Page:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu/223



And Apollodorus says that Hesiod already knew that the whole people were called both Hellenes and Panhellenes, as when he says of the daughters of Proetus that the Panhellenes sought them in marriage.

Acrisius was king of Argos and Proetus of Tiryns. And Acrisius had by Eurydice the daughter of Lacedemon, Danae; and Proetus by Stheneboea "Lysippe and Iphinoë and Iphianassa." And these fell mad, as Hesiod states, because they would not receive the rites of Dionysus.

These (the daughters of Proetus), because they had scorned the divinity of Juno, were overcome with madness, such that they believed they had been turned into cows, and left Argos their own country. Afterwards they were cured by Melampus, the son of Amythaon.

"Because of their hideous wantonness they lost their tender beauty...For he shed upon their heads a fearful itch: and leprosy covered all their flesh, and their hair dropped from their heads, and their fair scalps were made bare."

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