Chapter 2: The Olympians
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♦ London, British Museum E64: Attic red-figure cup with Apollo pursuing a girl (Daphne?)
Beazley Archive Pottery Database
♠ HAp 208-10 – Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo
Shall I sing of you as wooer and in the fields of love, how you went wooing the daughter of Azan along with god-like Ischys the son of well-horsed Elatius? Greek Text
♠ Hesiod, Ehoai (Catalogue of Women) fr 60 MW – Fragmenta Hesiodea, p. 39, ed. R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Oxford 1967.
♠ Hesiod, Ehoiai (Catalogue of Women) fr 59 MW – Fragmenta Hesiodea, pp. 38-39, ed. R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Oxford 1967.
♠ Py 3.34 – Pindar, Pythian Odes
since the girl lived by the banks of Lake Boebias. Greek Text
♠ Hesiod, Ehoiai (Catalogue of Women) fr 50 MW – Fragmenta Hesiodea, pp. 33-34, ed. R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Oxford 1967.
Pausanias ii. 26. 7
It seems to me that the third of the accounts is the least truthful when it says that Asklepios was the son of Arsinoe, daughter of Leukippos. For the Pythia responded to the Arkadian Apollophanes who had gone to Delphi and had asked the god if Asklepios was the son of Arsinoe and therefore a fellow-citizen for the Messenians : “O Asklepios, born as a great source of joy for all mortals, whom Phlegyas’ daughter, lovely Koronis, bore for my love after we had intercourse in rocky Epidauros.” This oracle clearly proves that Asklepios was not a son of Arsinoe, but Hesiod or one of Hesiod’s imitators made up the story for the favor of the Messenians.
Cf. Schol. Pind. Pyth iii. 14 (ii. 64. 11-20 Drachmann)
Some say that Asklepios is son of Arsinoe, some of Koronis; Asklepiades (12 F 32) says that Arsinoe is a daughter of Leukippos, son of Perieros, and Asklepios and Eriopis are children of Arsinoe and Apollo:
in the halls, having yielded to Phoibos, she bore Asklepios, leader of men, and fair-haired Eriopis.
and likewise of Arsinoe:
Arsinoe, having had intercourse with the son of Zeus and Leto bore Asklepios, an excellent and mighty son. (Transl. E. Bianchelli)
♠ ApB 3.10.3 – Apollodoros, Bibliotheke (Library)
Besides them Leucippus begat Arsinoe: with her Apollo had intercourse, and she bore Aesculapius. But some affirm that Aesculapius was not a son of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, but that he was a son of Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas in Thessaly. And they say that Apollo loved her and at once consorted with her. Greek Text
♠ Il 4.193-94 – Homer, Iliad
Talthybius, make haste to call hither Machaon, son of Asclepius, the peerless leech. Greek Text
♠ Il 4.218-19 – Homer, Iliad
he sucked out the blood, and with sure knowledge spread thereon soothing simples, which of old Cheiron had given to his father with kindly thought. Greek Text
♠ HomH 16 – Homeric Hymn to Asklepios
I begin to sing of Asclepius, son of Apollo and healer of sicknesses. In the Dotian plain fair Coronis, daughter of King Phlegyas, bare him, a great joy to men, a soother of cruel pangs.
[5] And so hail to you, lord: in my song I make my prayer to thee! Greek Text
♠ Py 3.8-46 – Pindar, Pythian Odes
His mother, the daughter of Phlegyas with his fine horses, before she could bring him to term with the help of Eleithuia who attends on childbirth, was stricken by the golden arrows of Artemis in her bedroom and descended to the house of Hades, by the skills of Apollo. The anger of the children of Zeus is not in vain. But she made light of Apollo, in the error of her mind, and consented to another marriage without her father’s knowledge, although she had before lain with Phoebus of the unshorn hair, and was bearing within her the pure seed of the god. She did not wait for the marriage-feast to come, nor for the full-voiced cry of the hymenaeal chorus, such things as unmarried girls her own age love to murmur in evening songs to their companion. Instead, she was in love with what was distant; many others have felt that passion. There is a worthless tribe among men which dishonors what is at home and looks far away, hunting down empty air with hopes that cannot be fulfilled. Such was the strong infatuation that the spirit of lovely-robed Coronis had caught. For she lay in the bed of a stranger who came from Arcadia; but she did not elude the watcher. Even in Pytho where sheep are sacrificed, the king of the temple happened to perceive it, Loxias, persuading his thoughts with his unerring counsellor: his mind, which knows all things. He does not grasp falsehood, and he is deceived by neither god nor man, neither in deeds nor in thoughts. Knowing even then of her sleeping with Ischys, son of Elatus, and of her lawless deceit, he sent his sister, raging with irresistible force, to Lacereia, since the girl lived by the banks of Lake Boebias. A contrary fortune turned her to evil and overcame her. And many neighbors shared her fate and perished with her; fire leaps from a single spark on a mountain, and destroys a great forest. But when her kinsmen had placed the girl in the wooden walls of the pyre, and the ravening flame of Hephaestus ran around it, then Apollo spoke: “I can no longer endure in my soul to destroy my own child by a most pitiful death, together with his mother’s grievous suffering.” So he spoke. In one step he reached the child and snatched it from the corpse; the burning fire divided its blaze for him, and he bore the child away and gave him to the Magnesian Centaur to teach him to heal many painful diseases for men. Greek Text
♠ Akousilaos FGrH 2F17 – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1, p. 52, ed. F. Jacoby, 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
♠ Pherekydes FGrH 3F3 – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1, p. 60, ed. F. Jacoby, 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
♠ Σ Py 3.52b – Scholia to Pindar, Pythian Odes: Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina 2, pp. 70-71, ed. A.B Drachman. Leipzig 1903.
♠ Artemon 569F5 – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker pt. 3 B, p. 663, ed. F. Jacoby, 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
♦ Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale T183 (not Mormino Collection): Attic red-figure skyphos by Sotades Painter with Apollo playing lyre and sitting on palm (?) leaves, and white bird (raven?) in tree
Digital LIMC, Polo Regionale di Palermo per i Parchi e i Musei Archeologici
Beazley Archive Pottery Database
♠ Hesiod, Ehoiai (Catalogue of Women) fr 51 MW – Fragmenta Hesiodea, p. 34, ed. R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Oxford 1967.
♠ Stesichoros, Eriphyle 194 PMG – Poetae Melici Graeci, p. 107 ed. D. L. Page. Oxford 1962.
♠ Akousilaos FGrH 2F18 – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1, p. 52, ed. F. Jacoby, 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
♠ Pherekydes FGrH 3F35 – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1, pp. 71-72, ed. F. Jacoby, 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
♠ Py 3.55-58 – Pindar, Pythian Odes
Gold shining in his hand turned even that man, for a handsome price, to bring back from death a man who was already caught. And so the son of Cronus hurled his shaft with his hands through both of them, and swiftly tore the breath out of their chests; the burning thunderbolt brought death crashing down on them. Greek Text
♠ Stesichoros, Eriphyle 194 PMG
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Artistic sources edited by R. Ross Holloway, Elisha Benjamin Andrews Professor Emeritus, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown Univ., and Frances Van Keuren, Prof. Emerita, Lamar Dodd School of Art, Univ. of Georgia, July 2019.
Literary sources edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, January 2021
