Astrabacus

Astrabakos ( Greek  Ἀστράβακος ) is a person of Greek mythology .

Astrabakos was after Pausanias the son of the Lacedaemonian Irbos and thus a descendant of the mythical Spartan king Agis in the fourth generation. He and his brother Alopekos went mad when they found the cult image of Artemis Orthia, kidnapped by Orestes and Iphigenia to Sparta, in a lygos bush . They were the first to fall victim to the malevolent being of Orthia in Sparta, whose cult was subsequently connected with human sacrifice until Lycurgus replaced him with the whipping of Ephebe in order to stain the altar of Orthia with human blood and on it Way to satisfy the goddess' thirst for blood.

Astrabakos was revered as a hero in Sparta and also had a corresponding small heroon as a place of worship, which was located near the temple of Artemis. The local legend also reported that he was in the form of Ariston , king of Sparta and contemporary of Kroisos in the 6th century BC. Chr., Whose third wife is said to have visited and with her fathered the later King Damaratus , as Herodotus narrates.

swell

• Herodotus 6.69
• Pausanias 3,16,6. 9
• Clement of Alexandria , admonition to the Greeks 35

literature

• Karl Tümpel : Astrabakos . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1886, column 658 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Erich Bethe : Astrabakos . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Sp. 1792.