Apollodorus Library 2.2.2

1. Compare Bacch. 10.40-112, ed. Jebb ; Hdt. 9.34 ; Strab. 8.3.19 ; Diod. 4.68 ; Paus. 2.7.8 ; Paus. 2.18.4 ; Paus. 5.5.10 ; Paus. 8.18.7ff. ; Scholiast on Pind. N. 9.13 (30) ; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. vii.4.26, p. 844, ed. Potter ; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Ἀζανία ; Verg. Ecl. 6.48ff. ; Ov. Met. 15.325ff. ; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxv.47 ; Serv. Verg. Ecl. 6.48 ; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iii.453 ; Vitruvius viii.3.21 . Of these writers, Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and, in one passage ( Paus. 2.18.4 ), Pausanias, speak of the madness of the Argive women in general, without mentioning the daughters of Proetus in particular. And, according to Diodorus Siculus, with whom Pausanias in the same passage ( Paus. 2.18.4 ) agrees, the king of Argos at the time of the affair was not Proetus but Anaxagoras, son of Megapenthes. As to Megapenthes, see Apollod. 2.4.4 . According to Virgil the damsels imagined that they were turned into cows; and Servius and Lactantius Placidus inform us that this notion was infused into their minds by Hera (Juno) to punish them for the airs of superiority which they assumed towards her; indeed, in one place Lactantius Placidus says that the angry goddess turned them into heifers outright. In these legends Mr. A. B. Cook sees reminiscences of priestesses who assumed the attributes and assimilated themselves to the likeness of the cow-goddess Hera. See his Zeus, i.451ff. But it is possible that the tradition describes, with mythical accessories, a real form of madness by which the Argive women, or some portion of them, were temporarily affected. We may compare a somewhat similar form of temporary insanity to which the women of the wild Jakun tribe in the Malay Peninsula are said to be liable. “A curious complaint was made to the Penghulu of Pianggu, in my presence, by a Jakun man from the Anak Endau. He stated that all the women of his settlement were frequently seized by a kind of madness—presumably some form of hysteria— and that they ran off singing into the jungle, each woman by herself, and stopped there for several days and nights, finally returning almost naked, or with their clothes all torn to shreds. He said that the first outbreak of this kind occurred a few years ago, and that they were still frequent, one usually taking place every two or three months. They were started by one of the women, whereupon all the others followed suit.” See Ivor H. N. Evans, “Further Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of Pahang,” Journal of the Federated Malay States Museums, ix:1, January 1920, p. 27 (Calcutta, 1920) .

2. According to Bacch. 10.95ff., ed. Jebb , the father of the damsels vowed to sacrifice twenty red oxen to the Sun, if his daughters were healed: the vow was heard, and on the intercession of Artemis the angry Hera consented to allow the cure.