Ἴνω μανεῖσαν ἐκ θεῶν, ὅθ᾽ ἡ Διὸς
Δάμαρ νιν ἐξέπεμψε δώματων ἄλῃ.
Compare Valckenaer, Diatribe in Eurip.; Apollodôr. i. 9, 1-2;
Schol. ad Pindar. Argum. ad Isthm. p. 180. The many varieties of
the fable of Athamas and his family may be seen in Hygin. fab.
1-5; Philostephanus ap. Schol. Iliad, vii. 86: it was a favorite
subject with the tragedians, and was handled by Æschylus,
Sophoklês and Euripidês in more than one drama (see Welcker,
Griechische Tragöd. vol. i. p. 312-332; vol. ii. p. 612). Heyne
says that the proper reading of the name is _Phrixus_, not
_Phryxus_,—incorrectly, I think: Φρύξος connects the name both
with the story of roasting the wheat (φρύγειν), and also with
the country Φρυγία, of which it was pretended that Phryxus was
the Eponymus. Inô, or Leukothea, was worshipped as a heroine at
Megara as well as at Corinth (Pausan. i. 42, 3): the celebrity
of the Isthmian games carried her worship, as well as that of
Palæmôn, throughout most parts of Greece (Cicero, De Nat. Deor.
iii. 16). She is the only personage of this family noticed
either in the Iliad or Odyssey: in the latter poem she is a
sea-goddess, who has once been a mortal, daughter of Kadmus; she
saves Odysseus from imminent danger at sea by presenting to him
her κρήδεμνον (Odyss. v. 433; see the refinements of Aristidês,
Orat. iii. p. 27). The voyage of Phryxus and Hellê to Kolchis was
related in the Hesiodic Eoiai: we find the names of the children
of Phryxus by the daughter of Æêtês quoted from that poem (Schol.
ad Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 1123) both Hesiod and Pherekydês mentioned
the golden fleece of the ram (Eratosthen. Catasterism. 19;
Pherekyd. Fragm. 53, Didot).
Hekatæus preserved the romance of the speaking ram (Schol. Apoll.
Rhod. i. 256) but Hellanikus dropped the story of Hellê having
fallen into the sea: according to him she died at Pactyê in the
Chersonesus (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 1144).
The poet Asius seems to have given the genealogy of Athamas by
Themistô much in the same manner as we find it in Apollodôrus
(Pausan. ix. 23, 3).
According to the ingenious refinements of Dionysius and
Palæphatus (Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. ii. 1144; Palæphat. de Incred.
c. 31) the ram of Phryxus was after all a man named Krios, a
faithful attendant who aided in his escape; others imagined a
ship with a ram’s head at the bow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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