Danaus (Ancient Greek: Δαναός, Danaós) was the son of king Belus of Libya. He frequently feuded with his brother Aegyptus. He fled to Argos, where he became king, succeeding his fourth cousin Gelanor.
He had 50 daughters, known as the Danaids who married the 50 sons of Aegyptus. He instructed his daughter to kill their husbands on the wedding night. All obeyed but Hypermnestra, who spared her husband Lynceus because he respected her wish to remain a virgin at the time. The 49 daughters were punished in Tartarus by being forced to use water jugs to fill a bath with a hole at the bottom.
Through Hypermnestra, Danaus was the grandfather of Abas and thus ancestor to kings of Argos and Mycenae.
Family[]
Parents and siblings[]
Danaus, was the son of King Belus of Egypt and the naiad Achiroe, daughter of the river god Nilus,[1] or of Sida,[2] eponym of Sidon. He was the twin brother of Aegyptus, king of Egypt while Euripides adds two others, Cepheus, King of Ethiopia and Phineus, betrothed of Andromeda.
Danaides[]
Danaus had fifty daughters, the Danaides, twelve of whom were born to the naiad Polyxo; six to Pieria; two to Elephantis; four to Queen Europa; ten to the hamadryad nymphs Atlanteia and Phoebe; seven to an Aethiopian woman; three to Memphis; two to Herse and lastly four to Crino.[3] According to Hippostratus, Danaus had all these progenies begotten by Europa, the daughter of Nilus.[4] In some accounts, Danaus married Melia while Aegyptus consorted with Isaie,[5] these two women were daughters of their uncle Agenor, King of Tyre, and their possible sister, Damno who was described as the daughter of Belus.[6]
Mythology[]
Flight from Aegyptus[]
After Aegyptus commanded that his fifty sons should marry the Danaides, Danaus elected to flee instead. To that purpose, he built a ship on the advice of Athena,[1] the first ship that ever was.[7] In it, he fled to Argos, to which he was connected by his descent from Io, a priestess of Hera at Argos, who was wooed by Zeus and turned into a heifer and pursued by Hera until she found asylum in Egypt. Argos at the time was ruled by King Pelasgus, the eponym of all autochthonous [indigenous] inhabitants who had lived in Greece since the beginning, also called Gelanor ("he who laughs"). The Danaides asked Pelasgus for protection when they arrived, the event portrayed in The Suppliants by Aeschylus. Protection was granted after a vote by the Argives.
When Pausanias visited Argos in the 2nd century CE, he related the succession of Danaus to the throne, judged by the Argives, who "from the earliest times ... have loved freedom and self-government, and they limited to the utmost the authority of their kings":[8]
- "On coming to Argos he claimed the kingdom against Gelanor, the son of Sthenelus. Many plausible arguments were brought forward by both parties, and those of Sthenelas were considered as fair as those of his opponent; so the people, who were sitting in judgment, put off, they say, the decision to the following day. At dawn a wolf fell upon a herd of oxen that was pasturing before the wall, and attacked and fought with the bull that was the leader of the herd. It occurred to the Argives that Gelanor was like the bull and Danaus like the wolf, for as the wolf will not live with men, so Danaus up to that time had not lived with them. It was because the wolf overcame the bull that Danaus won the kingdom. Accordingly, believing that Apollo had brought the wolf on the herd, he founded a sanctuary of Apollo Lycius."
The Danaides kill their husbands
The sanctuary of Apollo Lykeios ("wolf-Apollo", but also Apollo of the twilight) was still the most prominent feature of Argos in Pausanias' time: in the sanctuary, the tourist might see the throne of Danaus himself, an eternal flame, called the fire of Phoroneus.
Murdered bridegrooms[]
When Aegyptus and his fifty sons arrived to take the Danaides, Danaus gave them in order to spare the Argives the pain of a battle. However, he instructed his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night. Forty-nine followed through and subsequently buried the heads of their bridegrooms in Lerna;[9] but one, Hypermnestra, refused because her husband, Lynceus, honored her wish to remain a virgin. Danaus was angry with his disobedient daughter and threw her to the Argive courts. Aphrodite intervened and saved her. Lynceus and Hypermnestra then began a dynasty of Argive kings (the Danaid Dynasty).[10] Some sources relate that Amymone, the "blameless" Danaid,[11] and/or Bryce (Bebryce)[12] also spared their husbands.
Aftermath[]
Lynceus taking Danaus' crown while Hypermnestra watches
After his sons' deaths, Aegyptus escaped to Aroe in Greece and died there. His monument was shown in the temple of Serapis at Patrae.[13]
In some versions, Lynceus later killed Danaus as revenge for the death of his brothers.
The remaining forty-nine Danaides had their grooms chosen by a common mythic competition: A foot-race was held, and the order in which the potential Argive grooms finished decided their brides (compare the myth of Atalanta). Two of the grooms were Archander and Architeles, sons of Achaeus: They married Scaea and Automate, respectively.[14]
In later accounts, the Danaides were punished in Tartarus by being forced to carry water in a jug to fill a bath without a bottom (or with a leak) and thereby wash off their sins, but the bath was never filled because the water was always leaking out.[15]
Danaus in Rhodes[]
Another account of the travels of Danaus gave him three daughters, Ialysos, Kamiros and Lindos, who were worshipped in the cities that took their names in the island of Rhodes, Ialysos, Kamiros and Lindos (but see also Cercaphus). According to Rhodian mythographers who informed Diodorus Siculus,[16] Danaus would have stopped and founded a sanctuary to Athena Lindia on the way from Egypt to Greece.[1] Herodotus heard that Danaus' daughters founded the temple at Lindos.[17]
The scholar Ken Dowden observes[18] that once the idea is dismissed that myth is directly narrating the movements of historical persons, that the loci of Danaian institutions at Lindos in Rhodes as well as at Argos suggest a Mycenaean colony sent to Rhodes from the Argolid, a tradition, in fact, that Strabo reports.
Other feats[]
Danaus was credited as the inventor of wells and is said to have migrated from Egypt about 1485 B.C. into that part of Greece previously known as Argos Dipsion. Notes in Pliny the Elder's, Natural History also added that:
- "He [i.e., Danaus] may have introduced wells into Greece, but they had, long before his time, been employed in Egypt and in other countries. The term "Dipsion," "thirsting," which it appears had been applied to the district of Argos, may seem to render it probable, that, before the arrival of Danaus, the inhabitants had not adopted any artificial means of supplying themselves with water. But this country, we are told, is naturally well supplied with water."
The town Apobathmi in ancient Argolis took its name from Danaus landing at this spot.[19]
In art[]
Danaus from Jeux de cartes instructives. Histoire ancienne by Pierre-François Godard (1809-1821)
Unlike his daughters, he is rarely depicted separately. The Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting in the Hermitage contains his image (shown above earlier). In it, Danaus shows the Argive Greeks painted statues of Egyptian gods. There is an indirect mention of this in Pausanias's "Description of Hellas": [20]
"The greatest attraction of the Argives in the city is the temple of Apollo-Lycia (Guardian from Wolves). The statue, preserved to our time, was the work of the Athenian Attalus, and originally both the temple and the wooden statue were dedicated to Danaus; I am convinced that at that time all the statues were wooden, especially the Egyptian ones."
Another depiction of Danaus is from the 1800s. This depiction is from Jeux de cartes instructives. Histoire ancienne by Pierre-François Godard (1809-1821). This series of cards is intended to be educational bite-sized pieces of information, in this case of ancient historic figures. The text on the card says:
"An Egyptian had founded Athens, another Egyptian, Danaus, founded, a century later, the city and kingdom of Argos. Without dwelling on the too obviously fabulous story of this prince and his fifty daughters, we will say that at the time of his reign, the Greeks, divided into tribes, began to feel the advantage of uniting for common security.
Twelve of their principal cities formed a confederation whose deputies went twice a year to Thermopylae, where they formed an assembly (called the Council of the Amphictyons, from the name of its founder), and in which were judged the disputes which could arise between the small nations which had divided Greece. The defense of the Temple of Delphi was specially entrusted to the care of the Council of the Amphictyons."
Argive Genealogy[]
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| Preceded by: Gelanor |
King of Argos Mythic |
Succeeded by Lynceus |
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Apollodorus, The Library 2.1.4
- ↑ Malalas, Chronicle 2.30
- ↑ Apollodorus, The Library 2.1.5
- ↑ Tzetzes, Chiliades 7.37, p. 370–371
- ↑ Pherecydes fr. 21; Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius, Notes on Book 3.1689
- ↑ Gantz, p. 208; Pherecydes fr. 21 Fowler 2000, p. 289 = FGrHist 3 F 21 = Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius, 3.1177-87 ff.
- ↑ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 7.191 & 206
- ↑ Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece 2.19.3-4
- ↑ The Helladic site at Lerna is related in myth to the pool of the Lernaean hydra; compare the heads ritually buried in marshlands in northern Europe: see Bog body.
- ↑ Apollodorus, The Library 2.1.5; Hyginus, Fabulae 168; Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece 2.19.6 & 2.20.7
- ↑ Scholia on Pindar, Pythian Ode 9.200
- ↑ Eustathius on Dionysius Periegetes, 805
- ↑ Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece 7.21.13
- ↑ Pindar, Pythian Ode 9.117; Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece 7.1.6
- ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4. 462; Heroides 14; Servius on Virgil, Aeneid 10.497
- ↑ Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 5.58; Strabo, Geographia 14.2.6
- ↑ Herodotus, The Histories 2.182
- ↑ Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology 1992:64
- ↑ Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), Apobathmi
- ↑ Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece 2.19.3