Hemithea (sister of the Parthenos)

Hemithea ( Greek  Ἡμιθέα " demigoddess ") is a healing deity in Greek mythology . She was originally a mortal, was called Molpadia and was the daughter of Staphylos and Chrysothemis and the sister of the Parthenos and Rhoio .

myth

The strict father had already locked the Rhoio, who had been seduced by Apollo , in a box and let it go to sea, when it happened that Molpadia and her sister Parthenus fell asleep while they were supposed to watch over their father's wine and while the pigs overturned the jars of wine, so that the wine spoiled. In their fear of their father's punishment, the siblings threw themselves from a cliff into the sea, but were rescued by Apollon and raised among the gods, where Molpadia was given the name Hemithea.

So Diodorus . Parthenios tells a completely different story : Here Staphylos, the son of Dionysus , learns from a host named Lyrkos , son of Phoroneus , that the oracle of Didyma has promised him that he will beget a son with the first wife he is accompanying . Staphylos then made Lyrkos drunk and put Hemithea in his bed. The next morning Lyrkos was angry about the sperm robbery , but left a belt as a mark of identification for the future heir. When the son, whose name is Basilos, had grown up, he went to his father, who also recognized him.

sanctuary

After Diodorus, Hemithea became the goddess of a sanctuary in the city of Kastabos on the Carian Chersonese . There she was highly honored because she appeared bodily in their sleep to all the sick who went to her shrine and healed them ( enkoimesis ). Only those who had touched a pig or eaten pork were not allowed to enter the sanctuary. She was also helpful for women in need of childbed.

Because of this, the sanctuary flourished and received very numerous votive offerings . According to Diodorus , even the Persians , who plundered all the shrines on the coast, are said to have had such respect for the goddess that they did not touch any of the temple's treasures.

swell

• Diodorus 5,62,1
• Parthenios from Nicaea Erotica pathemata 1

literature

• JM Cook, WH Plommer: The Sanctuary of Hemithea at Kastabos. University Press, Cambridge 1966
• Fritz Graf : Hemithea. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 5, Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-476-01475-4 , Sp. 344 f.
• Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Hemithea 1 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,2, Leipzig 1890, Sp. 2034 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Hemithea in the Theoi Project (English)