Current text[edit]

New text[edit]

Son of Poseidon[edit]

Find secondary source for: "He was renowned as an expert seafarer, and possibly the inventor of seafaring as a practice; a harbor equipped by him to function as a port was said to have been named in his honor.^[1]"

^ Scholia on Euripides, Orestes, 54

Father of Palamedes = Argonaut and is a descendant of Son of Poseidon[edit]

Rose, Oxford Classical Dictionary s.v. Nauplius, p. 723
Grimal, s.v. Nauplius, pp. 302–303
Jones, n. 2 to Strabo, 8.6.2
Morford, p. 624
Collard and Cropp (2008b), p. 46

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

To Do[edit]

Get[edit]

Sources[edit]

Ancient[edit]

Homer[edit]

Odyssey

4.499-507

Aias truly was lost amid his long-oared ships. [500] Upon the great rocks of Gyrae Poseidon at first drove him, but saved him from the sea; and he would have escaped his doom, hated of Athena though he was, had he not uttered a boastful word in great blindness of heart. He declared that it was in spite of the gods that he had escaped the great gulf of the sea; [505] and Poseidon heard his boastful speech, and straightway took his trident in his mighty hands, and smote the rock of Gyrae and clove it in sunder.

Nostoi[edit]

Proclus' Summary of the Nostoi, attributed to Agias of Trozen

Then the storm at the rocks called Kapherides is described, and the destruction of Lokrian Aias.

Aeschylus[edit]

Palamedes

fr. 181 (Sommerstein, pp. 186, 187)

On account of what injury did you kill my son?

Gantz, p. 606

... a fragment of Aischylos' play (asking for what cause the speaker's son was killed: fr. 181R) does seem to indicate that Nauplios appeared in that play, and thus that the action was either all set after Palamedes' death or else very briefly dramatized in its opening phase.

Sophocles[edit]

Ajax

1295–1297 [Teucer to Agamemnon]

Jebb

And you yourself were born from a Cretan mother, whose father found a stranger straddling her and who was consigned by him to be prey for the mute fish.

Lloyd-Jones

And you yourself are the son of a Cretan mother, whom your father, finding a lover with her, sent to be destroyed by dumb fishes.

Nauplios Katapleon and Nauplios Pyrkaeus

fr. 429 Radt

LLoyd-Jones, pp. 220, 221 (See also Google books pp. 220, 221)

...and draughts-boards with five lines and castings of the dice ...

Gantz, p. 604

and another fragment adds dice and draughts (fr. 429 R)

fr. 432 Radt

LLoyd-Jones, pp. 222, 223

NAUPLIUS

And it was he^a who devised the wall for the army of the Argives; his the invention of weights, numbers, and measures; ... and for shepherds of ships at sea he found out the turnings of the Bear and the chilly setting of the Dogstar.

^a Palamedes. The Platonic Socrates remarks (Republic 522D) that Agamemnon did not even know how to count his feet until Palamedes taught him how to do so.

Trzaskoma, Smith and Brunet, p. 392

NAUPLIOS: He [Palamedes] hit upon the idea of a wall for the Argive army.

Weighing, ...

Gantz, p. 604

Sophokles somewhere had Nauplios credit his son with a similar range of discoveries, weights, numbers, measures, military tactics, and how to read the movement of the stars (fr. 432 R).

Palamedes

LLoyd-Jones, pp. 248—251 (see also Google Books, pp. 248, 249, 250, 251)

Euripides[edit]

Cretan Women (Kressai)

fr. 466 (Collard and Cropp (2008a) pp. 524, 525)

Am I to kill your child as a favour to you?¹

¹ Almost certainly Nauplius addressing Catreus about the proposed killing of Aerope. If Bekker’s ‘I will not kill your children’ is read, the children are Aerope and Clymene (cf. Apollodorus 3.2.2. = test. *iiic).

Helen

765–767

Menelaos

[765] Truly you have asked a great deal all at once. Why should I tell you about our losses in the Aegean, and Nauplios' beacons on Euboia,

1126–1131

an Achaean man, who had only a single ship, lit a blazing beacon on sea-girt Euboia, and destroyed many of [the Achaeans returning from Troy], casting them onto the rocks of Kaphareus [1130] and the sea-shores of the Aegean, by the treacherous flame he kindled.

Palamedes

Collard and Cropp (2008b), pp. 46–59

fr. 588a Kannicht [= Scholia on Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 770 Rutherford] (Collard and Cropp (2008b), pp. 58, 59)

... Euripides in Palamedes had Palamedes' brother Oeax inscribe his death on oar-blades, so that they would be carried of their own accord to his father Nauplius and report Palamedes' death.¹

¹ Aristophhanes, Women at the Thesmophoria 768-84 burlesques an incident form this play ...

Pherecydes of Athens[edit]

fr. 4 Fowler, apud schol. Apollonius of Rhodes 4.1091 [= FGrHist 3 F 4]

Fowler 2007, p. 277

Δίκτυς καὶ Πολυδέκτης ...

Gantz

p. 207

Pherekydes knows of [Amymone and Poseidon's] union (3F4)

p. 208

Pherekydes makes the offspring of [Amymone and Poseidon] Nauplios; Apollodoros and those other sources that specify the name agree.

Fowler 2013, p. 250

... [Diktys] is descended from Nauplios the son of Poseidon and Amymone. The genealogy is in Pher. fr. 4;

fr. 10 Fowler

Trzaskoma, Smith, and Brunet, p. 354

...for Dictys and Polydects were the sons of Androthoe daughter of Castor and Peristhenes son of Damastor (son of Nauplios, the son of Poseidon and Amymone).

Aristophanes[edit]

Thesmophoriazusae

768–784

Mnesilochus

Let me see, whom could I best send to him? Ha! I know a means [770] taken from Palamedes; like him, I will write my misfortune on some oars, which I will cast into the sea. Where might I find some oars? Hah! what if I took these statues instead of oars, wrote upon them and then threw them towards this side and that. That's the best thing to do. [775] Besides, like oars they are of wood.

Oh! my hands, keep up your courage, for my safety is at stake. Come, my beautiful tablets, receive the traces of my stylus [780] and be the messengers of my sorry fate. Oh! oh! this R looks miserable enough! Where is it running to then? Come, off with you in all directions, to the right and to the left; and hurry yourselves, for there's much need indeed!

Alcidamas[edit]

Odysseus 14-16 (Garagin and Woodruff, p. 286)

[14] Now, Ales, king of Tegea, consulted the oracle at Delphi and was told that if a son was born to his daughter, this son was destined to kill Aleus' sons. When he heard this, Aleus quickly went home and made his daughter a priestess of Athena, telling her he would put her to death if she ever slept with a man. As fortune (tuchē) would have it, Heracles came by during his campaign against Augeas, king of Elis, [15] and Aleus entertained him in the precinct of Athena. Heracles saw the girl in the temple, and, in a drunken state, he slept with her. When Aleus saw she was pregnant, he sent for this man's father Nauplius, since he knew he was a boatman and a clever one. When Nauplius arrived, Aleus gave him his daughter to cast into the sea. [16] He took her away, and when they reached Mt. Parthenius, she gave birth to Telephus. Nauplius ignored the orders Aleus had given him and took the girl and her child to Mysia, where he sold them to king Teuthras, who was childless. Teuthras made Auge his wife, and giving the child the name Telephus, he adopted him and later gave him to Priam to be educated at Troy. Time passed and Alexander [Paris] wished to visit Greece. He wanted to see the sanctuary at Delphi, but at the same time it is clear that he had heard about Helen's beauty, and he had heard about Telephus' birth: where it took place, and how, and who had sold him. And so for all the reasons Alexander took a trip to Greece.

Gantz, pp. 428–429

[Sophocles' Aleadai] was almost certainly one of the sources of a plot summary made by the fourth-century Athenian [cont.] Alkidamas (pp. 140-141 R). In this summary, Delphi informs ...

Jebb, p. 46

...declamations attributed to Alcidamas (Odyss. 13-16, p. 187 Bl.². It is there related how Aleos, king of Tegea, went to Delphi and received an oracle from the god, warning him that, if his daughter bore a son, his own sons must die by the hand of his grandson. Accordingly, on his way to Elis ...

Apollonius of Rhodes[edit]

Argonautica

1.133–138

Next to him came a scion of the race of divine Dannaus, Nauplius. He was the son of Clytonaeus son of Naubolus; Naubolus was son of Lernus; Lernus we know was the son of Proetus son of Nauplius; and once Amymone daughter of Danaus, wedded to Poseidon, bare Nauplius, who surpassed all men in naval skill."

2.896–897

And after him Erginus and Nauplius and Euphemus started up eager to steer.

Lycophron[edit]

Alexandra (Cassandra)

384–386 (Mair, pp. 526, 527)

when the destroyer^a shall lead them, their heads yet aching from the debauch, and light a torch to guide their feet in the darkness, sitting at his unsleeping art.

^a Nauplius, king of Euboea, who, in revenge for the death of his son Palamedes, whom the Greeks stoned to death on a charge of treason, lured the Greeks on their way from Troy upon the rocks of Euboea.

Diodorus Siculus[edit]

4.33.8

Aleos was ignorant of what had taken place, but when the bulk of the child in the womb betrayed the violation of his daughter he inquired who had violated her. And when Augê disclosed that it was Heracles who had done violence to her, he would not believe what she had said, but gave her into the hands of Nauplius his friend with orders to drown her in the sea.

4.33.9

But as Augê was being led off to Nauplia and was near Mount Parthenium, she felt herself overcome by the birth-pains and withdrew into a near-by thicket as if to perform a certain necessary act; here she gave birth to a male child, and hiding the babe in some bushes she left it there. After doing this Augê went back to Nauplius, and when she had arrived at the harbour of Nauplia in Argolis she was saved from death in an unexpected manner.

4.33.10

Nauplius, that is, decided not to drown her, as he had been ordered, but to make a gift of her to some Carians who were setting out for Asia; and these men took Augê to Asia and gave her to Teuthras the king of Mysia.

Strabo[edit]

8.6.2

After Temenium comes Nauplia, the naval station of the Argives: and the name is derived from the fact that the place is accessible to ships.¹ And it is on the basis of this name, it is said, that the myth of Nauplius and his sons has been fabricated by the more recent writers of myth, for Homer would not have failed to mention these, if Palamedes had displayed such wisdom and sagacity, and if he was unjustly and treacherously murdered, and if Nauplius wrought destruction to so many men at Cape Caphereus. But in addition to its fabulous character the genealogy of Nauplius is also wholly incorrect in respect to the times involved; for, granting that he was the son of Poseidon, how could a man who was still alive at the time of the Trojan war have been the son of Amymone?²

¹ i.e., "Naus" (ship) + "pleo" (sail).

² Strabo confuses Nauplius, son of Poseidon and Amymone and distant ancestor of Palamedes, with the Nauplia who was the father of Palamedes.

Hyginus[edit]

Fabulae

14.11 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 101)

[Argonauts:] ... Nauplius, son of Neptunune and Amymone, daughter of Danaus, from Argos."

105 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 133)

105 Palamedes

Ulysses plotted daily to find some way to kill Palamedes son of Nauplius because ...

[Grant]: Ulysses, because he had been tricked by Palamedes, son of Nauplius, kept plotting day by day how to kill him. At length, having formed a plan, he sent a soldier of his to Agamemnon to say that in a dream he had been warned that the camp should be moved for one day. Agamemnon, believing the warning true, gave orders that the camp be moved for one day. Ulysses, then, secretly by night hid a great quantity of gold in the place where the tent of Palamedes had been. He also gave to a Phrygian captive a letter to be carried to Priam, and sent a soldier of his ahead to kill him not far from the camp. On the next day when the army came back to the camp, a soldier found on the body of the Phrygian, the letter which Ulysses had written, and brought it to Agamemnon. Written on it were the words: “Sent to Palamedes from Priam,” and it promised him as much gold as Ulysses had hidden in the tent, if he would betray the camp of Agamemnon according to agreement. And so when Palamedes was brought before the king, and so denied the deed, they went to his tent and dug up the gold. Agamemnon believed the charge was true when he saw the gold. In this way Palamedes was tricked by the scheme of Ulysses, and though innocent, was put to death by the entire army.

116 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 136)

116 Nauplius

After Ilium had been taken and the spoils divvied up, the Danaans set out for home. ...

[Grant]: When the Danaans were returning home after the capture of Troy and the division of spoils, the anger of the gods caused their shipwreck on the Cepharean Rocks. They sent a storm and contrary winds because the Greeks had despoiled the shrines of the gods and Locrian Ajax had dragged Cassandra from the statue of Pallas. In this storm Locrian Ajax was struck with a thunderbolt by Minerva. The waves dashed him against the rocks, and from this they are called the Rocks of Ajax. When the others at night were imploring the aid of the gods, Nauplius heard, and though the time had come for avenging the wrong to his Palamedes. And so, as if he were bringing aid to them, he brought a burning torch to that place where the rocks were sharp and the coast most dangerous. Believing that this was done out of mercy they steered their ships there. As a result many ships were wrecked, and many of the troops and their leaders perished in the storm, their limbs and entrails dashed on the rocks. Those who could swim to shore were killed by Nauplius. But the wind bore Ulysses to Mar[ath]on, and Menelaus to Egypt. Agamemnon with Cassandra arrived at his own country.

157 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 151)

157 <Neptune's Children>⁴⁸

... <Nauplius by> Amymone <daughter of Danaus>.* [p. 191: 157 Danaus: We follow Muncker's supplement.]

[Grant]: Sons of Neptunus [Poseidon] . . . Nauplius by Amymone, daughter of Danaus.

169 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 153)

169 Amymone

While Amymone daughter of Danaus was intensely tracking her prey in the forest, she hit a Satyr with her spear. The Satyr wanted to rape her. She prayed to Neptune for help. When Neptune arrived, he drove the Satry away and slept with Amymone himself. From this union Nauplius was born. At the spot where all of this took place, it is said that Neptune struck the earth with his trident and water flowed out from there. The spring is called Lernaean, and the river Amymonian.

[Grant]: When Amymone, daughter of Danaus, was eagerly hunting in the woods, she struck a Satyr with her dart. He wanted to ravish her, but she begged the aid of Neptunus [Poseidon]. When Neptunus came there, he drove away the Satyr, and lay with her himself. From this embrace Nauplius was born. At the place where this occurred, Neptunus is said to have struck the earth with his trident. Water flowed out, called the Fountain of Lerna and the Amymonian River.

169A (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 153)

169A Amymone⁵³

Amymone daughter of Danaus ...

[Grant: Amymone, daughter of Danaus, was sent by her father to get water for performing sacred rites. While hunting for it, she grew weary and fell asleep. A satyr tried to seduce her, but she implored the help of Neptune. When Neptune had hurled his trident at the satyr, it became fixed in a rock. Neptune drove off the satyr. When he asked the girl what she was doing in this lonely place she said she had been sent by her father to get water. Neptune lay with her, and in return he did her a favour, bidding her draw out his trident from the rock. She drew it out and three streams of water flowed, which were called the Amymonian Spring from her name. From the embrace Nauplius was born. The fountain, however, later was called the Fountain of Lerna.

249 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 172)

249 Accursed Torches

...

Nauplius' at the Capharean Rocks, when the Achaeans were shipwrecked.

[Grant]: Fatal Firebrands ... That of Nauplius at the Capharean Rocks, when the Achaeons were shipwrecked.

Seneca[edit]

Agamemnon

557–561 (pp. 170, 171)

Already wrecked, we were drawn by another, worse scourge. There are shallows made treacherous by sharp underwater crags, where deceitful Caphereus conceals his rocky base beneath swirling eddies; water boils over the reefs, the waves always seethe in ebb or flow. Above towers

562–570 (pp. 172, 173)

a sheer headland that looks out on two seas, right and left: on one side to your Pelops’ shores and the Isthmus, whose narrow, recurving ground keeps the Ionian sea apart from Phrixus’; on the other side to Lemnos, famous for crime, Chalcis, and Aulis delayer of ships. On this headland Palamedes’ father, that criminal, took up position. Shining a bright light from the summit, he led the fleet onto the crags with that treacherous beacon.

Medea

658–659 (pp. 402, 403)

Planning harm for Argos with deceiving fire,

Nauplius will fall sheer into the deep;

Apollodorus[edit]

2.1.5

Amymone had a son Nauplius by Poseidon. This Nauplius lived to a great age, and sailing the sea he used by beacon lights to lure to death such as he fell in with. It came to pass, therefore, that he himself died by that very death. But before his death he married a wife; according to the tragic poets, she was Clymene, daughter of Catreus; but according to the author of The Returns, she was Philyra; and according to Cercops she was Hesione. By her he had Palamedes, Oeax, and Nausimedon.

2.7.4

Passing by Tegea, Hercules debauched Auge, not knowing her to be a daughter of Aleus.17 And shebrought forth her babe secretly and deposited it in the precinct of Athena. But the country being wasted by a pestilence, Aleus entered the precinct and on investigation discovered his daughter's motherhood. So he exposed the babe on Mount Parthenius, and by the providence of the gods it was preserved: for a doe that had just cast her fawngave it suck, and shepherds took up the babe and called it Telephus.18 And her father gave Auge to Nauplius, son of Poseidon, to sell far away in a foreign land; and Nauplius gave her to Teuthras, the prince of Teuthrania, who made her his wife.

3.2.2

And Catreus gave Aerope and Clymene to Nauplius to sell into foreign lands; and of these two Aerope became the wife of Plisthenes, who begat Agamemnon and Menelaus; and Clymene became the wife of Nauplius, who became the father of Oeax and Palamedes.

3.9.1

Auge was seduced by Hercules2 and hid her babe in the precinct of Athena, whose priesthood she held. But the land remaining barren, and the oracles declaring that there was impiety in the precinct of Athena, she was detected and delivered by her father to Nauplius to be put to death, and from him Teuthras, prince of Mysia, received and married her.

E.3.7

But he, not wishing to go to the war, feigned madness. However, Palamedes, son of Nauplius, proved his madness to be fictitious; and when Ulysses pretended to rave, Palamedes followed him, and snatching Telemachus from Penelope's bosom, drew his sword as if he would kill him. And in his fear for the child Ulysses confessed that his madness was pretended, and he went to the war.

E.3.8

Having taken a Phrygian prisoner, Ulysses compelled him to write a letter of treasonable purport ostensibly sent by Priam to Palamedes; and having buried gold in the quarters of Palamedes, he dropped the letter in the camp. Agamemnon read the letter, found the gold, and delivered up Palamedes to the allies to be stoned as a traitor.¹

1 The Machiavellian device by which the crafty Ulysses revenged himself on Palamedes for forcing him to go to the war is related more fully by a Scholiast on Eur. Or. 432 and Hyginus, Fab. 105. According to the Scholiast, a servant of Palamedes was bribed to secrete the forged letter and the gold under his master's bed, where they were discovered and treated as damning evidence of treason. According to Hyginus, Ulysses had recourse to a still more elaborate stratagem in order to bury the gold in the earth under the tent of Palamedes. Compare Serv. Verg. A. 2.81; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Achill. i.93; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 12, 140ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 35; Second Vatican Mythographer 200). An entirely different account of the plot against Palamedes is told by Dictys Cretensis ii.15. He says that Ulysses and Diomede induced him to descend into a well, and then buried him under rocks which they hurled down on the top of him.

E.6.7

The others being driven to Euboea by night, Nauplius kindled a beacon on Mount Caphareus; and they, thinking it was some of those who were saved, stood in for the shore, and the vessels were wrecked on the Capherian rocks, and many men perished.¹

1 As to the false lights kindled by Nauplius to lure the Greek ships on to the breakers, see above, Apollod. 2.1.5; Eur. Hel. 766ff.; Eur. Hel. 1126ff.; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 432; Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica xiv.611-628; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 384; Prop. v.1.115ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 116; Seneca, Agamemnon 557-575; Dictys Cretensis vi.1; Serv. Verg. A. 11.260; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Achill. i.93; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 46, 141 (First Vatican Mythographer 144; Second Vatican Mythographer 201). The story was probably told by Hagias in his epic The Returns （Nostoi）, though in the abstract of that poem there occurs merely a mention of “the storm at the Capherian Rocks.” See Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 53. The wrecker Nauplius was the subject of a tragedy by Sophocles. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 80ff.

E.6.8–9

For Palamedes, the son of Nauplius and Clymene daughter of Catreus, had been stoned to death through the machinations of Ulysses.¹ And when Nauplius learned of it,² he sailed to the Greeks and claimed satisfaction for the death of his son; [9] but when he returned unsuccessful (for they all favoured King Agamemnon, who had been the accomplice of Ulysses in the murder of Palamedes), he coasted along the Grecian lands and contrived that the wives of the Greeks should play their husbands false, Clytaemnestra with Aegisthus, Aegialia with Cometes, son of Sthenelus, and Meda, wife of Idomeneus, with Leucus.

¹ As to the death of Palamedes, see above, Apollod. E.3.8.

² This passage, down to the end of Section 12, is quoted with some slight verbal changes, but without citing his authority, by Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 384-386; compare Tzetzes, Scoliast on Lycophron 1093.

E.6.11

These were the earlier contrivances of Nauplius; but afterwards, when he learned that the Greeks were on their way home to their native countries, he kindled the beacon fire on Mount Caphereus, which is now called Xylophagus; and there the Greeks, standing in shore in the belief that it was a harbor, were cast away.

Valerius Flaccus[edit]

Argonautica

1.370–372 (Mozley, pp. 30, 31) (see also Theoi)

and Nauplius soon with cruel beacon to drive the Greeks upon thy rocks, Caphareus,

5.63–64 (Mozley, pp. 248, 249) (see also Theoi)

Downcast were all, and doubtful whose hand most faithfully should guide the ship; together Ancaeus and wise Nauplius made request.

Plutarch[edit]

Quaestiones Graecae, 33

Nauplius, when he was being pursued by the Achaeans, came as a suppliant to the Chalcidians ; and on the one hand he defended himself in regard to the indictment brought against him, and on the other hand brought a counter-charge against the Achaeans. The Chalcidians had no intention of surrendering him ; but, since they were afraid that he might be slain by treachery, they gave him a guard of young men in the prime of their youth and stationed them in this place, where they lived together and at the same time served as a guard for Nauplius.

Pausanias[edit]

1.22.6

There in the pictures is Orestes killing Aegisthus, and Pylades killing the sons of Nauplius who had come to bring Aegisthus succor.

2.38.2

Fifty stades, I conjecture, from Temenium is Nauplia, which at the present day is uninhabited; its founder was Nauplius, reputed to be a son of Poseidon and Amymone.

4.35.2

The Nauplians in my view were Egyptians originally, who came by sea with Danaus to the Argolid, and two generations later were settled in Nauplia by Nauplius the son of Amymone.

8.48.7

The Tegeans surname Eileithyia, a temple of whom, with art image, they have in their market-place, Auge on her knees, saying that Aleus handed over his daughter to Nauplius with the order to take and drown her in the sea.

Dictys Cretensis (4th century AD)[edit]

1.1

Among those who came to Crete were Palamedes and Oeax, the sons of Clymene and Nauplius.

5.1

The night had kept them from seeing; and Nauplius, knowing their plight and desiring to avenge the death of his son Palamedes, had raised a torch, to lure them there, as if to a harbour.

5.2

At the same time Oeax, who was the son of Nauplius and the brother of Palamedes, on learning that the Greeks were returning home, went to Argos and reported, falsely, to Clytemnestra and Aegiale that Agamemnon and Diomedes were bringing back women they preferred to their wives; and he added those things by which their womanly hearts, by nature easily persuaded, might be the more incensed against their husbands. Thus they were prompted to arm themselves against their husbands’ arrivals.

Quintus Smyrnaeus[edit]

The Fall of Troy

14.612–628

... some

Wretchedly perishing with their shattered ships

By Nauplius' devising on the rocks. [614]

Wroth for that son whom they had done to death,

He, when the storm rose and the Argives died,

Rejoiced amid his sorrow, seeing a God

Gave to his hands revenge, which now he wreaked

Upon the host he hated, as o'er the deep

They tossed sore-harassed. To his sea-god sire

He prayed that all might perish, ships and men

Whelmed in the deep. Poseidon heard his prayer,

And on the dark surge swept them nigh his land.

He, like a harbour-warder, lifted high

A blazing torch, and so by guile he trapped

The Achaean men, who deemed that they had won

A sheltering haven: but sharp reefs and crags

Gave awful welcome unto ships and men,

Who, dashed to pieces on the cruel rocks

In the black night, crowned ills with direr ills.

Some few escaped, by a God or Power unseen

Plucked from death's hand.

Scholia on Aristophanes[edit]

Thesmophoriazusae

770 Rutherford, pp. 486–487

...Euripides in the Palamedes makes Oeax, the brother of Palamedes, inscribe the death of Palamedes upon oars in order that they might be carried by the waves, and get to Nauplius, the father of Palamedes, and inform him of his death. ... as Oeax writes to Nauplius in the Palamedes of Euripides

Modern[edit]

Collard and Cropp[edit]

2008a

p. 520

αὐτὸς δὲ μητρὸς ἐξέφυς Κρήσσης, ἐφ᾽ ᾗ | λαβὼν ἐπακτὸν ἄνδρ᾽ ὁ φιτύσας πατὴρ | ἐφῆκεν ἐλλοῖς ἰχθύσιν διαφθοράν. ...

Sophocles, Ajax 1295-7 and Schol. on 1279a

p. 521

'You (Menelaus [should be Agamemnon]) were yourself born from a Cretan mother, whom her own father (Catreus) caught with a man taken into her bed, and sent her to death and destruction by dumb fishes':¹ the story is in Euripides' Cretan Women, that when (Aerope) had been secretly violated by her servant her father handed her over to Nauplius with orders to drown her; Nauplius did not do this, however, but pledged her in marriage to Pleisthenes.

¹ 'Dumb fishes': to consume her totally, so that nothing of her disgrace should ever be told.

2008b

p. 46

Palamedes the son of Nauplius the Argonaut was ...

p. 47

Nauplius' presence at Troy in Uripides' play now appears confirmed by an unpublished papyrus hypothesis ...

pp. 58, 59

¹ Aristophhanes, Women at the Thesmophoria 768-84 burlesques an incident form this play ...

Fowler[edit]

2001

p. 277

Pher. fr. 4

2013

p. 250

... [Diktys] is descended from Nauplios the son of Poseidon and Amymone. The genealogy is in Pher. fr. 4; ...

p. 251

p. 309

Gantz[edit]

p. 207

Pherekydes knows of [Amymone and Poseidon's] union (3F4), Pindar (Py 9.112-14) and Euripides (Pho 185-89) imply it,

p. 208

Pherekydes makes the offspring of [Amymone and Poseidon] Nauplios; Apollodoros and those other sources that specify the name agree.

p. 271

We know at any rate that this play [Euripides' Kressai] told how Katreus discovered his daughter Aerope to have been seduced by a servant, and gave her to Nauplios to drown; the latter instead gave her to Pleisthenes to wife (Σ Ai 1297). In Apollodorus, Katreus hands over two daughters, Aerope and Klymene, to Nauplios to be sold (not drowned); Nauplios gives Aerope to Pleisthenes, as in Euripides, but keeps Klymene for himself, and she becomes the mother of Palamedes and Oiax (ApB 3.2.2).

p. 428

[Sophocles' Aleadai] was almost certainly one of the sources of a plot summary made by the fourth-century Athenian [cont.]

p. 429

Alkidamas (pp. 140-141 R). In this summary, Delphi informs Aleos ... when Aleos discovers the pregnancy [of Auge], he sends for the ferryman Nauplios and gives him his daughter to drown. The latter duly leads her away, but after she gave birth to Telphos near Mount Parthenion, he disregards Aleos' orders and sells both mother and child to Teuthras of Mysia.

p. 546

Euripides' Kressai told the story of Aerope's seduction on Krete, and her father's consequent consigning her to Nauplios to be drowned,

p. 554

Turning to Sophocles' Aias ... He adds too (by way of insult to Agamemnon) Thyestes' feast, and then Agamemnon's Kretan mother, "in whose bed finding an alien man the father enjoined that she be quarry for the fishes." As these words stand the [cont.]

p. 555

reference would seem to be Katreus, Aerope's father, who found her with a slave and gave her to Nauplios to kill. But the word here translated as alien (epaktos) would more naturally refer to an adulterer, since in the bed of an unmarried woman any man would be inappropriate, and only a small ajustment to the text (involving the word father) would produce rather a reference to Aerope and Thyestes. Either way, Aerope must be the Kretan mother, married to Atreus, but if the manuscript correction is accepted we would have here our first reference to Aerope being thrown from a cliff as punishment for her adultery. The account of the Byzantine Orestia scholia at line 812, where Sophokles is said to attest that fate for Aerope, seems to guarantee that it appeared somewhere in his work, but of course the scholiast might be referring to this same passage of the Aias, where the meaning is as we have seen controversial.

... The scholia for the Aias passage tell us that in Euripides' Kressai Nauplios (as usual disobeying Katreus' order to drown Aerope) gave her to Pleisthenes in marriage (Σ Ai 1279). ...

p. 604

... our only references to this hero [Palamedes] before the fifth century occur in the Noistoi, Stesichoros, and (probably) the Aigimios of the Hesiodic Corpus, for Apollodoros says that according to Kerkops (one reputed author of the latter work) Nauplios and Hesione begat Palamedes, Oiax, and Nausimedon, while in the Nostoi his mother was instead Philyra, and for the tragedians Klymene, daughter of Katreus (ApB 2.1.5). We have met this Nauplios before, in chapter 6, as the offspring of Posiedon and the Danaid Amymone; we will see shortly that as father of Palamedes he plays a crucial role in the aftermath of his son's demise, and probably did so from an early date, given that he is mentioned in the Nostoi.

From that time period [the 5th century] we have Pindar's ... plus Palamedes plays (all lost) by each of the three tragedians; to these last should probably be added as well Sophokles'Nauplios Katapleon, if in that play Palamedes' father defended his departed son (see below)... Sophokles somewhere had Nauplios credit his son with a similar range of discoveries, weights, numbers, measures, military tactics, and how to read the movement of the stars (fr. 432 R), and another fragment adds dice and draughts (fr. 429 R).

[need to check cites from here to below]

p. 606

... a fragment of Aischylos' play (asking for what cause the speaker's son was killed: fr. 181R) does seem to indicate that Nauplios appeared in that play, and thus that the action was either all set after Palamedes' death or else very briefly dramatized in its opening phase ... and the Orestes scholia (which, in fact conclude with Nauplios' visit) ...

There is finally the above-noted coda to the tale of Palamedes, the wrath of his father Nauplios and journey to Troy to accuse those responsible for his son's death. The Oestes scholia constitute our clearest source for this event. stating as they do that Nauplios came to Troy after his son's death to protest, but received little attention because the army wished to please the leaders (Σ Or 432: we remember that a number of heroes including Agamemnon conspire [cont.]

p. 607

toward Palamedes' death in this account). We saw above that this voyage was almost certainly part of Aischylos' Palamedes, and probably too Sophokles' Nauplios Katapleon, assuming that play is not the same as his Nauplios Pyrkaeus. ... In Euripides the matter was handled a bit differently ...

...

... Apollodoros, who says that after Nauplios returned from his unsuccessful voyage to Troy he visited the homes of a number of the Greek leaders and managed to turn their wives to adultery (we are not told how; perhaps by tales, true or not, of their husbands' paramours at Troy: ApE 6.9). Included in the list are Klytaimestra's affair with Aigisthos, that of Aigialeia, wife of Diomedes, with Sthenelos' son Kometes, and that of Meda, wife of Idomeneus, with Leukos. ...

... One other detail is reported by the Odyssey scholia, that Nauplios persuaded Antikleia of Odysseus' death, whereupon the grieving mother hanged herself (Σ Od 11.197, 202, credited to the [cont.]

p. 608

neôteroi). On this phase of Nauplios' vengeance we have no other information; just possibly it (rather than the debate at Troy) was the subject of Sophokles' Nauplios Katapleon, if that play was distinct from the Pyrkaeus. The matter of the latter drama was certainly the second phase of the retribution, a phase surely in the Nostoi and indicated by both Apollodoros and the Orestes scholia: as the Achaians prepared for their return from Troy, Nauplios proceeded to the promintory of Kaphereus at the southern end of Euboia and lit deceptive fires that lured the ships to destruction.

p. 695

Nauplios' Revenge

We saw that Homer mentions neither Palamedes nor the vengeance of his father Nauplios against the Achaians returning from Troy.

p. 696-98?

Grimal[edit]

s.v. Nauplius

p. 302

Tradition records two heroes of this name, who are often confused with ease other.

1. The first, an ancestor of the second, was the son of Poseidon by Amymone, one of the daughters of Danäs. This Nauplius was considered to have been founder of the city of Nauplion. His sons were Damastor, grandfather of Dictys, and Polydectes, and Proetus, grandfather of Naubolus and accordingly great-grandfather of the second Nauplius.

2. Nauplius II, or Nauplius the Younger, is much better known of the two. He was descended from Nauplius I as follows ...He took part in the expedition of the Argonauts, ...

Hard[edit]

Two Google books links: p. 1 -OR- p. 1

p. 235

As a result of her liaison with Poseidon, Amymone gave birth to a son NAUPLIOS (Seafarer), who founded the city of Nauplia (later Nauplion) in the [cont.]

p. 236

in the north-eastern corner of the Argolic Gulf.⁶⁰ He used this city, which was the seaport of Tiryns, as his home-port during his long career as a seafarer. His legends fall into two groups, those in which rulers asked him to dispose of their daughters for different reasons (see pp. 355 and 543), and those in which he took action against the Greeks who had fought at Troy (see pp. 485 and 487) to avenge the murder of his son Palamedes at Troy (see p. 460). Ancient authors ascribe all these stories to the same person even though this would mean that he must have lived for many generations; Apollodorus notes the point by remarking that he was long-lived (makrobius) perhaps as a priviledge granted to him by his divine father, as in the case of Sarpedon, see p. 350). ... there is no indication in surviving sources that the Nauplios who acted against the Greeks after the Trojan war was ever identified with this other Nauplios. son of Klytoneos, rather than the earlier son of Poseidon and Amymone.

In the Returns, an early epic in the Trojan cycle, the wife of Nauplius was apparently a certain Philyra, but in tragedy and later sources she is always Klymene, a daughter of Katreus, king of Crete;⁶² for the story of how he came to marry her see p. 355. The couple had one son of major importance, Palamedes, an ingenious inventor who met an ignominious death at Troy through the machinations of Odysseus (see pp. 459-60), and two other sons of lesser note, Oiax (see p. 460) and Nausimedon.⁶³

p. 355

Katreus had come to fear that his daughters KLYMENE and AEROPE might present a danger to him, and therefore handed them over to Nauplios to be sold abroad. Nauplios treated them more generously, however, as in the similar story of Auge (see p. 543), by offering Aerope to Pleisthenes, king of Mycenae, as a wife and taking Kymene as his own wife.¹⁰⁵ Or according to a conflicting tale from a lost play by Euripides, Katreus asked Nauplios to drown Aerope at sea after discovering that she had been seduced by a slave, but Nauplios took her to Pleisthenes instead¹⁰⁶ Although there was disagreement on whether she married Atreus of Pleisthenes (an obscure figure who was sometimes interposed into the Mycenean king-list between Atreus and Agamemnon, see p. 508), she became the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaos in either case. It so happens that Nauplios is said to have deliveried her to Pleisthenes in surviving accounts of that story. ... As for Klymene, she bore two or more sons to Nauplios, including the prince of inventions, Palamedes (see p. 236).

¹⁰⁵ Apollod. 3.2.2

¹⁰⁶ Schol. Soph. Ajax 1279 citing Eur. Kressai.

p. 459

Odysseus and Palamedes

ODYSSEUS was a hero of ...

p. 460

In a lost play by Euripides, Oiax informed his father of the murder by inscribing the story on oar-blades and tossing them into the sea (rather like a message in a bottle), a splendidly impractical means of communication which is mocked by Aristophanes in the Thesmophoriazusae.¹³⁴

¹³⁴ See Arist. Thesm. 768ff. with schol 771.

p. 485

... Nauplios the wrecker

It is not clear from the Odyssey whether all the Greeks who sailed off with Agamemnon were imperilled by a great storm, as was certainly the case in the Returns. In the latter epic, .... The storm descended on them at the Kapherides Rocks, causing the death of the lesser Aias. This bare outline is all that is recorded in the surviving summary of the poem.¹⁶ The rocks were located at Cape Kaphareus at the southern tip of Euboea (the long island that skirts the east coast of Central Greece). According to subsequent sources, the seafarer Nauplios, who had been embittered against the Greeks ever since his son Palamedes had been unjustly killed at Troy (see pp. 459-60), took advantage of the storm to lure many ships to their destruction. He achieved this by lighting beacon-fires on the headland, causing the sailors to steer towards them in the belief that they were being guided to a safe haven, and so run ashore on the rocks. Cape Kaphareus was notorious as a hazard to shipping in any case, as is witnessed in its later name of Xylophagos, 'Eater of Timber'.¹⁷ Although Sophocles and Euripides are the earliest authors who are definitely known [cont.]

¹⁶ Proclus on Returns.

¹⁷ Mentioned as a more recent name in Apollod. Epit. 6.11

p. 486

to have referred to Nauplios' activities as a wrecker, it is at least possible that he already figured in that role in the Returns, since the epic is known to have referred to him in some context, and it located the storm at the appropriate place.¹⁸

...

Apollodorus recounts on the other hand ... by a false beacon fire kindled by Nauplios.²¹

...

... The malelvolent activities of Nauplios figure in most narratives; Hyginus even suggests that he killed the survivors who managed to swim to the shore. ... Sophocles portrayed the revenge of Nauplios in a lost play called Nauplios the Fire-Kindler (Nauplios Pyrkaios).

¹⁸ First references to Nauplios' activities, Eur. Helen 766-7 (shipwrecks, beacon lit by Nauplios in Euboea), 1126-31 (many lured on to rocks at Cape Kaphareus); this was the subject of the Nauplios Pyrkaios (Nauplios the Fire-Kindler) of Sophocles, but almost nothing is recorded of the play; Nauplios is mentioned in the Returns fr. 1 Davies (from Aollod. 2.1.5, that his wife was Philyra).

p. 487

In another version of the story, the embittered Nauplios sailed to Argos to turn Aigialeia against her husband. He was sometimes said to have also incited the infidelity of Klytaimnestra and to have persuaded the wife of Idomeneus to take a lover; the surviving sources fail to explain how he set about this delicate task.

p. 543

Apheidas, who has no myths of his own, had a single son, ALEOS, who ... appointed his daughter AUGE ... and handed his daughter over to the seafarer Nauplios to be sold [this seems to be a mistake!] in a foreign land. Nauplios treated her more generously, however, by offering her in marriage to Teuthras, the wealthy king of Mysia in Asia Minor;

LLoyd-Jones[edit]

Sophocles, Fragments

pp. 218, 219

ΝΑΥΠΛΙΟΣ ΚΑΤΑΠΛΕΩΝ and ΝΑΥΠΛΙΟΣ ΠΥΡΚΑΕΥΣ

Nauplius was the son of Poseidon by Amymone, one of the daughters of Danaus, and was by his wife Clymene the father of Palamedes. Palamedes, often said to have been the inventor of the alphabet, of numbers, and of other useful devices, was the main rival of Odysseus as a man of cunning, and was hated by him because he had unmasked the pretence of madness by which Odysseus had tried to avoid taking part in the expedition to Troy. Odysseus trumped up a charge against him and caused him to be put to death (see on the Palamedes), and the dead man’s father, Nauplius, came to the Greek camp to demand justice. When his demand was refused, he first used his celebrated skill as a navigator to sail round the homes of the various Greek heroes and encourage their wives to commit adultery. The wives of Agamemnon, Diomedes and Idomeneus responded to his suggestions, with unfortunate consequences for their husbands when they returned home. When the Greeks were sailing home from Troy, Nauplius lighted a beacon on Cape Caphereus, [cont.]

NAUPLIUS SAILS IN AND NAUPLIUS LIGHTS A FIRE

at the southern tip of Euboea, near some of the most dangerous rocks of the Mediterranean. Thinking this to indicate a safe refuge, a number of the Greeks sailed their ships on to the rocks and perished. There is a story that Nauplius himself finally met his end as the victim of some other wrecker; for another story about him, see on the Aleadae. A fragmentary hypothesis on papyrus seems to summarise the καταπλέων: it is printed below as fr. 434a.

Four quotations (frr. 425–428) name the καταπλέων, three (429–431) the πυρκαεύς, and six simply the Ναύπλιος. Possibly there was only one play, but probably there were two. Some think that the καταπλέων dealt with Nauplius’ visit to the Greek camp to demand justice; others that it described his voyage around Greece to corrupt his enemies’ wives. But the title πυρκαεύς seems to indicate that that play was about Nauplius’ activities as a wrecker, and fr. 435, and perhaps 433 and 434 also, support this notion. See on The Madness of Odysseus and the Palamedes.

March[edit]

p. 325

Nauplius (1) ("Seafarer")

p. 326

...to sell abroad ... general revenge on the Greeks ...

The foregoing events are attributed to the life of Nauplius (1), even though he lived some generations before the Trojan War. Apollodorus (2.1.5) explains the chronological discrepancy by saying that he lived to a great age. Nauplius (2) would in fact more plausibly be "Nauplius the Wrecker", but no classical writer seems to have thus identified him.

Nauplius (2)

Mooney[edit]

Mooney, 1.134

"Ναύπλιος: the Argonaut was a descendant of the famous navigator Nauplius, son of Poseidon, who was said to have founded the port of Nauplia (Paus. 2. 38. 2, 4. 35. 2), and to have first observed the Great Bear (Theon ad Arat. Phaen. 27).

Smith[edit]

Smith, s.v. Aerope

"(Ἀερόπη), a daughter of Catreus, king of Crete, and granddaughter of Minos. Her father, who had received an oracle that he should lose his life by one of his children, gave her and her sister, Clymene, to Nauplius, who was to sell them in a foreign land.

Smith, s.v. Auge

"Auge was surrendered to Nauplius, who was to kill her, but he gave her to Teuthras, king of the Mysians, who made her his wife. (Apollod. 2.7.4, 3.9.1.) The same story is related with some modifications by Pausanias (8.4.6, 48.5), Diodorus (4.33), Hyginus (Hyg. Fab. 99)"

Smith, s.v. Penelope

"Nauplius or her own parents are said to have cast her into the sea (Tzetz. ad Lyc. 792), where she was fed by sea-birds (πννέλοπες) from which she derived her name. (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1422.)

Smith, s.v. Nauplius 1.

"1. A son of Poseidon and Amymone, of Argos, a famous navigator, and father of Proetus and Damastor (Apollon. 1.136, &c.; Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. 4.1091). He is the reputed founder of the town of Nauplia, which derived its name from him (Paus. 2.38.2, 4.35.2; Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 54). He is also said to have discovered the constellation of the great bear. (Theon, ad Arat. Phaen. 27; Paus. 8.48.5; Strab. viii. p.368.)"

Smith, s.v. Nauplius 2.

"2. A son of Clytoneus, was one of the Argonauts and a descendant of Nauplius, No. 1. (Apollon. 1.134.)

Smith, s.v. Nauplius 3.

"3. A king of Euboea, and father of Palamedes, Oeax and Nausimedon, either by Clymene or Philyra or Hesione (Apollod. 2.1.4). Clymene was a daughter of Catreus, and she and her sister Aerope had been given by their father to Nauplius, who was to carry them to some foreign country; but Nauplius married Clymene, and gave Aerope to Pleisthenes, who became by her the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus (Apollod. 3.2.2). His son Palamedes had been condemned to death by the Greeks during the siege of Troy, and as Nauplius considered his condemnation to be an act of injustice, he watched for the return of the Greeks, and as they approached the coast of Euboea, he lighted torches on the most dangerous part of the coast. The sailors thus misguided suffered shipwreck, and perished in the waves or by the sword of Nauplius (Philostr. Her. 10.11; Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 422; Tzetz., ad Lycoph. 384; Hyg. Fab. 116). He is further said to have wreaked his vengeance on the Greeks by sending false messages to the wives of the heroes fighting at Troy, and thus to have led them to faithlessness towards their husbands or to self destruction. (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 24; Tzetz., l.c.; Paus. 1.22.6.)

Sommerstein[edit]

p. 182

ΠΑΛΑΜΗΔΗΣ

Palamedes is a figure unknown to, or ignored by, the poet(s) of the Iliad and Odyssey, but the tale of how he was treacherously murdered during the Trojan War, by Odysseus—in some versions alone, in others with Diomedes and sometimes Agamemnon as accomplices—was a popular one from the cyclic epics onwards, and was dramatized by all three of the great tragedians. Odysseus’ motive is sometimes revenge, Palamedes having unmasked him when he tried to avoid serving in the war by pretending to be mad (Cypria Arg. §5 West), sometimes jealousy of his cleverness. The later accounts, doubtless deriving from one or more of the tragic treatments, regularly have Palamedes [cont.]

p. 183

PALAMEDES

being condemned by the army on a trumped-up charge of treason and put to death by stoning; frr. 181a and 182 would fit well into such a scenario as part of a defence speech. Aeschylus’ play, however, went on beyond Palamedes’ condemnation and execution, since fr. 181 shows that Palamedes’ father, Nauplius, came to Troy (as Sophocles later made him do in The Arrival of Nauplius) and protested, doubtless to little effect, about what had been done to his son; the story was that he took revenge later by causing the Greek fleet to be wrecked on its way home and/or by encouraging the leaders’ wives to have adulterous affairs.

I have tried to establish, in the article cited below, what can be inferred with greater or lesser confidence about the structure of this play; I also argue there that fr. 451k Radt (here fr. 180a) gives us the opening lines of its prologue, on the grounds that none of the ten other known Trojan War plays of Aeschylus (except Myrmidons [q.v.], which we

Tripp[edit]

s.v. Nauplius (1). p. 390

Apollodorus tried to explain the fact that Nauplius was born many generations before the Trojan War with the statement that he had a long life. The Argonaut Nauplius would be more plausible as "Nauplius the Wrecker" than his ancestor, but no Classical writer see,s to have identified him thus.

Webster[edit]

p. 37

The scholiast on the reference to Aerope in ‘’Ajax’’ 1297 says ‘the story is in Euripides’ ‘’Cretan’’ [cont.]

p. 38

’’Women’’ that when Aerope had been seduced by a servant, her father (Katreus of Crete) handed her over to Nauplios with instructions to drown her, but he failed to do so and engaged her to Pleisthenes’.

A difficult fragment may belong here: fr. 466N² can be read either as ‘for [cont.]

p. 39

your sake shall I not kill the children?’ or, with a slight change, ‘for your sake am I to kill your daughter?’ The second version has been taken as Nauplios speaking to Katreus; and even if the action takes place at Mycenae, it could conceivably belong in the prologue as a quotation of Nauplios’ words; a minor difficulty is that Katreus gave ‘’two’’ daughters to Nauplios. If this solution is rejected, the first version may have been spoken to Aerobe by Atreus before the feast.

[1] Scholia on Euripides, Orestes, 54

[1]