Melissa
Melisseus , also Melissos ( ancient Greek Μελισσέυς , the "man of bees"), is a king in Crete in Greek mythology .
He was both the demon of honey and the art of beekeeping. He was considered the father of the nymphs Adrasteia and Ide or of Adrasteia and Kynosura or of Amaltheia and Melissa , to whom Rhea gave the Zeus child to be raised together with the Curetes in the dictean cave - and thus protected from the access of Kronos .
Melisseus is possibly synonymous with the curet of the same name. Since, according to a scholion to the library of Apollodorus, the Curetes were brothers of Adrasteia and Ide, he must have been a son of the king.
Melisseus was the first of man to offer sacrifices to the gods, introduced new customs of worship and parades in honor of the gods. His daughter Ide is said to have given its name to the Trojan Ida Mountains . He made his daughter Melissa the first priestess of Rhea.
literature
- Ludwig Less : Melisseus 1) . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, column 2642 ( digitized version ).
Individual evidence
- ^ Nonnos , Dionysiaka 28, 275 ff.
- ↑ Libraries of Apollodor 1, 1, 6; Hyginus Mythographus , Fabulae 182.
- ↑ Scholion to Euripides , Rhesus 342.
- ↑ Lactantius , Divine Instructions 1:22 .
- ^ Hyginus Mythographus, De astronomia 2, 13.
- ^ Diodorus 5, 65, 1
- ↑ Scholion to Libraries of Apollodorus 3, 133.
- ↑ Diodorus 17, 1; Plutarch , De fluviorum et montium nominibus et de iis quae in illis inveniuntur 13, 3
- ↑ Lactantius, Divine Instructions 1:22 .