, he gave Philomela to king Lynceus, whose wife Lathusa, because Progne was her friend, at once sent the concubine to her. When Progne recognized her sister and knew the impious deed of Tereus, the two planned to return the favour to the King. Meanwhile it was revealed to Tereus by prodigies that death by a relative’s hand was coming to his son Itys. When he heard this, thinking that his brother Dryas was plotting his son’s death, he killed the innocent man. Progne, however, killed her son Itys by Tereus, served him at his father’s table, and fled with her sister. When Tereus, cognizant of the crime, was pursuing them as they fled, by the pity of the gods it came about that Progne was changed into a swallow, and Philomela into a nightingale. They say, too, that Tereus was made a hawk.

XLVI. ERECHTHEUS

Erechtheus, son of Pandion, had four daughters who promised each other that if one met death, the others would kill themselves. Eumolpus, son of Neptune, came to attack Athens because he said the Attic land was his father’s. When he and his army were defeated and he was slain by the Athenians, Neptune demanded that Erechtheus’ daughter be sacrificed to him so that Erechtheus would not rejoice at his son’s death. And so when Chthonia, his daughter, had been sacrifided, the others in accordance with their oaths killed themselves. Erechtheus himself at Neptune’s request was smitten with a thunderbolt by Jove.

XLVII. HIPPOLYTUS

Phaedra , daughter of Minos and wife of Theseus, loved her stepson Hippolytus. When she could not bend him to her desire, she sent a letter to her husband saying that she had been attacked by Hippolytus, and slew herself by hanging.

Theseus, when he heard this, ordered his son to leave the city and prayed Neptune his father for his son’s death. And so when Hippolytus was driving his team of horses, a bull suddenly appeared from the sea. The horses, terrified at its bellowing, dragged Hippolytus, rending him limb from limb, and caused his death.

XLVIII. KINGS OF THE ATHENIANS

Cecrops, son of Terra (Earth); Cephalus, son of Deione; Erichthonius, son of Vulcan; Pandion, son of Erichthonius; Erechtheu, son of Pandion; Aegeus, son of Pandion; Theseus, son of Aegeus; Demophoon, son of Theseus.

XLIX. AESCULAPIUS

Aesculapius, son of Apollo, is said to have restored life either to Glaucus, son of Minos, or to Hippolytus, and Jupiter because of this struck him with a thunderbolt. Apollo, not being able to injure Jupiter, killed the ones who had made the thunderbolt, that is, the Cyclopes. On account of this deed Apollo was given in servitude to Admetus, King in Thessaly.

L. ADMETUS

When great numbers of suitors were seeking Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, in marriage, and Pelias was refusing many of them, he set a contest for them, promising that he would give her to the one who yoked wild beasts to a chariot and bore her off. Admetus asked Apollo to help him, and Apollo, because he had been kindly received by him while in servitude gave to him a wild boar and a lion yoked together, with which he carried off Alcestis.

He obtained this, too, from Apollo, that another could voluntarily die in his place. When neither his father nor his mother was willing to die for him, his wife Alcestis offered herself, and died for him in vicarious death. Later Hercules called her back from the dead.

LII. AEGINA

When Jupiter wished to lie with Aegina, the daughter of Asopus, he feared Juno, and took the girl to the island of Delos, and there made her pregnant. Aeacus was their son. When Juno found this out, she sent a serpent into the water which poisoned it, and if anyone drank from it, he paid the debt to nature. Since Aeacus, his allies lost, could not protect himself on account of the scarcity of men, as he gazed at some ants, he begged Jupiter to give him men for defense. Then Jupiter changed the ants into men, who were named Myrmidones, because in Greek ants are called ‘myrmekes’. The island, however, has the name of Aegina.

http://www.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae1.html#37