THE River-god Asopus-whom some call the son of Oceanus and Tethys; some, of Poseidon and Pero; others, of Zeus and Eurynome-married Metope, daughter of the river Ladon, by whom he had two sons and either twelve or twenty daughters.
b. Several of these had been carried off and ravished on various occasions by Zeus, Poseidon, or Apollo, and when the youngest, Aegina, twin sister of Thebe, one of Zeus’s victims, also disappeared, Asopus set out in search of her. At Corinth he learned that Zeus was once again the culprit, went vengefully in pursuit, and found him embracing Aegina in a wood. Zeus, who was unarmed, fled ignominiously through the thickets and, when out of sight, transformed himself into a rock until Asopus had gone by; whereupon he stole back to Olympus and from the safety of its ramparts pelted him with thunderbolts. Asopus still moves slowly from the wounds he then received, and lumps of burned coal are often fetched from his river bed.
c. Having thus disposed of Aegina’s father, Zeus conveyed secretly to the island then called Oenone, or Oenopia, where he laid with her in the form of an eagle, or of a flame, and cupids hovered over their couch, administering the gifts of love. In course of time Hera discovered that Aegina had borne Zeus a son named Aeacus, ant resolved to destroy every inhabitant of Oenone, where he was a king. She introduced a serpent into one of its streams, which hatched out thousands of eggs; so that swarms of serpents went wriggling over the fields into all the other streams and rivers. Thick darkness and a drowsy heat spread across the island, which Aeacus had renamed Aegina, and the pestilential South Wind blew for not less than four months. Crops and pastures dried up, and famine ensued; but the islanders were chiefly plagued with thirst and, when their wine was exhausted, would crawl to the nearest stream, where they died as they drank its poisonous water.
d. Appeals to Zeus were in vain: the emaciated suppliants and their sacrificial beasts fell dead before his very altars, until hardly a single warm-blooded creature remained alive.
e. One day, Aeacus’s prayers were answered with thunder and lightning. Encouraged by this favourable omen, he begged Zeus to replenish the empty land, giving him as many subjects as there were ants carrying grains of corn up a near-by oak. The tree, sprung from a Dodonian acorn, was sacred to Zeus; at Aeacus’s prayer, therefore, it trembled, and a rustling came from its widespread boughs, not caused by any wind. Aeacus, though terrified, did not flee, but repeatedly kissed the tree-trunk and the earth beneath it. That night, in a dream, he saw a shower of ants filling to the ground from the sacred oak, and bringing up as men. When he awoke, he dismissed this as deceitful fantasy; but suddenly his son Telamon called him outside to watch a host of men approaching, and he recognized their faces from his dream. The plague of serpents had vanished, and rain was falling in a steady period.
f. Aeacus, with grateful thanks to Zeus, divided the deserted city and lands among his new people, whom he called Myrmidons, that is ‘ants’, and whose descendants still display an ant- like thrift, patience, and tenacity. Later, these Myrmidons followed Peleus into exile from Aegina, and fought beside Achilles and Patroclus at Troy.
g. But some say that Achilles’s allies, the Myrmidons, were so named in honour of King Myrmidon, whose daughter Eurymedusa was seduced by Zeus in the form of an ant-which is why ants are sacred in Thessaly. And others tell of a nymph named Myrmex who, when her companion Athene invented the plough, boasted that she had made the discovery herself, and was turned into an ant as a punishment.
h. Aeacus, who married Endeis of Megara, was widely renowned for his piety, and held in such honour that men longed to feast their eyes upon him. All the noblest heroes of Sparta and Athens clamoured to fight under his command, though he had made Aegina the most difficult of the Aegean islands to approach, surrounding it with sunken rocks and dangerous reefs, as a protection against pirates. When al Greece was affected with a drought caused by Pelops’s murder of the Arcadian king Stymphalus or, some say, by the Athenians’ murder of Androgeus, the Delphic Oracle advised the Greeks: ‘Ask Aeacus to pray for your delivery!’ Thereupon every city sent a herald to Aeacus who ascended Mount Panhellenius, the highest peak in his island, robed as a priest of Zeus. There he sacrificed to the gods, and prayed for an end to the drought. His prayer was answered by a loud thunder clap, clouds obscured the sky, and furious showers of rain soaked the whole land of Greece. He then dedicated a sanctuary to Zeus on Panhellenius, and a cloud settling on the mountain summit has ever since been an unfailing portent of rain.
i. Apollo and Poseidon took Aeacus with them when they built the walls of Troy, knowing that unless a mortal joined in this work, the city would be impregnable and its inhabitants capable of defying the gods. Scarcely had they finished their task when three grey- eyed serpents tried to scale the walls. Two chose the part just completed by the gods, but tumbled down and died; the third, with a cry, rushed Aeacus’s part and forced his way in. Apollo then prophesied that Troy would fall more than once, and that Aeacus’s sons would be among it captors, both in the first and fourth generations; as indeed came to in the persons of Telamon and Ajax.
j. Aeacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthys were the three of Zeus’s sons whom he would have most liked to spare the burden of old age. The Fates, however, would not permit this, and Zeus, by graciously accepting their ban, provided the other Olympians with a good example.
k. When Aeacus died, he became one of the three Judges in Tartarus, where he gives laws to the shades, and is even called upon to arbitrate quarrels that may arise between the gods. Some add that he keeps the keys of Tartarus, imposes a toll, and checks the ghosts brought down by Hermes against Atropos’s invoice.
2. The Aeacus myth concerns the conquest of Aegina by Phthiotian Myrmidons, whose tribal emblem was an ant. Previously, the island was, it seems, held by goat-cult Pelasgians, and their hostility towards the invaders is recorded in Hera’s poisoning of the streams. According to Strabo, who always looked for reasonable explanations of myths, but seldom looked far enough, the soil of Aegina was covered by a layer of stones, and the Aeginetans called themselves Myrmidons because, like ants, they had to excavate before they could fill their fields, and because they were troglodytes (Strabo). But the Thessalian legend of Myrmex is a simple myth of origin: the Phthiotian Myrmidons claimed to be autochthonous, as ants are, and showed such loyalty to the laws of their priestess, the Queen Ant, that Zeus’s Hellenic representative who married her had to become an honorary ant himself. If Myrmex was, in fact, a title of the Mother-goddess of Northern Greece, she might well claim to have invented the plough, because agriculture had been established by immigrants from Asia Minor before the Hellenes reached Athens.
3. The Phthiotian colonists of Aegina later merged their myths with those of Achaean invaders from Phlius on the fiver Asopus; and, since these Phthians had retained their allegiance to the oak-oracle of Dodona, the ants are described as filling from a tree, instead of emerging from the ground.
4. In the original myth, Aeacus will have induced the rain-storm not by an appeal to Zeus, but by some such magic as Salmoneus used. His law-giving in Tartarus, like that of Minos and Rhadamanthys suggests that an Aeginetan legal code was adopted in other parts o Greece. It probably applied to commercial, rather than criminal, law judging from the general acceptance, in Classical times, of the Aeginetan talent as the standard weight of precious metal. It was of Cretan origin and turned the scales at 100 lb.
b. Several of these had been carried off and ravished on various occasions by Zeus, Poseidon, or Apollo, and when the youngest, Aegina, twin sister of Thebe, one of Zeus’s victims, also disappeared, Asopus set out in search of her. At Corinth he learned that Zeus was once again the culprit, went vengefully in pursuit, and found him embracing Aegina in a wood. Zeus, who was unarmed, fled ignominiously through the thickets and, when out of sight, transformed himself into a rock until Asopus had gone by; whereupon he stole back to Olympus and from the safety of its ramparts pelted him with thunderbolts. Asopus still moves slowly from the wounds he then received, and lumps of burned coal are often fetched from his river bed.
d. Appeals to Zeus were in vain: the emaciated suppliants and their sacrificial beasts fell dead before his very altars, until hardly a single warm-blooded creature remained alive.
e. One day, Aeacus’s prayers were answered with thunder and lightning. Encouraged by this favourable omen, he begged Zeus to replenish the empty land, giving him as many subjects as there were ants carrying grains of corn up a near-by oak. The tree, sprung from a Dodonian acorn, was sacred to Zeus; at Aeacus’s prayer, therefore, it trembled, and a rustling came from its widespread boughs, not caused by any wind. Aeacus, though terrified, did not flee, but repeatedly kissed the tree-trunk and the earth beneath it. That night, in a dream, he saw a shower of ants filling to the ground from the sacred oak, and bringing up as men. When he awoke, he dismissed this as deceitful fantasy; but suddenly his son Telamon called him outside to watch a host of men approaching, and he recognized their faces from his dream. The plague of serpents had vanished, and rain was falling in a steady period.
f. Aeacus, with grateful thanks to Zeus, divided the deserted city and lands among his new people, whom he called Myrmidons, that is ‘ants’, and whose descendants still display an ant- like thrift, patience, and tenacity. Later, these Myrmidons followed Peleus into exile from Aegina, and fought beside Achilles and Patroclus at Troy.
g. But some say that Achilles’s allies, the Myrmidons, were so named in honour of King Myrmidon, whose daughter Eurymedusa was seduced by Zeus in the form of an ant-which is why ants are sacred in Thessaly. And others tell of a nymph named Myrmex who, when her companion Athene invented the plough, boasted that she had made the discovery herself, and was turned into an ant as a punishment.
h. Aeacus, who married Endeis of Megara, was widely renowned for his piety, and held in such honour that men longed to feast their eyes upon him. All the noblest heroes of Sparta and Athens clamoured to fight under his command, though he had made Aegina the most difficult of the Aegean islands to approach, surrounding it with sunken rocks and dangerous reefs, as a protection against pirates. When al Greece was affected with a drought caused by Pelops’s murder of the Arcadian king Stymphalus or, some say, by the Athenians’ murder of Androgeus, the Delphic Oracle advised the Greeks: ‘Ask Aeacus to pray for your delivery!’ Thereupon every city sent a herald to Aeacus who ascended Mount Panhellenius, the highest peak in his island, robed as a priest of Zeus. There he sacrificed to the gods, and prayed for an end to the drought. His prayer was answered by a loud thunder clap, clouds obscured the sky, and furious showers of rain soaked the whole land of Greece. He then dedicated a sanctuary to Zeus on Panhellenius, and a cloud settling on the mountain summit has ever since been an unfailing portent of rain.
j. Aeacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthys were the three of Zeus’s sons whom he would have most liked to spare the burden of old age. The Fates, however, would not permit this, and Zeus, by graciously accepting their ban, provided the other Olympians with a good example.
k. When Aeacus died, he became one of the three Judges in Tartarus, where he gives laws to the shades, and is even called upon to arbitrate quarrels that may arise between the gods. Some add that he keeps the keys of Tartarus, imposes a toll, and checks the ghosts brought down by Hermes against Atropos’s invoice.
***
1. Asopus’s daughters ravished by Apollo and Poseidon will have been colleges of Moon- priestesses in the Asopus valley of the North-eastern Peloponnese, whose fertile lands were seized by the Aeolians. Aegina’s rape seems to record a subsequent Achaean conquest of Phlius, a city at the head waters of the Asopus; and an unsuccessful appeal made by their neighbours for military aid from Corinth. Eurynome and Tethys, the names of Asopus’s mother, were ancient titles of the Moon-goddess, and ‘Pero’ points to pera, a leather bag, and thus to Athene’s goat-skin aegis-as ‘Aegina’ also does.2. The Aeacus myth concerns the conquest of Aegina by Phthiotian Myrmidons, whose tribal emblem was an ant. Previously, the island was, it seems, held by goat-cult Pelasgians, and their hostility towards the invaders is recorded in Hera’s poisoning of the streams. According to Strabo, who always looked for reasonable explanations of myths, but seldom looked far enough, the soil of Aegina was covered by a layer of stones, and the Aeginetans called themselves Myrmidons because, like ants, they had to excavate before they could fill their fields, and because they were troglodytes (Strabo). But the Thessalian legend of Myrmex is a simple myth of origin: the Phthiotian Myrmidons claimed to be autochthonous, as ants are, and showed such loyalty to the laws of their priestess, the Queen Ant, that Zeus’s Hellenic representative who married her had to become an honorary ant himself. If Myrmex was, in fact, a title of the Mother-goddess of Northern Greece, she might well claim to have invented the plough, because agriculture had been established by immigrants from Asia Minor before the Hellenes reached Athens.
3. The Phthiotian colonists of Aegina later merged their myths with those of Achaean invaders from Phlius on the fiver Asopus; and, since these Phthians had retained their allegiance to the oak-oracle of Dodona, the ants are described as filling from a tree, instead of emerging from the ground.
4. In the original myth, Aeacus will have induced the rain-storm not by an appeal to Zeus, but by some such magic as Salmoneus used. His law-giving in Tartarus, like that of Minos and Rhadamanthys suggests that an Aeginetan legal code was adopted in other parts o Greece. It probably applied to commercial, rather than criminal, law judging from the general acceptance, in Classical times, of the Aeginetan talent as the standard weight of precious metal. It was of Cretan origin and turned the scales at 100 lb.
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