CHAPTER IX.

ARCADIAN GENEALOGY.

The Arcadian divine or heroic pedigree begins with Pelasgus, whom both Hesiod and Asius considered as an indigenous man, though Akusilaus the Argeian represented him as brother of Argos and son of Zeus by Niobê, daughter of Phorôneus: this logographer wished to establish a community of origin between the Argeians and the Arcadians.

Lykaôn son of Pelasgus and king of Arcadia, had, by different wives, fifty sons, the most savage, impious and wicked of mankind: Mænalus was the eldest of them. Zeus, in order that he might himself become a witness of their misdeeds, presented himself to them in disguise. They killed a child and served it up to him for a meal; but the god overturned the table and struck dead with thunder Lykaôn and all his fifty sons, with the single exception of Nyktimus, the youngest, whom he spared at the earnest intercession of the goddess Gæa (the Earth). The town near which the table was overturned received the name of Trapezus (Tabletown).

This singular legend (framed on the same etymological type as that of the ants in Ægina, recounted elsewhere) seems ancient, and may probably belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue. But Pausanias tells us a story in many respects different, which was represented to him in Arcadia as the primitive local account, and which becomes the more interesting, as he tells us that he himself fully believes it. Both tales indeed go to illustrate the same point—the ferocity of Lykaôn’s character, as well as the cruel rites which he practised. The latter was the first who established the worship and solemn games of Zeus Lykæus: he offered up a child to Zeus, and made libations with the blood upon the altar. Immediately after having perpetrated this act, he was changed into a wolf.[410]

[410] Apollodôr. iii. 8, 1. Hygin. fab. 176. Eratosthen. Catasterism. 8. Pausan. viii. 2, 2-3. A different story respecting the immolation of the child is in Nikolaus Damask. Frag. p. 41, Orelli. Lykaôn is mentioned as the first founder of the temple of Zeus Lykæus in Schol. Eurip. Orest. 1662; but nothing is there said about the human sacrifice or its consequences. In the historical times, the festival and solemnities of the Lykæa do not seem to have been distinguished materially from the other agônes of Greece (Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 104; Nem. x. 46): Xenias the Arcadian, one of the generals in the army of Cyrus the younger, celebrated the solemnity with great magnificence in the march through Asia Minor (Xen. Anab. i. 2, 10). But the fable of the human sacrifice, and the subsequent transmutation of the person who had eaten human food into a wolf, continued to be told in connection with them (Plato, de Republic. viii. c. 15. p. 417). Compare Pliny, H. N. viii. 34. This passage of Plato seems to afford distinct indication that the practice of offering human victims at the altar of the Lykæan Zeus was neither prevalent nor recent, but at most only traditional and antiquated; and it therefore limits the sense or invalidates the authority of the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue, Minos, c. 5.

“Of the truth of this narrative (observes Pausanias) I feel persuaded: it has been repeated by the Arcadians from old times, and it carries probability along with it. For the men of that day, from their justice and piety, were guests and companions at table with the gods, who manifested towards them approbation when they were good, and anger if they behaved ill, in a palpable manner: indeed at that time there were some, who having once been men, became gods, and who yet retain their privileges as such—Aristæus, the Krêtan Britomartis, Hêraklês son of Alkmêna, Amphiaraus the son of Oiklês, and Pollux and Kastôr besides. We may therefore believe that Lykaôn became a wild beast, and that Niobê, the daughter of Tantalus, became a stone. But in my time, wickedness having enormously increased, so as to overrun the whole earth and all the cities in it, there are no farther examples of men exalted into gods, except by mere title and from adulation towards the powerful: moreover the anger of the gods falls tardily upon the wicked, and is reserved for them after their departure from hence.”

Pausanias then proceeds to censure those who, by multiplying false miracles in more recent times, tended to rob the old and genuine miracles of their legitimate credit and esteem. The passage illustrates forcibly the views which a religious and instructed pagan took of his past time—how inseparably he blended together in it gods and men, and how little he either recognized or expected to find in it the naked phænomena and historical laws of connection which belonged to the world before him. He treats the past as the province of legend, the present as that of history; and in doing this he is more sceptical than the persons with whom he conversed, who believed not only in the ancient, but even in the recent and falsely reported miracles. It is true that Pausanias does not always proceed consistently with this position: he often rationalizes the stories of the past, as if he expected to find historical threads of connection; and sometimes, though more rarely, accepts the miracles of the present. But in the present instance he draws a broad line of distinction between present and past, or rather between what is recent and what is ancient: his criticism is, in the main, analogous to that of Arrian in regard to the Amazons—denying their existence during times of recorded history, but admitting it during the early and unrecorded ages.

In the narrative of Pausanias, the sons of Lykaôn, instead of perishing by thunder from Zeus, become the founders of the various towns in Arcadia. And as that region was subdivided into a great number of small and independent townships, each having its own eponym, so the Arcadian heroic genealogy appears broken up and subdivided. Pallas, Orestheus, Phigalus, Trapezeus, Mænalus, Mantinêus, and Tegeatês, are all numbered among the sons of Lykaôn, and are all eponyms of various Arcadian towns.[411]

[411] Paus. viii. 3. Hygin. fab. 177.

The legend respecting Kallistô and Arkas, the eponym of Arcadia generally, seems to have been originally quite independent of and distinct from that of Lykaôn. Eumêlus, indeed, and some other poets made Kallistô daughter of Lykaôn; but neither Hesiod, nor Asius, nor Pherekydês, acknowledged any relationship between them.[412] The beautiful Kallistô, companion of Artemis in the chase, had bound herself by a vow of chastity. Zeus, either by persuasion or by force, obtained a violation of the vow, to the grievous displeasure both of Hêrê and Artemis. The former changed Kallistô into a bear, the latter when she was in that shape killed her with an arrow. Zeus gave to the unfortunate Kallistô a place among the stars, as the constellation of the Bear: he also preserved the child Arkas, of which she was pregnant by him, and gave it to the Atlantid nymph Maia to bring up.[413]

[412] Apollod. iii. 8, 2.

[413] Pausan. viii. 3, 2. Apollod. iii. 8, 2. Hesiod. apud Eratosthen. Catasterism. 1. Fragm. 182, Marktsch. Hygin. f. 177.

Arkas, when he became king, obtained from Triptolemus and communicated to his people the first rudiments of agriculture; he also taught them to make bread, to spin, and to weave. He had three sons—Azan, Apheidas, and Elatus: the first was the eponym of Azania, the northern region of Arcadia; the second was one of the heroes of Tegea; the third was father of Ischys (rival of Apollo for the affections of Korônis), as well as of Æpytus and Kyllên: the name of Æpytus among the heroes of Arcadia is as old as the Catalogue in the Iliad.[414]

[414] Homer, Iliad, ii. 604. Pind. Olymp. vi. 44-63.

The tomb of Æpytus, mentioned in the Iliad, was shown to Pausanias between Pheneus and Stymphalus (Pausan. viii. 16, 2). Æpytus was a cognomen of Hermês (Pausan. viii. 47, 3).

The hero Arkas was worshipped at Mantineia, under the special injunction of the Delphian oracle (Pausan. viii. 9, 2).

Aleus, son of Apheidas and king of Tegea, was the founder of the celebrated temple and worship of Athênê Alea in that town. Lykurgus and Kêpheus were his sons, Augê his daughter, who was seduced by Hêraklês, and secretly bore to him a child: the father, discovering what had happened, sent Augê to Nauplius to be sold into slavery: Teuthras, king of Mysia in Asia Minor, purchased her and made her his wife: her tomb was shown at Pergamus on the river Kaïkus even in the time of Pausanias.[415]

[415] Pausan. viii. 4, 6. Apollod. iii. 9, 1. Diodôr. iv. 33.

A separate legend respecting Augê and the birth of Têlephus was current at Tegea, attached to the temple, statue, and cognomen of Eileithyia in the Tegeatic agora (Pausan. viii. 48, 5).

Hekatæus seems to have narrated in detail the adventures of Augê (Pausan. viii. 4, 4; 47, 3. Hekatæ. Fragm. 345, Didot.).

Euripidês followed a different story about Augê and the birth of Têlephus in his lost tragedy called Augê (See Strabo, xiii. p. 615). Respecting the Μυσοὶ of Æschylus, and the two lost dramas, Ἀλεαδαὶ and Μυσοὶ of Sophoklês, little can be made out. (See Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. p. 53, 408-414).

The child Têlephus, exposed on Mount Parthenius, was wonderfully sustained by the milk of a doe: the herdsmen of Korythus brought him up, and he was directed by the Delphian oracle to go and find his parents in Mysia. Teuthras adopted him, and he succeeded to the throne: in the first attempt of the army of Agamemnôn against Troy, on which occasion they mistook their point and landed in Mysia, his valor signally contributed to the repulse of the Greeks, though he was at last vanquished and desperately wounded by the spear of Achilles—by whom however he was afterwards healed, under the injunction of the oracle, and became the guide of the Greeks in their renewed attack upon the Trojans.[416]

[416] Têlephus and his exploits were much dwelt upon in the lost old epic poem, the Cyprian Verses. See argument of that poem ap. Düntzer, Ep. Fragm. p. 10. His exploits were also celebrated by Pindar (Olymp. ix. 70-79); he is enumerated along with Hectôr, Cycnus, Memnôn, the most distinguished opponents of Achilles (Isthm. iv. 46). His birth, as well as his adventures, became subjects with most of the great Attic tragedians.

From Lykurgus,[417] the son of Aleus and brother of Augê, we pass to his son Ankæus, numbered among the Argonauts, finally killed in the chase of the Kalydônian boar, and father of Agapenôr, who leads the Arcadian contingent against Troy,—(the adventurers of his niece, the Tegeatic huntress Atalanta, have already been touched upon),—then to Echemus, son of Aëropus and grandson of the brother of Lykurgus, Kêpheus. Echemus is the chief heroic ornament of Tegea. When Hyllus, the son of Hêraklês, conducted the Hêrakleids on their first expedition against Peloponnêsus, Echemus commanded the Tegean troops who assembled along with the other Peloponnêsians at the isthmus of Corinth to repel the invasion: it was agreed that the dispute should be determined by single combat, and Echemus, as the champion of Peloponnêsus, encountered and killed Hyllus. Pursuant to the stipulation by which they had bound themselves, the Hêrakleids retired, and abstained for three generations from pressing their claim upon Peloponnêsus. This valorous exploit of their great martial hero was cited and appealed to by the Tegeates before the battle of Platæa, as the principal evidence of their claim to the second post in the combined army, next in point of honor to that of the Lacedæmônians, and superior to that of the Athenians: the latter replied to them by producing as counter-evidence the splendid heroic deeds of Athens,—the protection of the Hêrakleids against Eurystheus, the victory over the Kadmeians of Thêbes, and the complete defeat of the Amazons in Attica.[418] Nor can there be any doubt that these legendary glories were both recited by the speakers, and heard by the listeners, with profound and undoubting faith, as well as with heart-stirring admiration.

[417] There were other local genealogies of Tegea deduced from Lykurgus: Bôtachus, eponym of the Dême Bôtachidæ at that place, was his grandson (Nicolaus ap. Steph. Byz. v. Βωταχίδαι).

[418] Herodot. ix. 27. Echemus is described by Pindar (Ol. xi. 69) as gaining the prize of wrestling in the fabulous Olympic games, on their first establishment by Hêraklês. He also found a place in the Hesiodic Catalogue as husband of Timandra, the sister of Helen and Klytæmnêstra (Hesiod, Fragm. 105, p. 318, Marktscheff.).

One other person there is—Ischys, son of Elatus and grandson of Arkas—in the fabulous genealogy of Arcadia whom it would be improper to pass over, inasmuch as his name and adventures are connected with the genesis of the memorable god or hero Æsculapius, or Asklêpius. Korônis, daughter of Phlegyas, and resident near the lake Bœbëis in Thessaly, was beloved by Apollo and became pregnant by him: unfaithful to the god, she listened to the propositions of Ischys son of Elatus, and consented to wed him: a raven brought to Apollo the fatal news, which so incensed him that he changed the color of the bird from white, as it previously had been, into black.[419] Artemis, to avenge the wounded dignity of her brother, put Korônis to death; but Apollo preserved the male child of which she was about to be delivered, and consigned it to the Centaur Cheirôn to be brought up. The child was named Asklêpius or Æsculapius, and acquired, partly from the teaching of the beneficent leech Cheirôn, partly from inborn and superhuman aptitude, a knowledge of the virtues of herbs and a mastery of medicine and surgery, such as had never before been witnessed. He not only cured the sick, the wounded, and the dying, but even restored the dead to life. Kapaneus, Eriphylê, Hippolytus, Tyndareus and Glaukus were all affirmed by different poets and logographers to have been endued by him with a new life.[420] But Zeus now found himself under the necessity of taking precautions lest mankind, thus unexpectedly protected against sickness and death, should no longer stand in need of the immortal gods: he smote Asklêpius with thunder and killed him. Apollo was so exasperated by this slaughter of his highly-gifted son, that he killed the Cyclôpes who had fabricated the thunder, and Zeus was about to condemn him to Tartarus for doing so; but on the intercession of Latôna he relented, and was satisfied with imposing upon him a temporary servitude in the house of Admêtus at Pheræ.

[419] Apollodôr. iii. 10, 3; Hesiod, Fragm. 141-142, Marktscheff.; Strab. ix. p. 442; Pherekydês, Fragm. 8; Akusilaus, Fragm. 25, Didot.

Τῷ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ἄγγελος ἦλθε κόραξ, ἱερῆς ἀπὸ δαιτὸς Πυθὼ ἐς ἠγαθέην, καὶ ῥ᾽ ἔφρασεν ἔργ᾽ ἀΐδηλα Φοίβῳ ἀκερσεκόμῃ, ὅτι Ἴσχυς γῆμε Κόρωνιν Εἰλατίδης, Φλεγύαο διογνήτοιο θύγατρα. (Hesiod, Fr.)

The change of the color of the crow is noticed both in Ovid, Metamorph. ii. 632, in Antonin. Liberal. c. 20, and in Servius ad Virgil. Æneid. vii. 761, though the name “_Corvo_ custode ejus” is there printed with a capital letter, as if it were a man named _Corvus_.

[420] Schol. Eurip. Alkêst. 1; Diodôr. iv. 71; Apollodôr. iii. 10, 3; Pindar, Pyth. iii. 59; Sextus Empiric. adv. Grammatic. i. 12. p. 271. Stesichorus named Eriphylê—the Naupaktian verses, Hippolytus—(compare Servius ad Virgil. Æneid. vii. 761); Panyasis, Tyndareus; a proof of the popularity of this tale among the poets. Pindar says that Æsculapius was “tempted by gold” to raise a man from the dead, and Plato (Legg. iii. p. 408) copies him: this seems intended to afford some color for the subsequent punishment. “Mercede id captum (observes Boeckh. ad Pindar. _l. c._) Æsculapium fecisse recentior est fictio; Pindari fortasse ipsius, quem tragici secuti sunt: haud dubie a medicorum avaris moribus profecta, qui Græcorum medicis nostrisque communes sunt.” The rapacity of the physicians (granting it to be ever so well-founded, both then and now) appears to me less likely to have operated upon the mind of Pindar, than the disposition to extenuate the cruelty of Zeus, by imputing guilty and sordid views to Asklêpius. Compare the citation from Dikæarchus, _infrà_, p. 249, note 1.

Asklêpius was worshipped with very great solemnity at Trikka, at Kôs, at Knidus, and in many different parts of Greece, but especially at Epidaurus, so that more than one legend had grown up respecting the details of his birth and adventures: in particular, his mother was by some called Arsinoê. But a formal application had been made on this subject (so the Epidaurians told Pausanias) to the oracle of Delphi, and the god in reply acknowledged that Asklêpius was his son by Korônis.[421] The tale above recounted seems to have been both the oldest and the most current. It is adorned by Pindar in a noble ode, wherein however he omits all mention of the raven as messenger—not specifying who or what the spy was from whom Apollo learnt the infidelity of Korônis. By many this was considered as an improvement in respect of poetical effect, but it illustrates the mode in which the characteristic details and simplicity of the old fables[422] came to be exchanged for dignified generalities, adapted to the altered taste of society.

[421] Pausan. ii. 26, where several distinct stories are mentioned, each springing up at some one or other of the sanctuaries of the god: quite enough to justify the idea of these Æsculapii (Cicero, N. D. iii. 22).

Homer, Hymn ad Æsculap. 2. The tale briefly alluded to in the Homeric Hymn. ad Apollin. 209. is evidently different: Ischys is there the companion of Apollo, and Korônis is an Arcadian damsel.

Aristidês, the fervent worshipper of Asklêpius, adopted the story of Korônis, and composed hymns on the γάμον Κορωνίδος καὶ γένεσιν τοῦ θεοῦ (Orat. 23. p. 463, Dind.).

[422] See Pindar, Pyth. iii. The Scholiast puts a construction upon Pindar’s words which is at any rate far-fetched, if indeed it be at all admissible: he supposes that Apollo knew the fact from his own omniscience, without any informant, and he praises Pindar for having thus transformed the old fable. But the words οὐδ᾽ ἔλαθε σκόπον seem certainly to imply some informant: to suppose that σκόπον means the god’s own mind, is a strained interpretation.

Machaôn and Podaleirius, the two sons of Asklêpius, command the contingent from Trikka, in the north-west region of Thessaly, at the siege of Troy by Agamemnôn.[423] They are the leeches of the Grecian army, highly prized and consulted by all the wounded chiefs. Their medical renown was further prolonged in the subsequent poem of Arktinus, the Iliu-Persis, wherein the one was represented as unrivalled in surgical operations, the other as sagacious in detecting and appreciating morbid symptoms. It was Podaleirius who first noticed the glaring eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide of Ajax.[424]

[423] Iliad, ii. 730. The Messênians laid claim to the sons of Asklêpius as their heroes, and tried to justify the pretension by a forced construction of Homer (Pausan. iii. 4, 2).

[424] Arktinus, Epicc. Græc. Fragm. 2. p. 22, Düntzer. The Ilias Minor mentio