Pelasgos (Arcadia)

Pelasgos ( Greek  Πελασγός ) is a figure in Greek mythology .

Pelasgos, who was regarded as the progenitor and eponym of the Pelasgians , who were one of the oldest populations in parts of Greece , was the first inhabitant of Arcadia according to the Arcadian variant of the legend. According to Hesiod and Asios of Samos he was an autochthon (local ancestor), according to Akusilaos, however, a son of Zeus and Niobe , a daughter of Phoroneus . Pelasgos became the first king of Arcadia, and Pausanias comments critically that he could not only have been a native of the country, but must also have had subjects over whom he ruled.

The Arcadians regarded Pelasgos, during whose reign the country was named after him Pelasgia , as the earliest cultural creator, who introduced the building of huts to protect against adverse weather conditions and the wearing of sheepskin coats and also weaned the population from unhealthy grasses, To nourish leaves and roots, but instead to eat acorns in particular , as was still common among the Arcadians in historical times. According to Hyginus Mythographus , he also built the first temple in Arcadia in honor of Zeus, but Hyginus gives another ancestry, according to which Pelasgos was a son of Triopas.

Lykaon is said to have been a son of Pelasgos of the Oceanid Meliboia or of the nymph Kyllene .

literature

• Hans von Geisau : Pelasgos 1). In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 4, Stuttgart 1972, Col. 595.

Remarks

1. ^ Pausanias 8, 1, 4.
2. ↑ Hesiod in the library of Apollodorus 2, 1, 1, 5 and 3, 8, 1, 1; Asios at Pausanias 8, 1, 4.
3. ↑ Akusilaos in the library of Apollodorus 2, 1, 1, 5 and 3, 8, 1, 1.
4. ^ Pausanias 8, 1, 4.
5. ↑ Pausanias 8, 1, 5f.
6. ↑ Hyginus Mythographus, Fabulae 225.
7. ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus 3, 8, 1, 1; Pausanias 8, 2, 1.