User:Paul August/Melia (consort of Inachus)

Melia (consort of Inachus)

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Ancient

Apollodorus

2.1.1

Ocean and Tethys had a son Inachus, after whom a river in Argos is called Inachus.¹ He and Melia [Μελίας], daughter of Ocean, had sons, Phoroneus, and Aegialeus. Aegialeus having died childless, the whole country was called Aegialia; and Phoroneus, reigning over the whole land afterwards named Peloponnese, begat Apis and Niobe by a nymph Teledice. Apis converted his power into a tyranny and named the Peloponnese after himself Apia; but being a stern tyrant he was conspired against and slain by Thelxion and Telchis. He left no child, and being deemed a god was called Sarapis.2 But Niobe had by Zeus （ and she was the first mortal woman with whom Zeus cohabited） a son Argus, and also, so says Acusilaus, a son Pelasgus, after whom the inhabitants of the Peloponnese were called Pelasgians. However, Hesiod says that Pelasgus was a son of the soil.

1 As to Inachus and his descendants, see Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 177 （who follows Apollodorus）; Paus. 2.15.5; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 932; Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.22. According to Apion, the flight of the Israelites from Egypt took place during the reign of Inachus at Argos. See Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, x.10.10ff. On the subject of Phoroneus there was an ancient epic Phoronis, of which a few verses have survived. See Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, pp. 209ff.

Hyginus

Fabulae

143 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 147)

Phoroneus

Inachus son of Ocean fathered Phoroneus by his own sister Argia.

Nostoi

fr. 8* (West, pp. 160, 161) = Scholiast on the Odyssey 2.120

Mycene was the daughter of Inachus and the Oceanid Melia. She and Arestor were the parents of Argos, as it is related in the Cycle.

Ovid

Amores

3.6.25–26

The Inachus, they say, went pale for Bithynian Melie, and his chill waves felt love’s warmth.

Pausanias

2.16.4

Homer in the Odyssey mentions a woman Mycene in the following verse:—“Tyro and Alcmene and the fair-crowned lady Mycene.” [Hom. Od., unknown line]. She is said to have been the daughter of Inachus and the wife of Arestor in the poem which the Greeks call the Great Eoeae. So they say that this lady has given her name to the city. But the account which is attributed to Acusilaus, that Myceneus was the son of Sparton, and Sparton of Phoroneus, I cannot accept, because the Lacedaemonians themselves do not accept it either. For the Lacedaemonians have at Amyclae a portrait statue of a woman named Sparte, but they would be amazed at the mere mention of a Sparton, son of Phoroneus.

Plato

Timaeus

221

[22a] as were most versed in ancient lore about their early history, he discovered that neither he himself nor any other Greek knew anything at all, one might say, about such matters. And on one occasion, when he wished to draw them on to discourse on ancient history, he attempted to tell them the most ancient of our traditions, concerning Phoroneus, who was said to be the first man, and Niobe; and he went on to tell the legend about Deucalion and Pyrrha after the Flood, and how they survived it, and to give the geneology of their descendants;

Scholiast on the Odyssey

2.120 [= Nostoi fr. 8* (West, pp. 160, 161)]

Mycene was the daughter of Inachus and the Oceanid Melia. She and Arestor were the parents of Argos, as it is related in the Cycle.

Modern

Fowler

p. 236 [in folder]

In another work attributed to Hesiod, the Megalai Ehoiai (fr. 246, quoted by Pausanias with fr. 24), Mykene, daughter of Inachos and Melie (therefore sister of Phoroneus), married Arestor; these are the parents of Argos in the Nostoi (fr. 8*) and probably also Hesiod, and Arestor is the name of Argos' father also in Pher. fr. 66 (below p. 240) and in Ov. Met. 1.624. ...

p. 259 [in folder]

§7.2.6 THE FOUNDING OF MYKENAI (Hek.fr.22)

The A scholia to the Iliad quote Hek. fr. 22 for the declension of the word μύκης thus revealing the story told of how Perseus lost the cap of his scabbard on the site, and so named the place Mykenai.^62, Pausanias (2.16.3) tells the same story, and an alternative, that he pulled an actual mushroom from the earth, upon which water gushed forth and he slaked his thirst. He also reports two eponyms, Mykene daughter of Inachos (Od. 2.120, Hesiod fr. 246), and Akousilaos' Sparton (above, p. 237). ... [plus others]

Gantz

p. 198

From the family of Deukalion in the last chapter we proceed, as Apollodoros and probably the Ehoiai did, to the offspring of Inachos, the river god of Argos. Our evidence suggests that the Argive Akousilaos and likely the Argive epic Phoronis tried to establish Phoroneus, son of Inachos, as a local rival to Prometheus and Deukalion, regarding his as the first man or at least first inhabitant of Argos; the Phoronis calls him "father of mortal men" (fr. 1 PEG). ...

For the stages before Io most of our evidence comes from Apollodoros, who seems to have drawn on Akousilaos and other sources as well as the Ehoiai. The opening of the second book of his Bibliotheke offers the following: Inachos and his sister Melia (thus an Okeanid) produce two sons, Aigialeus and Phoroneus (ApB 2.1.1). Aigialeus dies childless, but Phoroneus begets Apis and Niobe. Apis in his turn also dies childless, but Niobe, as the first mortal woman with whom Zeus mates, bears a son Argos and also (this form Akousilaos Pelagos. Argos begets Iaos, and Iaos begets Io. ... But other fragments of Akousilaos do show he mentioned Phoroneus as the son of Inachos and first man/ruler of Argos in the time of the flood, and that Niobe was in some way part of the story (2F23).

Grimal

s.v. Inachus, p. 230

Inachus ... A river-god of the Argolid. It was said that at one time he was king of Argos and that by Melia — a daughter of Oceanus — he had two sons, Phoroneus and Aegialeus (Table 17). He was a son of Oceanus and Tethys. According to the Argives he lived before the human era and his son Phoroneus was the first man.

s.v. Io, p. 232

If she was a daughter of Inachus, her mother was Melia.

s.v. Melia, p. 281

Melia (Μελια)

1. A daughter of Oceanus and a sister of Ismenus. After an affair with Apollo she gave birth to Ismenus and Tenarus. She was worshipped in the temple of Apollo Ismenius near Thebes and at Thebes there was a spring called after her

2. There was another daughter of Oceanus called Melia. She married Inachus by whom she had three sons, Aegialeus, Phegeus and Phoroneus (Table 17).

Hard

p. 227

The first man of Argos, and perhaps the first man of all, was PHORONEUS, who was fathered by Inachos on an Okeanid nymph called Meila or Argia.¹ He was described as the first of mortal men in the Phoronis,² an archaic epic that would have recorded local traditions about Phoroneus and the ancient history of the Argolid.

Larson

BU p. 149

The second book of Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca gives the Inachid genealogy, probably derived from the Hesiodic Ehoeae. The genealogy begins with Inachos and the nymph Melia, both offspring of Okeanos and Tethys. Their sons were Aigialeos, who died childless, and Phoroneus, who begat Apis and Niobe with a nymph (Teledike or Laodike).⁸⁹ Argive sources presented Phoroneus as a local rival to Prometheus and Deukalion: he was the man or first inhabitant and king of Argos, and he lived in the time of the Flood. He first established Hera’s cult in Argos, and with Inachos and other local river gods, he awarded the land to Hera in the contest with Poseidon. According to the Argive epic Phoronis, he was the “father of mortal men.”⁹⁰ Thus, his Okeanid mother, Melia, calls to mind the “Melian race of mortal men” in Hesiod. In a fragment of the Ehoeae, we hear of another daughter of Phoroneus, who joined with a descendant of Deukalion (probably Doros) to produce five daughters. These in turn bore “the divine mountain nymphs and the race of worthless satyrs, unsuited for work, and the Kouretes, divine sportive dancers.” The fragment contains the earliest attested literary reference to satyrs. This daughter of Phoroneus might be Iphthime, who appears both in the papyrus context of this fragment and in Nonnos as a daughter of Doros and mother of satyrs with Hermes. The local tradition, then, associates the nymphs, satyrs, and Kouretes with the Dorian Peloponnese and, particularly, with Argolis.⁹¹

BU p. 307

89. For Apollod. and the Ehoeae, see West (1985) 32– 45. There are conflicting traditions about Phoroneus’ family; for example, his wife was Peitho (Schol. Eur. Or. 632) or Kerdo (Paus. 2.21.1). For discussion, see Waldstein (1902– 5) 1.33– 34.

90. Phoroneus founds Hera’s cult: Apollod. Bibl. 2.1.3. The fifth-century Argive Acusilaus (2 F 23a) and the Phoronis (fr. 1) put Phoroneus forward as “the first man”; cf. Gantz (1993) 198. For the Phoronis, see Huxley (1969) 31– 38. Contest with Poseidon: Paus. 2.15.5; Apollod. Bibl. 2.1.4.

91. Melian race: Hes. Theog. 563– 34. For the fr. of the Ehoeae, see the new papyrus in Solmsen, Merkelbach, and West (1990), fr. 10 a– b = Hes. fr. 123 Merkelbach and West (1967). Iphthime: Nonnus Dion. 14.105– 17. See Gantz (1993) 135; West (1985) 59; Carpenter (1986) 78.

Tripp

s.v. Inachus, p. 318

Inachus married the ash-nymph Meila, also a daughter of Oceanus, and she bore him two sons Phoroneus and Aegialeus, and a daughter Io. Melia may also have been the mother of his daughter Mycene. (Hyginus names the mother of Phoroneus and Io Argia.) It is as the father of Io [A] that Inachus is best known, though some writers claim that Io was the daughter of his descendant Iasus.

s.v. Io, p. 319

A daughter of Inachus, the Argive river-god, and Melia, or of Iasus or Piren.

A. Io was destined to become, by Zeus, the ancestress of thee great Greek dynasties: those of Argos, Thebes, and Crete.