In Greek mythology, Chelidon (Ancient Greek : Χελιδών, romanized: Khelidṓn, lit. 'swallow') is a minor figure, a noblewoman from either the city of Miletus or Colophon in an Anatolian variant of the story of Philomela, [1] though she might have had an independent origin in Attica.
According to Antoninus Liberalis, Chelidon was the daughter of Pandareus by his (unnamed) wife and sister to Aëdon and an unnamed brother. [2] Eustathius of Thessalonica wrote that the name of Pandareus's wife was Harmothoë, although he does not list Chelidon among their daughters (Aëdon, Cleothera and Merope) and mentions no brother. [3] According to Pausanias, the two other sisters were called Cameiro and Clytia. [4]
Both Hesiod and Sappho wrote that the swallow (Chelidon) is the daughter of the Athenian king Pandion I, the father of Philomela. [5]
After her sister Aëdon won a bet against her husband Polytechnus, Polytechnus was forced to find his wife a female slave as promised. He went to his wife's father Pandareus, claiming that Aëdon wanted to see her sister. Chelidon thus left with Polytechnus to visit Aëdon, but on the way there he forced himself on the maiden while she cried and prayed to Artemis for help. He then cut her hair short, dressed her up as a slave, and terrorized her against telling anyone what had happened. He then gave her to Aëdon as a slave. Aëdon did not suspect anything and for a time Chelidon suffered in silence, until one day she overheard Chelidon lamenting her cruel fate. [6]
Enraged at the treatment of her sister, Aëdon decided to avenge her. The two sisters then killed Itys, Aëdon's son by Polytechnus, and fed him to his unwitting father while they ran back to their own. Polytechnus was not slow in figuring out what had happened and was soon hunting them down, but Pandareus protected his daughters and had Polytechnus tied up, smeared with honey and left to the mercy of flocks of flies. But Aëdon, feeling sorry for her husband, kept the flies off of him. Angered over what they perceived as her betrayal, Pandareus, his unnamed wife and son attacked her, so Zeus decided to turn them all into birds. Chelidon, like Philomela, became a swallow, a singing bird. Artemis bid that Chelidon would always dwell near humans in her new avian life. [2] [7]
The story of Chelidon seems to be an Anatolian variety of the myth of Procne and Philomela, in which Chelidon supplants Philomela, the unmarried sister abused by her brother-in-law. Unlike Chelidon, Philomela had her tongue cut by Tereus (Polytechnus) so she had to weave a tapestry in order to inform her sister.
However, both Chelidon and Aëdon appear to individually predate the myth of Procne and Philomela, which seems to have been shaped to its current form by the Athenian playwright Sophocles in his lost play Tereus . [8] [9] Chelidon is said by both earlier writers Hesiod and Sappho to be the daughter of Pandion (Procne and Philomela's father) instead of Pandareus, while earlier mentions of Aëdon have her kill her son unknowingly rather than wittingly in a doomed effort to hurt her rival Niobe. Those stories concerning Aëdon however do not include a sister or swallows, which must have joined the myth of the nightingale later. [10] It has been suggested the story crossed the Aegean from Asia Minor, Pandareus was mixed up with Pandion, and thus the myths of the nightingale and the swallow were combined and joined the Athenian mythos. The figure of the sister who is sexually linked to the husband might have evolved from the original Aëdon's rival. [10]
A sixth-century BC metope from Apollo's temple at Thermos depicts Chelidon and Aëdon plotting together over something that has been broken off. [11] Some vases, although with much less certainty, also seem to depict the scene of Itys's murder by Aëdon-Procne and Philomela-Chelidon. [11]
Aëdon was in Greek mythology, the daughter of Pandareus of Ephesus. According to Homer, she was the wife of Zethus, and the mother of Itylus. Aëdon features in two different stories, one set in Thebes and one set in Western Asia Minor, both of which contain filicide and explain the origin of the nightingale, a bird in constant mourning.
In some stories from Greek mythology, Itylus or Itylos was the son of Aedon, who was the daughter of Pandareus of Ephesus and the wife of King Zethus of Thebes.
In Greek mythology, Tereus was a Thracian king, the son of Ares and the naiad Bistonis. He was the brother of Dryas. Tereus was the husband of the Athenian princess Procne and the father of Itys.
Philomela or Philomel is a minor figure in Greek mythology who is frequently invoked as a direct and figurative symbol in literary and artistic works in the Western canon.
In Greek mythology, Itys is a minor mythological character, the son of Tereus, a king of Thrace, by his Athenian wife Procne. Itys was murdered by his own mother and served to be consumed during dinner by his father, as part of a revenge plan against Tereus for assaulting and raping Philomela, Procne's sister. His immediate family were all transformed into birds afterwards, and in some versions Itys too joins them in the avian kingdom. Itys' story survives in several accounts, the most extensive and famous among them being Ovid's Metamorphoses. His myth had been known since at least the sixth century BC.
In Greek mythology, Pandareus was the son of Merops and a nymph. His residence was given as either Ephesus or Miletus.
Gerana, sometimes also called Oenoe, is a queen of the Pygmy folk in Greek mythology, who incurred the wrath of the goddess Hera and was subsequently turned into a bird bearing her name, the crane. This aetiological tale explains the ancient rivalry between the Pygmies and the cranes, and also serves as a cautionary tale against the people who hubristically claimed to be better than even the gods themselves. Gerana's story bears some resemblance to that of Lamia, who was also a beautiful woman cursed by Hera and transformed into something unappealing.
Acacallis in Greek mythology, was princess of Crete. The Bibliotheca calls her Acalle (Ἀκάλλη).
Tereus is a lost Greek play by the Athenian poet Sophocles. Although fragments have long been known, the discovery of a synopsis among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has allowed an attempt at a reconstruction. Although the date that the play was first produced is not known, it is known that it was produced before 414 BCE, because the Greek comedic playwright Aristophanes referenced Tereus in his play The Birds, which was first performed in 414. Thomas B. L. Webster dates the play to near but before 431 BCE, based on circumstantial evidence from a comment Thucydides made in 431 about the need to distinguish between Tereus and the King of Thrace, Teres, which Webster believes was made necessary by the popularity of Sophocles play around this time causing confusion between the two names. Based on references in The Birds it is also known that another Greek playwright, Philocles, had also written a play on the subject of Tereus, and there is evidence both from The Birds and from a scholiast that Sophocles' play came first.
Procne or Progne is a minor figure in Greek mythology. She was an Athenian princess as the elder daughter of a king of Athens named Pandion. Procne was married to the king of Thrace, Tereus, who instead lusted after her sister Philomela. Tereus forced himself on Philomela and locked her away. When Procne discovered her sister and her gruesome fate, she took revenge against her husband by murdering their only child, a young boy named Itys. Procne's story serves as an origin myth for the nightingale.
In Greek mythology, Alcyoneus is a young and handsome man from Crissa, the only son of Diomos and Meganeira. He features in a short myth where he is chosen to be the sacrificial victim for a beast called Sybaris that terrorised Delphi and the surrounding area, a prototypical example of the hero slays a monster and saves a princess tale. His tale survives in the writings of second-century author Antoninus Liberalis, and might originate from an older work by Nicander of Colophon.
In Greek mythology, Pandion may refer to the following characters:
In Greek mythology, Polytechnus is a carpenter from Colophon, in an Anatolian variant of the story of Tereus.
In Greek mythology, Amaleus is the name of the eldest of the Niobids, the twelve or fourteen children of Amphion, king of Thebes, by his wife Queen Niobe. Although the Niobids are primarily notable for the myth of Niobe's blasphemous boast against the goddess Leto, Amaleus has a unique appearance of his own in myth, where an attempt on his life was made by his aunt, Aëdon.
The statue of Procne and Itys is a Greek marble sculpture of the fifth century BC which once adorned the Acropolis of Athens, created by sculptor Alcamenes. The statue depicts the Athenian princess Procne about to strike her own son Itys dead as revenge against her husband Tereus. It was discovered near the temple of Athena-Nike during the early nineteenth century, and it is now exhibited in the Acropolis Museum of Athens, in Greece.
In Greek mythology, Chelidon may refer to the following women:
In Greek mythology, Harmothoë is a minor character, the wife of Pandareus and the mother of his children.
In Greek mythology, Antiphera is a slave woman from Aetolia in the service of Athamas and Ino, a king and queen in Boeotia. Antiphera caught the eye of Athamas, and thus incurred the wrath of his wife Ino.
In Greek mythology, Cleostratus is a teenage boy from Thespiae, a town in Boeotia, who is chosen to be offered to a dragon in a yearly sacrifice to the monster, until he is saved by his lover Menestratus. His and Menestratus's myth is known thanks to Description of Greece, a second-century work by Greek traveller and geographer Pausanias. Cleostratus' myth is an early example of the hero-tale where the hero saves a damsel or princess from a vicious dragon.
In Greek mythology, Cleothera is one of the daughters of Pandareus and Harmothoë, natives of western Asia Minor or the island of Crete. After the deaths of their parents, she and her sister Merope were adopted by Aphrodite, the goddess of love and sensuality, and in time they came to serve the Furies, goddesses of rage and revenge.
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