Myskelos
Myskelos ( Greek Μύσκελος , Latin Myscelus) is a figure in Greek mythology and the son of Alemon .
According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, he lived in Argos . One night, Heracles , who had become god, appeared to Myskelos in a dream and ordered him to leave his home and go to distant Aisar and threatened him with punishment if he did not obey the command. On the other hand, however, there was the local law, which forbade anyone under the death penalty to look for a new home.
After the god appeared to him a second time in a dream and threatened even higher punishments, Myskelos immediately decided to leave the city. He was then arrested and tried. The verdict was decided by black and white stones that were thrown into an urn and then counted (black = guilty, white = innocent). To avoid the death penalty, Myskelus prayed to the gods and after the urn was emptied all the stones were white.
So Myskelos left Argos and went to the Aisar River in Italy. Here he founded a town not far from a hill under which the bones of the hero Croton are buried, and named it after the name of the buried: Kroton (today: Crotone ). Pythagoras is one of its most famous inhabitants .
literature
- Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Myskelos . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, Col. 3323 f. ( Digitized version ).
Individual evidence
- ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses , XV, 12-59.