Lynkeus (son of Aphareus)

Lynkeus ( Greek  Λυνκεύς ), the son of Aphareus and Arene , was the younger brother of Idas in Greek mythology . The library of Apollodorus mentions another brother: Peisus . His eyes were so sharp that he could see through walls and into the interior of the earth.

Lynkeus and Idas took part in the hunt for the Calydonian boar and in the Argonaut trip. Together with the Dioscuri , Castor and Polydeukes , they undertook a foray into Arcadia . Later they got into a quarrel with the Dioscuri, where Lynkeus was killed by Polydeukes with a spear.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe immortalized Lynkeus in his Faust II in the third act as herald of the arrival of Helena and in the fifth act as a witness to the arson of Mephisto . "Goethe assigned the same name to two different symbolic figures" (A. Daur. Faust and the Devil . Heidelberg 1950)

swell

• Apollodor, Libraries , 1, 67; 1, 111; 3, 117; 3, 135-136.
• Pausanias , traveling in Greece , 3, 13, 1; 3, 14, 7; 4, 2, 6-7; 4, 3, 1.

literature

• Konrad Seeliger : Lynkeus 2 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, Col. 2208 f. ( Digitized version ).