User:Paul August/Caanthus

Caanthus

Sources

Ancient

Pausanias

9.10.5

Higher up than the Ismenian sanctuary you may see the fountain which they say is sacred to Ares, and they add that a dragon was posted by Ares as a sentry over the spring. By this fountain is the grave of Caanthus. They say that he was brother to Melia and son to Ocean, and that he was commissioned by his father to seek his sister, who had been carried away. Finding that Apollo had Melia, and being unable to get her from him, he dared to set fire to the precinct of Apollo that is now called the Ismenian sanctuary. The god, according to the Thebans, shot him.

9.10.6

Here then is the tomb of Caanthus. They say that Apollo had sons by Melia, to wit, Tenerus and Ismenus. To Tenerus Apollo gave the art of divination, and from Ismenus the river got its name. Not that the river was nameless before, if indeed it was called Ladon before Ismenus was born to Apollo.

Modern

Fontenrose

p. 317

By the source of Ismenos, which Pausanias identifies with Ares' spring and the scene of the Kadmos-Drakon combat, there was a tomb of the hero Kaanthos, son of Ocean and brother of [cont.]

p. 318

Melia, whom Apollo carried off. Ocean sent Kaanthos ...

The first part of this story closely resembles the Kadmos legend, i.e., up to the point where the hero failes to recover his sister. ...

p. 319

Another source for the story of Kaanthos has turned up in an Oxyrhynchus papyrus: the first brother murder, it is said, occurred at Thebes when Ismenos killed Klaaitos (which name appears to be a corruption of Kaanthus, itself perhaps a corrupt form); both were sons of Ocean who fought over their sister Melia. The Pindaric Scholiast (see note 83) agrees that Ismenos was Melia's brother, not her son, as Pausanias has it.

Larson

BU online version

BU p. 142

According to Pausanias, Melia’s brother, Kaanthos, was sent by their father, the river Okeanos, to look for her after she was abducted. Kaanthos attempted to set fire to the Ismenion and was shot by the god. His tomb was located by a spring near the Ismenion; his story is clearly a doublet of the better-known myth of Kadmos, who was sent to find his sister, Europe, after her abduction by Zeus. (It also reminds us of the stories of Asopos as the outraged father who attempts to regain his abducted daughters.) The spring by which Kaanthos’ tomb lay belonged perhaps to his sister, Melia; it is identified by Pausanias as the famous spring of Ares, once guarded by a great serpent. There is much disgreement in both ancient and modern sources about the springs and rivers of Thebes. The city had two roughly parallel rivers, the Ismenos and the Dirke, joined by a third smaller rivulet. The Ismenos was fed entirely by one spring, now known as Agianni. Dirke was [cont.]

p. 143

fed by several springs, among them one at the foot of the Kadmeia, now called Pege.⁵⁸

BU p. 305

58. Kaanthus: Paus 9.10.5-6. According to Schol. Pind. Pyth. 11.6, at the site of the Ismenion there is a spring with the name of "the heroine" Melia.

Schachter

1967 "A Boeotian Cult Type"

p. 4

1 Pausanias 9.10.f.: ...

2 P.Oxy. 1241.4.5-10: ... the first murder of brothers occured at Thebes, where Ismenos and Klaaitos, sons of Okeanos, fought over their sister Melia (Klaaitos is either a mistake or variant for Kaanthos).

3 Hyginus, fab. 94: Amphion, while assaulting Apollo's temple, is shot by the god. According to Pherekydes, FGrHist 3 F 126, one of the daughters of Amphion and Niabe was called Melia, and several rather late sources list Ismenos among the sons.²⁶

The first part of the first version is an imitation of the story of Kadmos and Europa.²⁷ The shooting of Kaanthos and Amphion, and possibly, the death of Klaaitos, are influenced by the story of the Niobids.

1981 "Cults of Boiotia"

p. 79

There are at least three versions, at least, of the cult legend:²⁵

1 Pausanias 9.10.f f. : ...

2 P.Oxy. 1241.4.5-10: ...

3 ... Pherekydes, 'FGrHist 3 F 126, ...

The story of Kaanthos' search for Melia is of course identical with that of Kadmos' search for Europa: see F. Vian, Les origines de Thèbes (Paris 1963) 139 and note 4; J' Fontenrose, Pythom ... pp. 317-320, esp. 318.

Smith

s.v. Caanthus

(*Ka/anqos), a son of Oceanus and brother of Melia. He was sent out by his father in search of his sister who had been carried off, and when he found that she was in the possession of Apollo, and that it was impossible to rescue her from his hands, he threw fire into the sacred grove of Apollo, called the Ismenium. The god then killed Caanthus with an arrow. His tomb was shewn by the Thebans on the spot where he had been killed, near the river Ismenius. (Paus. 9.10.5.)