Asbolus

Asbolus ( Greek  Ἄσβολος , carbon black , latinisiert Asbolus) is a centaur of Greek mythology .

With Hesiod and Ovid he is one of the centaurs who fight with the Lapiths at the wedding of Peirithoos . The nickname bird shower ( οἰωνιστής or augur) indicates visionary abilities.

According to Flavius ​​Philostratus , he was crucified by Heracles after the battle . On the cross he wrote the epigram:

I, Asbolos, fearful neither of gods nor of men,
am, hanging on a resinous spruce with pointed needles,
consecrated as a plentiful meal to ravens that live almost forever.

In ancient pictorial representations of Centaur battles it is inscribed on the Attic black-figure clit crater (approx. 570/60 BC) and an Attic black-figure cantharos in the Berlin Collection of Antiquities (Inv.-No. F1737; approx. Century BC) attested.

literature

• Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Asbolos . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, column 609 ( digitized version ).
• Konrad Wernicke : Asbolos 1 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, col. 1519.

Web links

• Asbolos in the Greek Myth Index

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hesiod's Shield of Heracles 185.
2. ^ Ovid Metamorphoses 12, 309.
3. ↑ Flavius ​​Philostratos Heroikos 19, 17.
4. ^ Andreas Beschorner: Heroes and Heroes, Homer and Caracalla: Translation, commentary and interpretations on the heroic of Flavios Philostratos . Levante, 1999. p. 157.
5. ↑ The inscription on the kantharos: Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum 7383; 8185c.