Eridanus (mythology)

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The Eridanos ( Greek  Ἠριδανός , Latin Eridanus ) is a great river at the end of the world in Greek mythology . As a river god, Eridanos was the son of Oceanus and Tethys .

Phaeton , son of the sun god Helios , fell into the Eridanos after losing control of his father's sun chariot. His sisters, the Heliaden , were turned into black poplars on the banks of the Eridanos , and their tears into amber .

In the case of Apollonios of Rhodes , for example, it is unclear whether the Eridanos is a river, a stream or an inlet or rather a lake. Since Phaeton's fall, vapors are said to have still risen from the water there. No bird could fly over the place, because in the middle of the lake every bird would go up in flames. It is a sad area, filled with steam and the smell of burning and at night you can hear the shrill cries of mourning from the heliads. According to the Celts , the ambers found there are the petrified tears of Apollo , who was there when he was exiled from Olympus . The Eridanus flows According to Apollonius in the Okeanos , in the Ionian Sea and with seven mouths into the Tyrrhenian Sea .

Given such a confused geography, it is not surprising that there is no secure location of the Eridanos. Attempts have been made to connect the Eridanos both with the Rhone (which flows into the Eridanos after Apollonios) and with the Po . Herodotus and Strabo considered Eridanos to be purely mythical. In Virgil the Eridanus appears as a river of the underworld.

The connection of the Eridanos with amber and the view of Herodotus that the Eridanos flows into a northern sea also suggested a river flowing into the Baltic Sea ( Radaune ). In addition, in Greek mythology, Eridanos is associated with Hyperborea , which is mostly located in the far northeast (from Greece) . However, the geographical localizations "Po" and "Rhône" also reflect a relationship to amber, since the ancient Romans received amber deliveries both via Massalia (Marseille; i.e. via the Rhône) and from the Po river basin (probably also from Etruscans).

The constellation Eridanus and a hypothetical river in tertiary northern Europe are named after the mythical river (see Eridanus (geology) ).

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Remarks

  1. ^ Hesiod , Theogony 338.
  2. ^ Ovid , Metamorphoses 2,324. 365; Hyginus , Fabulae 152; 154; Flavius ​​Philostratos , adults 1,11.
  3. ↑ Apollonios of Rhodes, Argonautika 4,594 ff.
  4. ↑ Pliny , Naturalis historia 37.31 f.
  5. ↑ Herodotus, Historien 3,115; Strabon, Geographika 5,1,9.
  6. ↑ Virgil, Aeneid 6,659.
  7. ↑ Hesiod, fragments 150, 23-24 (R. Merkelbach, ML West, 1967).
  8. ↑ u. a. George Charles Williamson: The Book of Amber. Benn, London 1932, p. 30.
  9. ↑ Wilhelm Geerlings : The tears of the sisters of Phaëton - Bernstein in antiquity. In: Michael Ganzelewski, Rainer Slotta (Ed.): Bernstein - Tears of the Gods. Catalog of the exhibition of the German Mining Museum Bochum (= publications from the German Mining Museum Bochum. Number 64). Deutsches Bergbau-Museum, Bochum 1996, pp. 395-399.