Myrmidons

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Myrmidons ( ancient Greek Μυρμιδόνες Myrmidónes ) were an Achaean tribe in the south of Thessaly from before the Doric immigration . They are mainly known from Greek mythology as the phthiotic people who lived around Phthia and Larisa Kremaste .

In Homer's Iliad describes how under the leadership of Peleus ' son Achilles the small army of myrmidons in the Battle of Troy drew and these were distinguished there by unqualified obedience, courage and superior fighting force. They wore black armor and shields. You played a crucial role in the fall of Troy. After the war, Neoptolemus , the grandson of Peleus, brought the Myrmidons home.

The following five leaders of the Myrmidons are named in the Iliad: Menesthios , Eudoros , Peisandros , Phoinix and Alkimedon .

According to tradition, the Myrmidons are the descendants of the eponymous ancestor King Myrmidon of Phthia (Phthiotis), a son of Zeus and the "far-sighted" Eurymedusa , a princess of Phthia. She was seduced by Zeus in the form of an ant ( ancient Greek μύρμηξ myrmēx ), hence its name. Others say that Myrmex was the name of the mortal man of Eurymedusa, and that Zeus took his form to approach her. [A] His wife was Peisidice , daughter of Aiolus and Enarete , with whom he begat the Actor and Antiphos (who was the first to invite Peleus to stay in Thessaly). Hyginus also attributes the two daughters Ischylla and Eupolemia to him and Aelianus another son, Erysichthon . [B]

According to a legend about their origins, they once lived on the island of Aigina , the soil of which, although fertile, was extremely stony on the surface and therefore very bare. Therefore, in order to reclaim the soil like the ants, the inhabitants would have dug through the earth with extraordinary diligence and distributed it on the stones in order to obtain agriculturally cultivable areas, and would have lived very sparingly under the earth in caves in the same way. But then they went along with Peleus when he was banished from there by his father Aiakos . In Phthia then Peleus was received by King Eurytion , the son of Aktor, and he sanitized him and gave him his daughter Antigone along with the third part of his land.

Ortus Myrmidonum : Engraving by Virgil Solis (from P. Ovidii Metamorphosis 1581)

The interpretation as "ant-people" ( μύρμηκες mýrmēkes ) is mentioned for the first time in Ovid's Metamorphoses . Accordingly, the name is derived from the fact that Zeus once gave the island of Aegina, at the request of Aiakos, new inhabitants and created them from ants, since the island had been robbed of its original inhabitants by a plague sent by the vengeful Hera . Ovid seems to have borrowed this version from the Greek historian Thucydides , who described a plague in Athens.

The aiginetic legend of the transformation of ants into humans by Zeus - for the sake of his son Aiakos ( Αιακός from αῖα earth ), the husband of Endeis ( Ένδηΐς from εν and δα earth ) - is originally independent of this Zeus-Myrmidon stemma and wants the autochthony of the aiginetic aiacids is based on the mythical derivation of the earth animal. The Thessalian stemma originally knew just as little of the ants etymology as the aiginetic saga. [B] Nevertheless, the port Μύρμηξ ( Murmex ) of the coast of Magnesia , famous for Thetis- Σηπιάς ( Sipias ) , gives thought to Sepias , while the association of the Thessalian Achaeans, the mythical ' Myrmidones ', with the Aiginetic Achaeans and the origin of these is certain of those is most likely.

Secondary literature

swell

  • Aeschylus : Myrmidones (The Myrmidons - A Lost Work)

Remarks

  1. ↑ Myrmidons . Brockhaus and dtv, Wiesbaden / Munich 1982. Volume 12, ISBN 3-423-03312-6 , p. 274.
  2. ↑ a b Eratosthenes in Virgil , Aeneid 4,402 and 2,77 (and commentary by Servius )
  3. ↑ Homer, Iliad 16, 173-197.
  4. ↑ Johannes Ilberg : Peisandors 1 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 3.2, Leipzig 1909, column 1791 ( digitized version ).
  5. ^ First in Hellanikos (frg. 17 from Athenaios 10,416 A; FHG 1, 48).
  6. ↑ Arnobius 4:26; Isidorus , Origines 9.2 ap. Muncker.
  7. ↑ Clemens of Alexandria , admonition to the Greeks 39.6; Hyginus , Fabulae 72.
  8. ↑ a b Strabon , Geographica 9,5,9; 8,6,16
  9. ↑ Libraries of Apollodor 1,7,2.
  10. ↑ Hyginus, Poeticon astronomicon 2.14; Friedrich Wilhelm Schneidewin interprets Ischylla from the traditional spellings Hisela, Hiscela, Hysocla, Hyocla, Hiscilla .
  11. ↑ Hyginus, Fabulae 14; Apollonius Rhodius , Argonautica 1.54.
  12. ↑ Aelianus, Varia historia 27. Erysichthon is in most sources the son of Triopas .
  13. ↑ Theagenes in Tzetzes , ad Lycophronem 176.
  14. ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus 3,13,1.
  15. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.517ff.
  16. ↑ http://www.online-mythology.com/myrmidons/ (English)
  17. ^ Heinrich Dietrich Müller: Mythology of the Greek Tribes. Volume 1. 1857, p. 78.
  18. ↑ Herodotus 7,183.
  19. ↑ Otto Müller: Prolegomena to a scientific mythology. Göttingen 1825, p. 168; (Heinrich Dietrich Müller: Mythology of the Greek Tribes. Volume 1. 1857, p. 73 ff.)
  20. ^ Johann Albert Fabricius : Bibliotheca Graeca. l. II. C. 16. §. 7th