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Catreus And Althaemenes

Catreus
CATREUS, Minos’s eldest surviving son, had three daughters: Aerope, Clymene, and Apemosyne; and a son, Althaemenes. When an oracle predicted that Catreus would be killed by one of his own children, Althaemenes and the swift-footed Apemosyne piously left Crete, with a large following, in the hope of escaping the curse. They landed on the island of Rhodes, and founded the city of Crethenia, naming it in honour of their native island. Althaemenes afterwards settled at Cameirus, where he was held in great honour by the inhabitants, and raised an altar to Zeus on the near-by Mount Atabyrius, from the summit of which, on clear days, he could gain a distant view of his beloved Crete. Around this altar he set brazen bulls, which roared aloud whenever danger threatened Rhodes.
b. One day Hermes fell in love with Apemosyne, who rejected his and fled from him. That evening he surprised her near a spring. Again she turned to flee, but he had spread slippery hides on the one path of escape, so that she fell flat on her face and he succeeded in ravishing her. When Apemosyne returned to the palace, and ruefully told Althaemenes of this misadventure, he cried out ‘Liar and harlot!’ and put her to death.
***
1. This artificial myth, which records a Mycenaeo-Minoan occupation of Rhodes in the fifteenth century BC, is intended also to account for libations poured down a chasm to a Rhodian hero, as well as for erotic sports in the course of which women danced on the newly- flayed hide of sacrificial beasts. The termination byrios, or buriash, occurs in the royal title of the Third Babylonian Dynasty, founded in 1750 BC; and deity of Atabyrius in Crete, like that of Atabyrium (Mount Tabor) in Palestine, famous for its golden calf worship, was the Hittite Tesup, cattle-owning Sun-god. Rhodes first belonged to the Sumerian Moon-goddess Dam- Kina, or Danaë, but passed into the possession of Tesup; and, on the breakdown of the Hittite Empire, was colonized by Greek-speaking Cretans who retained the cult, but made Atabyrius a son of Proetus (‘first man’) and Eurynome the Creatrix. In Dorian times Zeus Atabyrius usurped Tesup’s Rhodian cult. The roar of bulls will have been produced by the whirling of
rhomboi, or bull-roarers, used to frighten away evil spirits.


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