Iamos

Iamos ( Greek  Ἴαμος from Greek  ἴον violets ) was the mythical ancestor of the Iamids in Olympia , a family of seers and priests. He was the son of Poseidon's daughter Euadne and Apollo .

As Euadne was ashamed of the pregnancy, she hid the newborn between violets in a bush, from which his name came. There he was fed honey by snakes. Apollon prophesied to Euadne's foster father, Aipytos , that Iamos would become an outstanding seer and the founder of a long-lasting generation of seers. When the grown-up Iamos climbed into the Alpheios to ask Poseidon and Apollon about his destiny, his father told him to follow his voice, led him to Olympia and gave him the ability both from the flight of the birds and from the To prophesy smoke from burned cowhide. Through him, Apollo founded the Olympic oracle on the Zeus altar . The descendants of Iamos, who originally presumably held rule and priesthood in the Elean Pisatis , retained the hereditary seer office in Olympia for almost a thousand years. In addition to the Elean-Olympic branch of the family, there were others in Messinia , Sparta , Arcadia and Sicily .

literature

• Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Iamos . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.1, Leipzig 1894, column 13 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Hans von Geisau : Iamos. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 2, Stuttgart 1967, column 1309.