Aipytos (son of Kresphontes)

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Aipytos ( Greek  Αἴπυτος ) is a king of Messenia in Greek mythology .

Aipytus was the son of Kresphontes , the first Heraclid king of Messenia, and Merope , daughter of Kypselus . This made him a great-grandson of the king of Arcadia of the same name . In a riot, his father and brothers were killed while he was being rescued. He later succeeded in taking over the rule in Messenia, his father's kingdom.

Versions of the myth

According to Pausanias , Kresphontes was killed as a friend of the people by noble Messenians along with almost all of his sons; only Aipytos, who was still a child, survived and was taken to his grandfather Kypselos in the Arcadian city of Trapezous , where he grew up. After he had reached manhood, he was able to recapture Messenia with the help of the Arcadians under the leadership of Holaias , brother of Merope, and the Heraclids of Argos and Sparta . He punished his father's murderers and won over the nobles with deference and the people with gifts. He achieved such fame through his wise government that his descendants were no longer called Heraclid, but Aipytid . His son Glaucus succeeded him on the throne.

A surviving fragment of Nikolaos of Damascus tells that Merope gave birth to her son Aipytus when she was visiting her father in Trapezus. After the Kresphontes had been eliminated, his murderers lured Aipytus' brothers to him by outwitting Kypselus and killed them. Aipytos escaped this fate because he stayed with Kypselus. Following his subsequent repatriation, he punished the murderers, but was - unlike Pausanias - not a popular king.

Euripides dealt with the return of Aipytus in his lost tragedy Kresphontes , but named the son of Merope not Aipytus, but after his father Kresphontes. Later mythographic tradition, especially the library of Apollodorus and Hyginus Mythographus , served as the main source of Euripides' drama.

According to the library of Apollodorus , Kresphontes was murdered together with two of his sons after a short reign, whereupon the Heraclid Polyphontes came to the throne. He married Merope against her will, but was later killed by her third son Aipytos, who grew up with her father and who now took over the rule.

Hyginus explains that Polyphontes, after he murdered Kresphontes and forced his widow Merope to marry him, pursued her little son, who was called by Hyginus Telephontes , and offered a gold bonus for his killing. As he grew up, Telephontes went to Polyphontes unrecognized, claimed to have killed Merope's son and demanded the reward offered for it. Merope, who thought he was her son's murderer, almost killed him with an ax in his sleep, but an old man recognized him in time. Merope now apparently reconciled with Polyphontes and then helped her son murder Polyphontes in a sacrifice of thanks.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Pausanias 4: 3, 6-9; 8, 5, 7; Isocrates 6:23 ; 6, 31.
  2. ↑ Nikolaos von Damascus, in: Karl Müller , Theodor Müller , Victor Langlois (eds.): Fragmenta historicorum graecorum (FHG). Vol. 3, p. 377.
  3. ↑ Georg Wentzel : Aipytos 4). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume I, 1, Stuttgart 1893, Sp. 1046.
  4. ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus 2, 8, 5, 4-6.
  5. ^ Hyginus Mythographus, Fabulae 137.