Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/156

 J24 HISTORY OF GREECE. territory and Mount Geraneia, to the rock Moluris, overhanging the Saronic Gulf: Athamas pursued her, and in order to escape him she leaped into the sea. She became a sea-goddess under the title of Leukothea ; while the body of Melikertes was cast ashore on the neighboring territory of Schoenus, and buried by his uncle Sisyphus, who was directed by the Nereids to pay to him heroic honors under the name of Palacmon. The Isthmian games, one of the great periodical festivals of Greece, were cele- brated in honor of the god Poseidon, in conjunction with Palae- mon as a hero. Athamas abandoned his territory, and became the first settler of a neighboring region called from him Athman- tia, or the Athamantian plain. 1 1 Eurip. Med. 1250, with the Scholia, according to which story Ino killed both her children: Au/uap viv l^Kirefttpe 6u/j.aTuv aki). Compare Valckenacr, Diatribe in Eurip. ; Apollodor. i. 9, 1-2 ; Schol. ad Pindar. Argum. ad Isthm. p. 180. The many varieties of the fable of Atha- mas and his family may be seen in Hygin. fab. 1-5 ; Philostephanus ap. Schol. Iliad, vii. 86 : it was a favorite subject with the tragedians, and was handled by ^schylus, Sophokles and Euripides in more than one drama (see Welcker, Griechische Tragod. vol. i. p. 312-332 ; vol. ii. p. 612). Heyne Bays that the proper reading of the name is Phrixus, not Phryxus, incor- rectly, I think : pi'fof connects the name both with the story of roasting the wheat (^pvye(v), and also with the country $pvyia, of which it was pretended that Phryxus was the Eponymus. In6, or Leukothea, was worshipped as a heroine at Megara as well as at Corinth (Pausan. i. 42, 3) : the celebrity of the Isthmian games carried her worship, as well as that of Palremon, throughout most parts of Greece (Cicero, De Nat Deor. iii. 16). She is the only personage of this family noticed either in the Iliad or Odyssey : in the latter poem she is a sea-goddess, who has once been a mortal, daughter of Kadmus ; she saves Odysseus from imminent danger at sea by presenting to him her npfjSefivov (Odyss. v. 433 ; see the refinements of Aristides, Orat. iii. p. 27). The voyage of Phryxus and Helle 4 to Kolchis was related in the Hesiodic Eoiai : we find the names of the children of Phryxus by the daughter of JEe'te's quoted from that poem (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. ii. 1123} both Hesiod and Pherekyde's mentioned the golden fleece of the ram (Eratosthcn. Catasterism. 19; Pherekyd. Fragm. 53, Didot). Hekatacus preserved the romance of the speaking ram (Schol. Apoll. Rhod I 256) but Hellanikus dropped the story of Helld having fallen inla th
 * lvu pavelaav kit tfeuv, 6$' i) Aibf