Notes on the current edition
Library
1.
See above, Frazer on Apollod. 1.9.4, where Cephalus is said to have been a son of Deion by Diomede; compare
Apollod. 2.4.7
;
Apollod. 3.15.1
. Pausanias also calls Cephalus a son of Deion (
Paus. 1.37.6
;
Paus. 10.29.6
), and so does
Ant. Lib. 41
. The
Scholiast on Hom. (Od. xi.321)
calls his father Deioneus. Hyginus in two passages (
Hyginus, Fab. 189, 270
) describes Cephalus as a son of Deion, and in another passage (
Hyginus, Fab. 160
) as a son of Hermes (Mercury) by Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus. Euripides tells how “Dawn with her lovely light once snatched up Cephalus to the gods, all for love”(
Eur. Hipp.454ff.
).
2.
According to
Hes. Th. 986ff.
and
Paus. 1.3.1
, Phaethon was a son of Cephalus and the Dawn or Day. According to another and seemingly more usual account the father of Phaethon was the Sun. See
Diod. 5.23
;
Paus. 1.4.1
;
Paus. 2.3.2
;
Lucian, Dial. Deorum xxv.1
;
Tzetzes, Chiliades iv.357ff.
;
Eustathius on Hom. Od. xi.325, p. 1689
;
Scholiast on Hom. Od. xvii.208
;
Ov. Met. 2.19ff.
;
Hyginus, Fab. 152, 156
;
Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. i.221
;
Scholia in Caesaris Germanici Aratea, p. 421, ed. Fr. Eyssenhardt, in his edition of Martianus Capella
;
Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 37, 93, 208 (First Vatican Mythographer 118; Second Vatican Mythographer 57; Third Vatican Mythographer iii.8.14)
;
Serv. Verg. A. 10.189
. The mother who bore him to the Sun is usually called Clymene (so Lucian, Tzetzes, Eustathius, Ovid, Hyginus, Lactantius Placidus, the Vatican mythographers, and Servius); but the
Scholiast on Hom. Od. xvii.208
calls her Rhode, daughter of Asopus. Clymene herself, the mother of Phaethon, is said to have been a daughter of Ocean and Tethys (
Tzetzes, Chiliades iv.359
;
Ov. Met. 2.156
) or of Iphys or Minyas (Eustathius). Apollodorus passes over in silence the famous story how Phaethon borrowed the chariot of the Sun for a day, and driving too near the earth set it on fire, and how in his wild career he was struck dead by Zeus with a thunderbolt and fell into the river Eridanus, where his sisters mourned for him till they were turned into poplar trees, their tears being changed into drops of amber which exuded from the trees. The story is told at great length and with many picturesque details by
Ovid, (Metamorph. ii.1ff.)
. Compare
Lucretius v.396ff.
; Diodorus Siculus, Lucian, the Scholiast on Homer, Hyginus, and the Latin Mythographers. Euripides wrote a tragedy on the subject, of which some considerable fragments survive. See
TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 599ff.
For some similar stories, see Frazer's Appendix on Apollodorus, “Phaethon and the Chariot of the Sun.”
3.
According to
Hyginus, Fab. 142
, Cinyras was a son of Paphus.
4.
A different and apparently more prevalent tradition represented Adonis as the son of Cinyras by incestuous intercourse with his daughter Myrrha or Smyrna. See
Scholiast on Theocritus i.107
;
Plut. Parallela 22
;
Ant. Lib. 34
(who, however, differs as to the name of Smyrna's father);
Ov. Met. 10.298ff.
;
Hyginus, Fab. 58, 164
;
Fulgentius, Mytholog. iii.8
;
Lactantius Placidus, Narrat. Fabul. x.9
;
Serv. Verg. Ecl. 10.18
, and
Serv. Verg. A. 5.72
;
Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 60 (First Vatican Mythographer 200)
. Similar cases of incest with a daughter are frequently reported of royal houses in antiquity. They perhaps originated in a rule of transmitting the crown through women instead of through men; for under such a rule a widowed king would be under a strong temptation to marry his own daughter as the only means of maintaining himself legitimately on the throne after the death of his wife. See
Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed., i.43ff.
The legend of the incestuous origin of Adonis is mentioned, on the authority of Panyasis, by Apollodorus himself a little lower down.
