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Alope

Alope
THE Arcadian King Cercyon, son of Hephaestus, had a beautiful daughter, Alope, who was seduced by Poseidon and, without father’s knowledge, bore a son whom she ordered a nurse to expose a mountain. A shepherd found him being suckled by a mare, and took him to the sheep-cotes, where his rich robe attracted great interest, and fellow-shepherd volunteered to rear the boy, but insisted on taking robe too, in proof of his noble birth. The two shepherds began quarrel, and murder would have been done, had their companions not led them before King Cercyon. Cercyon called for the disputed robe and, when it was brought, recognized it  as having been cut from a garment belonging to his daughter. The nurse now took fright, and confessed her part in the affair; whereupon Cercyon ordered Alope to be immured, and the child to be exposed again. He was once more suckled by the mare and, this time, found by the second shepherd who, now satisfied as to his royal parentage, carried him to his own cabin and called him Hippothous.
b. When Theseus killed Cercyon, he set Hippothous on the throne of Arcadia; Alope had meanwhile died in prison, and was buried beside the road leading from Eleusis to Megara, near Cercyon’s wrestling ground. But Poseidon transformed her body into a spring, named Alope.
***
1. This myth is of familiar pattern, except that Hippothous is twice exposed and that, on the first occasion, the shepherds come to blows. The anomaly is perhaps due to a misreading of an icon-sequence, which showed royal twins being found by shepherds, and these same twins coming to blows when grown to manhood-like Pelias and Neleus, Proetus and Acrisius or Eteocles and Polyneices.
2. Alope is the Moon-goddess as vixen who gave her name to the Thessalian city of Alope (Pherecydes, quoted by Stephanus of Byzantium sub Alope); the vixen was also the emblem of Messene. The mythographer is probably mistaken in recording that the robe worn by Hippothous was cut from Alope’s dress; it will have been the swaddling band into which his clan and family marks were woven.



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