Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/41

Rh walls of white marble. Aeacus was believed in later times to be buried under the altar in this asacred enclosure. (Paus. 2.29.6.) A legend preserved in Pindar (Pind. O. 8.39, &c.) relates that Apollo and Poseidon took Aeacus as their assistant in building the walls of Troy. When the work was completed, three dragons rushed against the wall, and while the two of them which attacked those parts of the wall built by the gods fell down dead, the third forced its way into the city through the part built by Aeacus. Hereupon Apollo prophesied that Troy would fall through the hands of the Aeacids. Aeacus was also believed by the Aeginetans to have surrounded their island with high cliffs to protect it against pirates. (Paus. 2.29.5.) Several other incidents connected with the story of Aeacus are mentioned by Ovid. (Met. 7.506, &c., 9.435, &c.) By Endeis Aeacus had two sons, Telamon and Peleus, and by Psamathe a son, Phocus, whom he preferred to the two others, who contrived to kill Phocus during a contest, and then fled from their native island. [PELEUS; TELAMON.] After his death Aeacus became one of the three judges in Hades (Ov. Met. 13.25; Hor. Carm. 2.13. 22), and according to Plato (Gorg. p. 523; compare Apolog. p. 41; Isocrat. Evag. 5) especially for the shades of Europeans. In works of art he was represented bearing a sceptre and the keys of Iades. (Apollod. 3.12.6; Pind. Isthm. 8.47, &c.) Aeacus had sanctuaries both at Athens and in Aegina (Paus. 2.29.6; Hesych. sub voce Schol. ad Pind. Nem. 13.155), and the Aeginetans regarded him as the tutelary deity of their island. (Pind. N. 8.22.)

 AEAEA (Αἰαία). 1. A surname of Medeia, derived from Aea, the country where her father Aeetes ruled. (Apollon. 3.1135.)

2. A surname of Circe, the sister of Aeetes. (Hom. Od. 9.32; Apollon. 4.559; Verg. A. 3.386.) Her son Telegonus is likewise mentioned with this surname. (Acaeus, Propert. 2.23.42.)

3. A surname of Calypso, who was believed to have inhabited a small island of the name of Aeaea in the straits between Italy and Sicily. (Pomp. Mela, 2.7; Propert. 3.10. 31.)

 AEA′NTIDES. 1. The tyrant of Lampsacus, to whom Hippias gave his daughter Archedice in marriage. (Thuc. vi. 59.)

2. A tragic poet of Alexandria, mentioned as one of the seven poets who formed the Tragic Pleiad. He lived in the time of the second Ptolemy. (Schol. ad Hephaest. p. 32, 93, ed. Paw.)

 AEBU'TIA GENS, contained two families, the names of which are CARUS and ELVA. The former was plebeian, the latter patrician; but the gens was originally patrician. Cornicen does not seem to have been a family-name, but only a surname given to Postumus Aebutius Elva, who was consul in B. C. 442. This gens was distinguished in the early ages, but from the time of the above-mentioned Aebutius Elva, no patrician member of it held any curule office till the praetorship of M. Aebutius Elva in B. C. 176. It is doubtful to which of the family P. Aebutius belonged, who disclosed to the consul the existence of the Bacchanalia at Rome, and was rewarded by the senate in consequence, B. C. 186. (Liv. 39.9, 11, 19.)

 AEDE'SIA (Αἰδεσία), a female philosopher of the new Platonic school, lived in the fifth century after Christ at Alexandria. She was a relation of Syrianus and the wife of Hermeias, and was equally celebrated for her beauty and her virtues. After the death of her husband, she devoted herself to relieving the wants of the distressed and the education of her children. She accompanied the latter to Athens, where they went to study philosophy, and was received with great distinction by all the philosophers there, and especially by Proclus, to whom she had been betrothed by Syrianus, when she was quite young. She lived to a considerable age, and her funeral oration was pronounced by Damascius, who was then a young man, in hexameter verses. The names of her sons were Ammonius and Heliodorus. (Suidas, s.v. Damascius, apud Phot. cod. 242, p. 341b. ed. Bekker.)

 AEDE'SIUS (Αἰδέσιος), a Cappadocian, called a Platonic or perhaps more correctly an Eclectic philosopher, who lived in the fourth century, the friend and most distinguished disciple of Iambilichus. After the death of his master the school of Syria was dispersed, and Aedesius fearing the real or fancied hostility of the Christian emperor Constantine to philosophy, took refuge in divination. An oracle in hexameter verse represented a pastoral life as his only retreat, but his disciples, perhaps calming his fears by a metaphorical interpretation, compelled him to resume his instructions. He settled at Pergamus. where he numbered among his pupils the emperor Julian. After the accession of the latter to the imperial purple he invited Aedesius to continue his instructions, but the declining strength of the sage being unequal to the task, two of his most learned disciples, Chrysanthes and Eusebius, were by his own desire appointed to supply his place. (Eunap. Vit. Aedes.)

 AEDON（Ἀηδών). 1. A daughter of Pandareus of Ephesus. According to Homer (Hom. Od. 19.517, &c.) she was the wife of Zethus, king of Thebes, and the mother of Itylus. Envious of Niobe, the wife of her brother Amphion, who had six sons and six daughters, she formed the plan of killing the eldest of Niobe's sons, but by mistake slew her own son Itylus. Zeus relieved her grief by changing her into a nightingale, whose melancholy tunes are represented by the poet as Aedon's lamentations about her child. (Compare Pherecydes, Fragm. p. 138, ed. Sturz; Apollod. 3.5.5.) According to a later tradition preserved in Antoninus Liberalis (c. 11), Aedon was the wife of Polytechnus, an artist of Colophon, and boasted that she lived more happily with him than Hera with Zeus. Hera to revenge herself ordered Eris to induce Aedon to enter upon a contest with her husband. Polytechnus was then making a chair, and Aedon a piece of embroidery, and they agreed that whoever should finish the work first should receive from the other a female slave as the prize. When Aedon had conquered her husband, he went to her father, and pretending that his wife wished to see her sister Chelidonis, he took her with him. On his way home he ravished her, dressed her in slave's attire, enjoined her to observe the strictest silence, and gave her to his wife as the promised prize. After some time Chelidonis, believing herself unobserved, lamented her own fate, but she was overheard by Aedon, and the two sistrs conspired against Polytechnus and killed his son Itys, whom they placed before him in a dish. Aedon fled with Chelidonis to her 