Melampus

MELAMPUS the Minyan, Cretheus’s grandson, who lived at Pylus in Messene, was the first mortal to be granted prophetic powers, the first to practise as a physician, the first to build temples to Dionysus in Greece, and the first to temper wine with water.
b. His brother Bias, to whom he was deeply attached, fell in love with their cousin Pero; but so many suitors came for her hand that she was promised by her father Neleus to the man who could drive off King Phylacus’s cattle from Phylace. Phylacus prized these cattle above everything in the world, except his only son Iphiclus, and guarded them in person with the help of an unsleeping and unapproachable dog.

c. Now, Melampus could understand the language of birds, his ears having been licked clean by a grateful brood of young serpents; he had rescued these from death at the hands of his attendants and piously buried their parents’ dead bodies. Moreover, Apollo, whom he met one day by the banks of the river Alpheius, had taught him to prophesy from the entrails of sacrificial victims. It thus came to his knowledge that whoever tried to steal the cattle would be made a present of them, though only after being imprisoned for exactly one year. Since Bias was in despair, Melampus decided to visit Phylacus’s byre by dead of night; but as soon as he laid his hand on a cow, the dog bit his leg, and Phylacus, springing up from the straw, led him away to prison. This was, of course, no more than Melampus expected.
d. On the evening before his year of imprisonment ended, Melampus heard two woodworms talking at the end of a beam which was socketed into the wall above his head. One asked with a sign of fatigue: ‘How many days yet of gnawing, brother?’
The other worm, his mouth full of wood-dust, replied: ‘We a making good progress. The beam will collapse tomorrow at dawn, we waste no time in idle conversation.’
Melampus at once shouted: ‘Phylacus, Phylacus, pray transfer me to another cell!’ Phylacus, though laughing at Melampus’s reasons this request, did not deny him. When the beam duly collapsed and killed one of the women who was helping to carry out the bed, Phylacus was astounded at Melampus’s prescience. ‘I will grant you both your freedom and the cattle,’ he said, ‘if only you would cure my son Iphiclus of impotency.’
e. Melampus agreed. He began the task by sacrificing two bulls Apollo, and after he had burned the thigh-bones with the fat, left the carcasses lying by the altar. Presently  two vultures flew down, and remarked to the other: ‘It must be several years since we were here- that time when Phylacus was gelding rams and we collected our perquisites.’
‘I well remember it,’ said the other vulture. ‘Iphiclus, who was then still a child, saw his father coming towards him with a blood-stain, knife, and took fright. He apparently feared to be gelded himself because he screamed at the top of his voice. Phylacus drove the knife into the sacred pear-tree over there, for safe-keeping, while he ran to comfort Iphiclus. That fright accounts for the impotency. Loo Phylacus forgot to recover the knife! There it still is, sticking in tree, but bark has grown over its blade, and only the end of its hand shows.”
‘In that case,’ remarked the first vulture, ‘the remedy for Iphiclus’s impotency would be to draw out the knife, scrape off the rust left the rams’ blood and administer it to him, mixed in water, everyday for ten days.’
‘I concur,’ said the other vulture. ‘But who, less intelligent then ourselves, would have the sense to prescribe such a medicine?’

f. Thus Melampus was able to cure Iphiclus, who soon begot a son named Podarces; and, having claimed first the cattle and then Pero, presented her, still a virgin, to his grateful brother Bias.
g. Now, Proetus, son of Abas, joint-king of Argolis with Acrisius had married Stheneboea, who bore him three daughters named Lysippe, Iphinoë, and Iphianassa-but some call the two younger ones Hipponoë and Cyrianassa. Whether it was because they have offended Dionysus, or because they had offended Hera by their over-indulgence in love-affairs, or by stealing gold from her image at Tiryns, their father’s capital, all three were divinely afflicted by madness and went raging on the mountains, like cows stung by the gadfly, behaving in a most disorderly fashion and assaulting travellers.
h. Melampus, when he heard the news, came to Tiryns and offered to cure them, on condition that Proetus paid him with a third share of his kingdom.
‘The price is far too high,’ said Proetus brusquely; and Melampus retired.
The madness then spread to the Argive women, a great many of whom killed their children, deserted their homes, and went raving off to join Proetus’s three daughters, so that no roads were safe, and sheep and cattle suffered heavy losses because the wild women tore them in pieces and devoured them raw. At this Proetus sent hastily for Melampus, to say that he accepted his terms. ‘No, no,’ said Melampus, ‘as the disease has increased, so has my fee! Give me one third of your kingdom, and another third to my brother Bias, and I undertake to save you from this calamity. If you refuse, there will not be one Argive woman left in her home.’
When Proetus agreed, Melampus advised him: ‘Vow twenty red oxen to Helius-I will tell you what to say-and all will be well.’
i. Proetus accordingly vowed the oxen to Helius, on condition that his daughters and their followers were cured; and Helius, who sees everything, at once promised Artemis the names of certain kings who had omitted their sacrifices to her, on condition that she persuaded Hera to remove the curse from the Argive women. Now, Artemis had recently hunted the Nymph Callisto to death for Hera’s sake, so found no difficulty in carrying out her side of the bargain. This is the way that business is done in Heaven as on earth: hand washes hand.
j. Then Melampus, helped by Bias and a chosen company of sturdy young men, drove the disorderly crowd of women down from the mountains to Sicyon, where their madness left them, and then purified them by immersion in a holy well. Not finding Proetus’s daughters among this rabble, Melampus and Bias went off again and chased all three of them to Lusi in Arcadia, where they took refuge in a cave overlooking the river Styx. There Lysippe and Iphianassa regained their sanity and were purified; but Iphinoë had died on the way.
k. Melampus then married Lysippe, Bias (whose wife Pero had recently died) married Iphianassa, and Proetus rewarded them both according to his promise. But some say that Proetus’s true name was Anaxagoras.

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1. It was a common claim of wizards that their ears had been licked by serpents, which were held to be incarnate spirits of oracular heroes (The Language of Animals by J. R. Frazer, Archaeological Review) and that they were thus enabled to understand the language of birds and insects. Apollo’s priests appear to have been more than usually astute in claiming to prophesy by this means.
2. Iphiclus’s disability is factual rather than mythical: the rust of the gelding-knife would be an appropriate psychological cure for impotency caused by a sudden fright, and in accordance with the principles of sympathetic magic. Apollodorus describes the tree, into which the knife was thrust as an oak, but it is more likely to have been the wild pear-tree, sacred to the White Goddess of the Peloponnese, which fruit in May, the month of enforced chastity; Phylacus had insulted the goddess by wounding her tree. The wizard’s claim to have been told of the treatment by vultures-important birds in augury-would strengthen the belief in its efficacy. Pero’s name has been interpreted as meaning ‘maimed or deficient’, a reference to Iphiclus’s disability, which is the main point of the story, rather than as meaning ‘leather bag’, a reference to her control of the winds.
3. It appears that ‘Melampus’, a leader of Aeolians from Pylus, seized part of Argolis  from the Canaanite settlers who called themselves Son of Abas (the Semitic word for ‘father’), namely the god Melkarth, and instituted a double kingdom. His winning of the cattle from Phylacus (‘guardian’), who has an unsleeping dog, recalls Heracles’ Tenth Labour, and the myth is similarly based on the Hellenic custom of buying a bride with the proceeds of a cattle raid.

4. ‘Proetus’ seems to be another name for Ophion, the Demiurg. The mother of his daughters was Stheneboea, the Moon-goddess as cow-namely Io, who was maddened in much the same way-and their names are titles of the same goddess in her destructive capacity as Lamia, and as Hippolyte, whose wild mares tore the sacred king to pieces at the end of his reign. But the orgy for which the Moon-priestesses dressed as mares, should be distinguished from the rain-making gadfly dance for which they dressed as heifers; and from the autumn goat-cult revel, when they tore children and animals to pieces under the toxic influence of mead, wine, or ivy-beer. The Aeolians’ capture of the goddess’s shrine at Lusi, recorded here in mythic form, would have put an end to the wild-mare orgies; Demeter’s rape by Poseidon records the same event. Libations poured to the Serpent-goddess in an Arcadian shrine between Sicyon and Lusi may account for the story of Iphinoë’s death.
5. The official recognition at Delphi, Corinth, Sparta, and Athens of Dionysus’s ecstatic wine cult, given many centuries later, was aimed at the discouragement of all earlier, more primitive, rites; and seems to have put an end to cannibalism and ritual murder, except in the wilder parts of Greece. At Patrae in Achaea, for instance, Artemis Tridaria (‘threefold assigner of lots’) had required the annual sacrifice of boys and girls, their heads wreathed with ivy and corn, at her harvest orgies. This custom, said to atone for the desecration of the sanctuary by two lovers, Melanippus and Comaetho, priestess of Artemis, was ended by the arrival of a chest containing an image of Dionysus, brought by Eurypylus from Troy (Pausanias).
6. Melamopodes (‘black feet’), is a common Classical name for the Egyptians; and these stories of how Melampus understood what birds or insects were saying are likely to be of African, not Aeolian, origin.